Hi there, I'm Lale Arakoglu, and on today's episode of Women Who Travel, I'm talking to a lawyer, political pioneer, and activist.

She's Carol Mosley Braun, who in 1992 became the first black woman elected to the US Senate.

She served seven years as a Democrat representing Illinois.

A lifelong traveler, she says becoming U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa in 1999,

was a dream come true.

And today, she chairs the United States African Development Foundation.

Ambassador Braun's memoir, which is in bookstores now, is called Trailblazer and dedicated

to her grandmother.

Her ancestors moved north in the Great Migration.

They were farmers from Alabama and musicians from New Orleans.

And now she's talking to me from her home in Chicago.

How is Chicago because it is pouring of rain in New York?

Very nice.

It's beautiful and it's not raining or snowing more of the point.

And the weather is really quite lovely.

And I live right across from a park.

So I'm here in Madison Park and enjoying the birds flitting around and the beautiful greenery and the scenery is just

gorgeous. And so it really is lovely being here. You obviously have had an extraordinary career in politics. We will get all into this later,

but you are in Chicago where you were born and raised. Talk a bit about how you were aware

of segregation when you were growing up in Chicago. In your book, you talk about how your mother had to endure that

while giving birth to you in a Chicago hospital. Well, my first introduction to it was the fact that we

lived in a, it was actually a transitional community in the sense it was going from all white to all black.

...