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Lawyer, political pioneer, and activist Carol Moseley Braun has some career stories to tell, many of which she shares in Trailblazer, her new memoir. Lale chats with Braun, who in 1992 became the first Black woman elected to the US senate, about crossing paths with Dr. Martin King, Jr., campaigning alongside the likes of Maya Angelou and Gloria Steinem, and lessons learned from the communities she served as US Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa.

Lale Arikoglu: Hi, there. I’m Lale Arikoglu, and on today’s episode of Women Who Travel, I’m talking to a lawyer, political pioneer and activist. She’s Carol Moseley Braun, who in 1992 became the first Black woman elected to the U.S. Senate. She served seven years as a Democrat representing Illinois. A lifelong traveler, she says becoming U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa in 1999 was a dream come true, and today she chairs the United States African Development Foundation.

Ambassador Braun’s memoir, which is in bookstores now, is called Trailblazer and dedicated to her grandmother. Her ancestors moved north in the Great Migration. They were farmers from Alabama and musicians from New Orleans, and now she’s talking to me from her home in Chicago. How is Chicago because it is pouring with rain in New York?

Carol Moseley Braun: Very nice. It’s beautiful, and it’s not raining or snowing, more the point. The weather is really quite lovely, and I live right across from a park, so I’m here in Madison Park and enjoying the birds flitting around and the beautiful greenery and the scenery is just gorgeous, and so it really is lovely being here.

LA: You obviously have had an extraordinary career in politics. We will get all into this later, but you are in Chicago where you were born and raised. Talk a bit about how you were aware of segregation when you were growing up in Chicago. In your book you talk about how your mother had to endure that while giving birth to you in a Chicago hospital.

CMB: Well, my first introduction to it was the fact that we lived in a, it was actually a transitional community in the sense it was going from all white to all Black. And so we were in the middle of that transition, and that on top of the fact that when I was born, the nuns at the hospital where mother was, had designated me as being white. And of course I’m obviously not white, and so I went with my birth certificate saying I was white until I was in the state legislature when I was finally able to get it changed. I tried to get it changed just going to the passport offices, and of course they looked at me like I had lost my mind and, yeah, that’s part of my background too.