Terrycina Andrea "Terri" Sewell (; born January 1, 1965) is an American lawyer and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, she has served since 2011 as the U.S. representative for , which includes most of the Black Belt, as well as most of the predominantly black portions of Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, and Montgomery. A native of Huntsville, Sewell studied at Princeton University, Harvard Law School, and St Hilda's College at the University of Oxford. Before entering politics, she was a securities lawyer for Davis Polk & Wardwell and a public finance lawyer for Maynard, Cooper & Gale, where she was the first Black woman to make partner. She is the first African-American woman elected to Congress from Alabama and, along with Republican Martha Roby, was one of the first women elected to Congress from Alabama in a regular election. Sewell has been the only Democrat in Alabama's House delegation during her entire term in office, and, apart from Doug Jones's tenure as a U.S. senator from 2018 to 2021, she has also been the state's only congressional Democrat. Early life and education Terri Sewell was born in Huntsville, Alabama, to Andrew A. Sewell, a former high school basketball coach, and Nancy Gardner Sewell, a retired high school librarian and former Selma city council member. Her mother was the first Black woman elected to Selma's city council. As a child, Sewell wanted to be a star on Broadway. Because her mother had hoped for her to become a lawyer, Sewell joined the debate team in high school. She was the first Black valedictorian of Selma High School. After graduating from high school, Sewell went to Princeton University. She was the first Selma High School graduate to attend an Ivy League school. She was recruited to attend Princeton by Julian L. McPhillips, who read about her in the local Selma newspaper. At Princeton, she befriended Michelle Obama, who served as what Sewell called her "big sister" on campus. Sewell completed a 158-page long senior thesis, "Black Women in Politics: Our Time Has Come". During her time at Princeton, she interned with Richard Shelby (then a Democrat) and Howell Heflin. After graduating from Princeton in 1986, Sewell attended Oxford University where she was a Marshall Scholar. It was there that she befriended Susan Rice. Her master's thesis, on the election of the first black members of the British parliament, was later published as