WA-10: Washington state could elect its first Black woman to Congress this year
Washington has never elected a Black woman (or any Black person) to the U.S. Congress. But that could change this year.
Two Black women are running for the open U.S. House seat being vacated by Democratic Congressman Denny Heck.
Marilyn Strickland, a Democrat who served as mayor of Tacoma for nearly a decade and later ran Seattle’s Chamber of Commerce, is one of two Black women in the race for Washington’s 10th, which includes Olympia and part of Tacoma.
Strickland sees in the protests this spring against police brutality as a spark that could ignite historic change at the ballot drop box this fall.
“Our institutions, whether they're government, whether they're education, whether it's policing, whether it's banking, whether it's healthcare, what are the institutions doing? And how do we address the inequities that exist in them?” Strickland said.
Congress is one of those institutions. In 1968 Shirley Chisholm of New York became the first Black woman elected to congress. In 1972, she was the first woman and Black American person to run in a presidential primary.
https://www.kuow.org/stories/washington-could-elect-first-african-american-to-congress-this-year