In February 2023, history was made in the Commonwealth as elected Democrat Jennifer McCllelan soared to victory in a race to fill a vacant seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first Black woman to represent the state in Congress.
It was a major milestone for the veteran state legislator, whose family grew up in the Jim Crow South. McClellan said much of her family had to fight to cast their vote, including her father’s grandfather who had to take a literacy test and find three white people to support him just to be able to register to vote. Additionally, her grandfather and father were required to pay poll taxes. Her mother wouldn’t vote until after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed.
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Her mother was also the first in her family to receive an education beyond the 8th grade.
“I realize that in a lot of ways, I am fighting the same fight that my mom and my grandmother and my great-grandmother fought, and rather than getting despondent over that or giving up, I dig deeper,” she told NBC News when she was first elected. “I’ve got to keep fighting those fights so my daughter doesn’t have to.”
She currently represents the 4th congressional district in Virginia, which covers the state’s capitol, Colonial Heights, Petersburg, and other localities—extending south to the North Carolina border. Previously, she served in the House of Delegates for more than a decade and had been a member of the state Senate since 2017. She also ran for governor in 2021.
With a focus on environmental justice and climate change, abortion rights, public school funding, and expanding voting rights, McClellan hopes to be a catalyst for change both in the Commonwealth and throughout the U.S.
“It’s a huge honor and responsibility to ensure that I’m not the last,” she said in a previous interview.