More than 45 years ago in Gary, Indiana, 8,000 people from all walks of life gathered for the National Black Political Convention. Hosted by Richard Hatcher, the nation’s first Black mayor of a large city, and held seven years after the Voting Rights Act, the convention sought to develop an agenda “not only for the future of Black humanity, but [also as] … probably the only way the rest of America [could] save itself from the harvest of its criminal past.”

Although political leaders, such as Illinois’ first Black statewide officeholder and onetime U.S. Sen. Roland Burris (D), credited the conference with increasing the number of Black political officeholders at almost every level, Black women are still underrepresented. As Higher Heights, a New York-based political action committee for Black women candidates, explains on its site, “Of the 100 members of the U.S. Senate, there is one Black woman. Of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives, 18 are Black women.” Only two of the 74 women in a statewide elected office are Black, and 266 of the 1,830 women serving as state legislators across the country are Black.

Notably, back at the Gary Convention, former journalist Renee Ferguson, who covered the event, observed, “there were a lot of egos and there weren’t many women.”