WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate has confirmed Bernice Donald as a judge on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Donald will be the first African-American woman confirmed for that court.
Donald has broken through racial barriers throughout her career. She was the first African-American woman to be elected as a judge in Tennessee, serve on the federal bankruptcy court and sit as a U.S. district judge in her state.
The Cincinnati-based court serves Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee.
She has been a federal judge based in Memphis the past 16 years.
Donald is the sixth of 10 children raised on a sharecropper’s farm in Mississippi.
The vote was 96-2. Voting “no” were Republican Sens. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and David Vitter of Louisiana.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.
