The new memoir For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics reveals hard truths about the Democratic Party and tips for those trying to rise up. Each Friday night, starting in the early-aughts, four African-American women — they called themselves “The Colored Girls” — gathered for dinner with others in Washington, D.C. What began as a respite from the political scene soon grew into a must-attend event for presidential hopefuls. Almost always White men, candidates such as Howard Dean and Tom Vilsack would suddenly find themselves being grilled by as many as a dozen female Black professionals and politicos. The most fascinating of these dinners was with Barack Obama in 2008 in a private dining room at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse in Chinatown. When asked what his race strategy would be, Obama demurred. “Oh, race won’t be an issue. America is past that,” he said, according to an OZY exclusive excerpt from For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics, co-authored by Donna Brazile, Minyon Moore, Yolanda Caraway, and Leah Daughtry, all African-American women and trendsetting deans of Democratic politics. “His expectation was that he was walking into a room of adorers and supporters,” Daughtry says. “Some of it was, I think, Black male bravado.” That episode is one of many revelations in For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics, a firsthand account of the four authors, who grew up in the Civil Rights era and rose to the top of American politics. | 
