The Senate on Tuesday, on the anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, narrowly confirmed longtime civil rights attorney Kristen Clarke to be the Justice Department's civil rights chief, making her the first Black woman to fill the high-profile role (article available here).
The Senate voted 51-48 to confirm Clarke, with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, as the lone Republican to support President Joe Biden's nominee to lead a powerful division of the Justice Department that's in charge of investigating police abuses and enforcing voting rights laws and federal statutes prohibiting discrimination based on race, sex, religion and other factors.
The daughter of Jamaican immigrants, Clarke began her career as a Justice Department lawyer, mostly in the Civil Rights Division, from 2000 to 2006 after graduating from law school, prosecuting police brutality, hate crimes and human trafficking cases and enforcing voting rights laws. She continued advocacy work on voting rights at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and was also the civil rights enforcement officer for the New York State Attorney General's Office. Most recently, she served as president of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights.
Clarke is the first woman, and first woman of color, to be confirmed by the Senate to serve as the assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division. Vanita Gupta, an Indian American and now the third highest ranking Justice Department official, led the civil rights office in an acting capacity in the Obama administration.