Hillary Clinton Born: Trailblazer for Women in American Politics

Hillary Clinton shattered political barriers across three decades of American public life, serving as First Lady, U.S. Senator from New York, Secretary of State, and the first woman to win a major party's presidential nomination. Born Hillary Diane Rodham in Chicago on October 26, 1947, she grew up in Park Ridge, Illinois, in a conservative Republican household. She was class president at Maine South High School and attended Wellesley College, where she shifted leftward politically. Her 1969 commencement speech, in which she challenged the invited speaker, Senator Edward Brooke, made national news. She earned her law degree from Yale in 1973, where she met Bill Clinton. As First Lady from 1993 to 2001, she took on a policy portfolio unprecedented for the role, leading the administration's effort to reform the American health care system. The plan collapsed under political opposition and industry lobbying in 1994, but many of its principles resurfaced in the Affordable Care Act sixteen years later. Her active involvement in policy drew both admiration and fierce criticism from those who believed the First Lady should occupy a more traditional role. She won a U.S. Senate seat from New York in 2000, becoming the first sitting First Lady to run for and win elected office. She served two terms, sitting on the Armed Services Committee and voting in favor of the Iraq War in 2002, a vote she later called a mistake and that haunted her 2008 presidential campaign against Barack Obama. As Secretary of State from 2009 to 2013, she visited 112 countries, more than any previous Secretary. She managed the diplomatic response to the Arab Spring and was in the Situation Room during the Osama bin Laden raid. The 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, became a years-long political controversy. She won the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, the first woman to achieve this from a major party, and won the popular vote by nearly three million votes but lost the Electoral College to Donald Trump.