Benedita da Silva

Benedita Souza da Silva Sampaio was born on 26 April 1942 in the Chapéu Mangueira favela of Rio de Janeiro, one of fourteen children born to a laundress and a peasant father, and was married at sixteen, surviving the deaths of three of her five children in rapid succession.

Despite her hardships, da Silva was the only one of her siblings to obtain a university degree, completing a social service course in 1982, and in that same year was elected a city councillor in Rio de Janeiro, becoming the first Black woman ever to hold the position.

In 1986 da Silva was elected to Brazil's federal Chamber of Deputies, becoming the first Black woman to reach the position, and helped draft the country's new post-dictatorship constitution; in 1991 she helped bring Nelson Mandela to visit Brazil for the first time.

In 1994 da Silva was elected to the Brazilian Senate, becoming the country's first Black woman senator, and continued living in her favela community even while serving in national office; in 2002 she became the first Afro-Brazilian and the first woman to become Governor of the State of Rio de Janeiro.

Da Silva went on to serve as Brazil's Minister of Social Action under President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and helped pass legislation making racial discrimination a non-bailable crime with no statute of limitations; describing herself as 'three times a minority' — Black, a woman, and poor — she remains a defining figure in the history of Afro-Brazilian political representation.