welcome to the black women government takeover

By no means is the fight won or the journey done, but we can celebrate a new day in governance. It’s a day filled with Black womanhood, just like the Texas judicial system and Congress. In a historic moment for Texas and the United States, 17 Black women judges were sworn in by Harris County, Houston’s largest county. According to the Washington Post, 50 incumbent Republican judges lost their seats in the midterm elections and that vacuum has been filled with Black Girl Magic. Harris County is the third most populous county in the country, boasting one of the United States’ most diverse populations.

The great part of this new movement is that it’s not just the judiciary. If you haven’t caught our political fangirling as of late then you’ll have missed the bad-ass Black women who are breaking barriers and making history during the midterm elections. Ilhan Omar is a Somali-Muslim who came to the United States as refugee over twenty years. Omar is now one of the first Muslims and the first Somali American to be sworn into Congress as the, and she’s not the only first.

Ayanna Pressley is a Black bombshell who can rock the hell out of twist-braids and she is the first Black woman to represent the state of Massachusetts in the House of Representatives. Pressley unseated 10-term Republican Michael Capuano, who was a reliably liberal white man who probably would have voted like Pressley on most issues — essentially a liberal wet dream. Pressley won anyway on a progressive platform that invigorated the Democratic base during the midterms.

Lauren Underwood is a 31-year-old Democrat who pulled off an upset by winning a Congressional seat in a predominantly white and Republican district. As one of the youngest Black candidates to be elected to Congress, Underwood has not gotten nearly enough shine for staging this kind of upset and becoming the first Black woman to win her Illinois district. Another Black woman who deserves all the shine in the world is Lucy McBath, the mother of Jordan Davis who was killed by police in 2012. McBath ran on a gun-control platform as a way to honor her son’s untimely death and ended up winning the seat in Georgia’s Sixth district. McBath experienced a mother’s worst nightmare and transformed that energy into a purpose that could one day save other mothers from the same tragedy.

Black women are a force of nature without intending to be. We take hellfire and use it to fashion a new and better world for us and those around us. The new face of Congress and the judicial system is in large part owing to Black women looking at the world and going “Fuck it! I’ll do it myself.” And they did. And now we have a pool of representatives unlike any we’ve seen before.