Fifty-two-year-old Angela Alsobrooks recently became Maryland’s first Black U.S. Senator. But she is an old hand at blazing new trails. Her tenure as a bona-fide trailblazer began after she graduated from Duke University in 1993 with a degree in public policy and Afro-American studies. In 1996, she received her law degree from the University of Maryland.
According to her bio on the U.S. Senate website, she worked as a law clerk in the Baltimore City Circuit Court and soon, became the first full-time assistant state’s attorney to handle domestic violence cases in Prince George’s County.
Her trailblazing career also includes a stint as the first woman to be elected Prince George’s County State’s Attorney. Later, from 2018 to 2024, she served as the county executive of Prince George’s County, Md.
“I have grandparents who could have never imagined a day like this,” Alsobrooks told reporters after her recent Congressional oath-of-office ceremony concluded, referring to her great grandfather, Sam Ford, who was shot and killed on July 4, 1956 by a sheriff’s deputy in 1956 in Seneca, S.C. “He hit him with a stick in the beginning,” said Alsobrook’s great aunt, Mildred James, who was 93, when she described Sam Ford’s death to Fox Baltimore News in a 2020 interview. James said she was 29 years old at the time. She went to the inquest.
“They found that the officer was not guilty and he was free to go and no charges,” she recalls.
They fled to relatives in Washington. “It was really frightening for us kids,” she said.
Sam Ford grabbed the stick. Then the policeman pulled his gun, Alsobrook’s aunt said.
“I’m told also, that before he did that, he shot at his feet and that he said, ‘Dance, n*****, dance.’ Is what he said to him before he shot and killed him,” Alsobrook’s great aunt, Mildred James, told Fox Baltimore News.
Against this troubling backdrop, Alsobrooks was sworn into office in the U.S. Senate on Jan. 3. Maryland’s new trailblazing U.S. Senator was born and raised in a largely Black middle-class neighborhood in Prince George’s County, where her father, James Alsobrooks, sold insurance and delivered The Washington Post and her mother, Patricia Alsobrooks, worked as a receptionist. In high school, she was elected student government president while she was enrolled at Banneker High School, in Washington, D.C.
Most recently, Alsobrooks won a seat in the U.S. Senate in November 2024 by defeating former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan. Alsobrooks won 58.4 percent of the vote compared to Hogan’s 42.9 percent margin in November 2024.
“She’s a super bad woman,” Alsobrook’s college-age daughter, Alexandra, a Spelman student, said in a 2023 Instagram post. A year later, Alsobrook’s daughter, Alex, wrote after she voted in the recent November 2024 election– which was her daughter’s first election–that she voted for her mom for Senate, and for Kamala Harris as the next president.
As Alsobrooks assumes office during Trump’s second presidential term, it is important to recall that her career comes on the heels of other trailblazing Senate careers. Carol Mosley Braun’s (1993-1999) and Kamala Harris’ (2017-2020) historic Senate wins, for example, may have paved the way for Alsobrooks’ recent swearing-in ceremony at Capitol Hill.
Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois became the first Black female senator after she won in 1992. Vice President Harris represented California in the Senate starting in 2017 before becoming vice president in 2021. Laphonza Butler of California was appointed to the Senate in 2023, after serving as an African-American labor union official who was appointed as a United States senator from California from 2023 to 2024.
While history was being made at Alsobrook’s recent swearing-in ceremony on Capitol Hill, her family sat in the gallery, making hearts with their hands and waving. She replaces Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), who is retiring after serving 40 years in the House and the state House of Delegates.
“As divided as we may feel in America, I still believe there is no ‘us against them.’ There is only us,” Alsobrooks said during her victory speech.
Alsobrooks described her recent swearing-in ceremony on Capitol Hill as “a day of joy. I’ve enjoyed every minute of,” she told reporters. “It really has also been full circle. I started here in 1992 as an intern, as a Congressional Black Caucus intern in 1992. So, it was surreal.”
Alsobrooks said it was special to be sworn in by Harris. She shared a photo they took together in 2017 when Harris was sworn into the Senate.
Earlier, Alsobrooks also participated in a ceremonial swearing-in reception sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus. Gov. Wes Moore who attended Alsobrook’s recent oath-of-office ceremony, said it was “humbling” to see her in the role after working hard to help elect her in a competitive race, but added, “history is not just to take an oath or to be in the seat.”
“The history is to make sure that all the promises that were made, that we hold to our promises,” he said before heading to private receptions held for other new federal lawmakers.
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