In Search for My Sisters: A Commentary on Black Women in Political Science
*Note from the Author: An original version of this article was published in Medium on 11/13/2020. The author has since updated the article to include data from the American Political Science Association (APSA).
When Mary Elizabeth Taylor resigned from the State Department in June 2020, I took notice of political “hidden figures” — i.e., African American women who play advisory roles in politics, yet are little known to the American public. Taylor, as you may recall, was the young African American senior staffer who gained notoriety in social media when she was seen sitting behind Neil Gorsuch during his Supreme Court nomination hearings in early 2017. She drew attention because she was young, she was Black and beautiful, and no one knew who she was. (See Daniel S. Levine’s article in Heavy.com).
Admittedly, I was unaware of the overall number of Black women serving in the executive branch. Over the years, I’ve known the obvious ones — e.g., Loretta Lynch (attorney general in the Obama administration) or Condoleezza Rice (National Security Advisor and Secretary of State under the Bush II administration). But less visible Black women working in the executive branch were unknown to me.
According to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the number of African…
