PERSON: Carol Swain

Political Scientist

Carol Miller Swain (born March 7, 1954) is an American political scientist and legal scholar who is a retired professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University. She is a frequent television analyst and has authored and edited several books. Her interests include race relations, immigration, representation, evangelical politics, and the United States Constitution.

Carol Miller Swain was born on March 7, 1954, in Bedford, Virginia, the second of 11 children. Her father dropped out of school in the third grade and her mother dropped out in high school. Her stepfather used to physically abuse her mother, Dorothy Henderson, who is disabled due to polio. Swain grew up in poverty, living in a shack without running water, and sharing two beds with her eleven siblings. She did not finish high school, dropping out in ninth grade. She moved to Roanoke with her family in the 1960s and appealed to a judge to be transferred to a foster home, which was denied. Swain instead lived with her grandmother in a trailer park.

After she divorced in 1975, Swain earned a GED and worked as a cashier at McDonald’s, a door-to-door salesperson, and an assistant in a retirement facility. She later earned an associate degree from Virginia Western Community College. She went on to earn a B.A., magna cum laude, in criminal justice from Roanoke College and a master’s degree in political science from Virginia Tech. While an undergraduate at Roanoke College, she organized a scholarship fund for black students that by 2002 had an endowment of $350,000. She finished a Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1989. In 2000, she earned a Master of Legal Studies from Yale Law School.

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