Terri Sewell

Terrycina Andrea "Terri" Sewell (born January 1, 1965) is an American lawyer and politician.

After graduating from Princeton in 1986, Sewell attended St Hilda's College, Oxford where she was a Marshall Scholar.

It was there that she befriended Susan Rice.

Sewell graduated from Oxford with a degree in political science in 1988.

She attended Harvard Law School for her J.D. degree, which she completed in 1992.

There she overlapped with and was friends with Barack Obama, who became a lifelong friend and influenced Sewell's decision to enter politics.

Her master's thesis, on the election of the first black members of the British parliament, was later published as a book, Black Tribunes: Race and Representation in British Politics (1993).

After graduation, Sewell served as a judicial law clerk in Birmingham, Alabama, to Chief Judge U. W. Clemon, In New York, she worked at Davis Polk & Wardwell, alongside Kirsten Gillibrand, starting in 1994.

Sewell returned to Alabama in 2004 due to her father's health problems.

She worked for another law firm, Maynard, Cooper & Gale PC, where she was the first black woman partner at the firm.

She was a public finance lawyer.

In 2007, Sewell was at Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, where she is a member, when then Senator Barack Obama spoke during the 2008 United States presidential election.

Sewell credits Obama's speech (in which he asked "[t]he questions that I have today is, what’s called of us in this Joshua generation? What do we do in order to fulfill that legacy, to fulfill the obligations and the debt that we owe to those who allowed us to be here today?") as the catalyst for her serving in politics.

Weeks after his speech, Gillibrand called Sewell, recruiting Sewell to run for office.

After four-term Democratic incumbent Artur Davis gave up the seat to run for governor, Sewell entered the Democratic primary—the real contest in this majority Democratic, majority-black district.

She finished first in the four-way primary with 36.8% of the vote.

In the runoff, she defeated Jefferson County Commissioner Sheila Smoot with 55% of the vote.

In the general election, Sewell defeated Republican opponent Don Chamberlain with 72.4% of the vote as expected.

A member of the Democratic Party, she has served since 2011 as the U.S. representative for AL's 7th congressional district, which includes most of the Black Belt, as well as most of the predominantly African American portions of Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, and Montgomery.

A native of Huntsville, Sewell studied at Princeton University, Harvard Law School, and St Hilda's College at the University of Oxford.

Before entering politics, she was a securities lawyer for Davis Polk & Wardwell and a public finance lawyer for Maynard, Cooper & Gale, where she was the first Black woman to make partner.

She is the first African-American woman elected to Congress from Alabama and, along with Republican Martha Roby, was one of the first women elected to Congress from Alabama in a regular election.

Sewell was the only candidate to file for the Democratic nomination in 2012, and defeated Chamberlain again in the general election.

This was the last time Sewell had a Republican opponent until 2022.

Sewell was challenged in the Democratic primary by Tamara Harris Johnson, a former Birmingham City Attorney.

She defeated Johnson with 83.9% of the vote, effectively clinching a third term.

Sewell won a fourth term against a write-in opponent.

Sewell won a fifth term against a write-in opponent.

Sewell has been the only Democrat in Alabama's House delegation during her entire term in office, and apart from Doug Jones's U.S. Senate tenure from 2018 to 2021 she has also been the state's only congressional Democrat.

Terri Sewell was born in Huntsville, Alabama, to Andrew A. Sewell, a former high school basketball coach, and Nancy Gardner Sewell, a retired high school librarian and former Selma city council member.

Her mother was the first Black woman elected to Selma's city council.

As a child, Sewell wanted to be a star on Broadway.

Because her mother had hoped for her to become a lawyer, Sewell joined the debate team in high school.

She was the first Black valedictorian of Selma High School.

After graduating from high school, Sewell went to Princeton University.

She was the first Selma High School graduate to attend an Ivy League school.

She was recruited to attend Princeton by Julian L. McPhillips, who read about her in the local Selma newspaper.

At Princeton, she befriended Michelle Obama, who served as what Sewell called her "big sister" on campus.

Sewell completed a 158-page long senior thesis, "Black Women in Politics: Our Time Has Come".

During her time at Princeton, she interned with Richard Shelby (then a Democrat) and Howell Heflin.