Biden should pick a Black woman for VP. Here are 6 great options

Black women have been betting on the Democratic Party since the civil rights era. It is time for the Democratic Party to bet on them.

That's why this month Joe Biden must select a Black woman as his running mate.

Just consider that 98% of Black women voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to Pew Research Center. They voted Democratic in similar numbers in a down-ticket race the next year.

Black women also do the hard work of organizing, registering voters and turning them out to vote. Without Black women, few of Democrats' electoral or policy victories of the past 50 years would have been possible -- and we would live in a far more unequal and less prosperous country.

Even now, many Black women are on the front lines, fighting to solve the nation's problems -- often with too few resources or too little respect. In many of America's hospitals, the essential workers saving lives in nursing uniforms disproportionately are Black women.

Black women are also leading the charge to jail the police officers who shot and killed Breonna Taylor in her own home in March -- rendering her, sadly, as yet another icon of systemic injustice. In fact, the biggest political movement of our time, Black Lives Matter, was co-founded by three African American women: Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tameti.