Terri Sewell

Terri Sewell grew up near Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge with parents who worked in education.¹ Her father was a coach, while her mother was a librarian and Selma's first Black city councilwoman.² At Princeton, a planned half hour interview for her thesis with Shirley Chisholm became a four hour conversation during a snowstorm.¹

Sewell was Selma High School's first Black valedictorian and went on to Princeton, Oxford and Harvard Law School.² She worked as a securities and public finance attorney and became the first Black woman partner in Maynard Cooper & Gale's Birmingham office.² She has said her father's illness helped bring her back to Alabama.¹

First elected in 2010, Sewell became the first Black woman in Alabama's congressional delegation.² She now holds senior Democratic roles on the Ways and Means oversight panel and the House Administration elections panel.² Her legislation honoring the four children killed in Birmingham's 1963 church bombing became law in 2013.³

Her priorities include restoring federal voting rights protections, workforce training and economic opportunities in the Black Belt.² She sponsors the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which proposes new protections and review of discriminatory voting changes.² She faces Republican Ammie Akin, an educator and community development advocate, in the general election.⁴