"I am, by definition, a different kind of senator," said Carol Moseley-Braun, "I am an African American, a woman, a product of the working class. I cannot escape the fact that I come to the Senate as a symbol of hope and change."

Moseley-Braun understands however that she has a tremendous amount of work to do.

"My job," she said, "is emphatically not to be a celebrity, or a full-time symbol. Symbols will not create jobs and economic growth. They will not do the hard work of solving the health care crisis. They will not save the children of our cities from drugs, guns and murder."

Carol Moseley was born in Chicago, on August 16, 1947 into a middle-class family.

When her parents divorced in 1963, Carol moved with her mother, brothers and sisters to live with her grandmother, in a neighborhood known as "Bucket of Blood."

She remembers the "crushing poverty", however, was not herself crushed by her environment. Moseley-Braun was brought up to believe that working for a better world was a primary human responsibility

At her swearing-in ceremonies, she became the first African American woman in the US Senate.