Black women achieved record-high representation in state legislatures and made historic gains in the U.S. Senate in 2025, according to a new report tracking their political progress over the past decade.
Senators Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware and Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland.
Black women now hold 401 state legislative seats nationwide, representing 5.4% of all state legislators and 16.2% of all women state legislators. This marks a 67.1% increase from 240 seats in 2014, when the organizations began tracking these statistics.
The most dramatic change occurred in the U.S. Senate, where two Black women now serve simultaneously for the first time in American history. Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland and Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware both won open seats in the 2024 election, doubling Black women's representation in the upper chamber.
"This year also marks the first time in history that two Black women serve together in the United States Senate," Alsobrooks and Blunt Rochester wrote in the report's foreword. "That milestone is not a coincidence; it's a culmination. It's the result of investments made, barriers challenged, and generations of Black women who refused to be sidelined."
At the congressional level, 29 Black women currently serve as voting members, including 27 in the House and two in the Senate. This represents nearly double the 15 Black women who served in Congress when tracking began in 2014. All current Black congresswomen are Democrats except for the two senators.
The 2024 election cycle was particularly significant because Vice President Kamala Harris became the first Black woman to head a major-party presidential ticket. Though Harris lost the election, her 107-day campaign raised $81 million in its first 24 hours and nearly doubled Democratic voter enthusiasm, according to the report.
