Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Makes ‘Herstory’ With The Most Black Women In Any Presidential Campaign

Powerful Black Women Calling the Shots in the Obama Administration

Ty Wright/Bloomberg via Getty Images

There are more Black women in Clinton’s campaign than any presidential campaign in history – President Obama’s campaigns included.

Toni Akindele Oct, 19, 2016

This week, the onslaught of diversity reports and wage disparities coming from facets of varied industries have been telling – side eye at the TV industry. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, however, just received a high mark.

According to The Cut, “there are more African-American women working on Hillary Clinton’s campaign than any other presidential campaign in history. Thirty-eight, in fact, are stationed at her headquarters. More than both of President Obama’s campaigns in 2008 and 2012, and certainly more than her current Republican opponent.”

The Cut profiles six of these brilliant women in a slideshow, including senior policy advisor Maya Harris, who delves into the policies that would affect Black women the most: the gender pay gap, support for small business, and criminal-justice reform.

“When you talk about these things, they impact women of color in tremendous ways,” Harris tells The Cut. “For example, an average women makes 80 cents on the dollar compared to White men. For African-American women it’s 63 cents on the dollar and for Latinas it’s 54 cents on the dollar.”

“When you talk about ensuring equal pay for women, that will have a distinct and dramatic impact for women of color, for whom the wage gap is widest,” says Harris.

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Also profiled in the article is Hillary’s director of progressive media Zerlina Maxwell, who explains what it’s like as a campaign going head to head against Donald Trump.

“Being a Black woman in this campaign, it’s a lot, especially given what’s going on all in the news with Black people,” says Maxwell. “And especially when you’re running against Donald Trump, which can sometimes be emotionally exhausting. But that just makes the work here more important.”

Though the work can be emotionally exhausting, these incredible women hold each other down. They even have a Black Girl Magic email group they used to get together for their spectacular photo shoot.

Meet the Black women of Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the slideshow, here.