Before them, there have been three black senators – Carol Moseley Braun, presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Laphonza Butler – but they never sat together in the upper chamber of Congress.
Even in the current decade, there have been two years without a black woman among the 100 senators. That happened after Harris left the chamber to become vice president in 2021 and until the California governor named Laphonza Butler to fill Dianne Feinstein’s place when she died in 2023.
As vice-president, Harris has also been the leader of the Senate and the one who has the deciding vote in the event of a tie, but the vice-president is still not considered one of the senators.
Another woman will also become the first woman in the Senate after Tuesday’s election: Sarah McBride of Delaware is the first openly transgender person to sit in the assembly.