|
Terrycina Andrea "Terri" Sewell (born January 1, 1965) is an American politician, elected in 2010 as the U.S. Representative for . The 7th district includes most of the Black Belt, as well as most of the predominantly black portions of Birmingham, Tuscaloosa and Montgomery. Sewell is a member of the Democratic Party and the first black woman elected to Congress from Alabama. Sewell is the only Democrat in Alabama's seven-member congressional delegation. Sewell and Republican Martha Roby, also elected in 2010, are the first women elected to Congress from Alabama in regular elections.〔Elizabeth B. Andrews was elected to fill an unexpired term in the House, while Senators Dixie Bibb Graves and Maryon Pittman Allen were appointed and never elected.〕 A native of Selma, Sewell is a graduate of Princeton University, Harvard Law School and Oxford University. She is a public finance attorney. ==Early life and education== Terrycina Sewell, known as "Terri," was raised in Selma. She is the daughter of Andrew A. Sewell, a former athletic coach, and Nancy Gardner Sewell, a former City Councilwoman and now retired librarian of Selma. Her mother was the first black woman elected to the Selma City Council. Both parents held careers in the Selma public school system. Sewell was the first black valedictorian of Selma High School. Her mother's family was politically active, offering its homestead to activists who came for the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches to gain voting rights. Sewell spent her childhood summers in Lowndes County, Alabama with her maternal grandparents. Her grandfather, a Primitive Baptist minister and a farmer, instilled in her a love for the land, an appreciation of hard work, and the importance of her faith. Her grandfather and the members of Beulah Primitive Baptist Church gave her a deep understanding of the Black Belt Region and its people. Sewell graduated with honors from Princeton University and received a scholarship from ''U.S. News and World Report'', among others. A lifelong Democrat, during the summers while in college, she worked on Capitol Hill for 7th congressional district congressman Richard Shelby, as well as for Senator Howell Heflin. She was a leader on the college campus, serving in various roles including class vice-president, class representative to the Student Union, and spearheading the admission office’s effort to set up a Minority Student Recruitment office to recruit more minority students to the university. Upon graduation from college, Sewell was featured on NBC’s ''Today Show'' as one of the “Top Collegian Women.” She was chosen as one of the “Top Ten College Women in America” by ''Glamour Magazine''. She received the Afro-American Studies Thesis Prize for her senior thesis, ''Black Women in Politics: Our Time Has Come,'' which featured a personal interview with Shirley Chisholm, the first black U.S. Congresswoman. Sewell continued her education, receiving a Masters degree with first-class Honours from Oxford University. At the age of 25, she published her Masters’ thesis on the election of the first black members of British parliament as a book titled, ''Black Tribunes: Race and Representation in British Politics'' (1993). Sewell attended Harvard Law School with the help of an NAACP Legal Defense Fund scholarship, graduating in 1992. In law school, she served as an editor of the ''Civil Rights Civil Liberties Law Review.'' She published an article titled “Selma, Lord, Selma,” about the legal struggles in Selma, in the (''Harvard Black Letter Journal'' ), (vol. 8, Spring 1991). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Terri Sewell」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|