Black Lives Matter activist Cori Bush becomes Missouri's first Black congresswoman

Protest leader and activist Cori Bush won the election to Missouri’s 1st Congressional District, making her the state's first Black congresswoman.

Bush, a Democrat, easily defeated her little-known Republican challenger, Anthony Rogers, leading with 79% of the vote. She was essentially guaranteed a win after ousting longtime Rep. William Lacy Clay, who had held the seat since 2001, in Missouri’s Democratic primary earlier this year.

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A nurse, pastor and single parent who spent several months living out of a car, Bush, 44, rose to prominence as a protest leader after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, a Black 18-year-old, in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. She continued to speak out against police brutality and racial discrimination as nationwide protests erupted in the wake of George Floyd's death at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer.

A survivor of COVID-19, Bush and others wore masks as she thanked supporters after her win.

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"Thank you for electing me as your first Black congresswoman here in the state of Missouri," she said. "That's bittersweet because, you know, it's 2020: Why am I the first in the whole state?"

Bush strongly supports the movement to "defund the police" and has said she would passionately advocate for that policy if she were elected to the House. She supports Medicare For All, the Green New Deal, and universal basic income as a remedy to the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, St. Louis Public Radio reported.

Bush campaigned for Sen. Bernie Sanders during his presidential bid, but she had said she would be working to help former Vice President Joe Biden defeat President Donald Trump, despite Biden's opposition to defunding the police.

Bush lost a primary bid against Clay in 2018. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez strongly backed her that year but did not endorse her this time against Clay, who announced his support for the first-term congresswoman's Green New Deal in a statement that included a photo of himself standing beside her.

Contributing: The Associated Press

Follow N'dea Yancey-Bragg on Twitter: @NdeaYanceyBragg

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Cori Bush wins in Missouri, is state's first Black congresswoman