PHILADELPHIA — Three black women are running the Democratic National Convention this week, taking charge of the top jobs that keep the massive gathering on schedule and, as much as possible, on message.

Veteran Democratic strategist Donna Brazile stepped up at the last minute to serve as interim chairman of the Democratic National Committee after embattled Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigned from her position Sunday. Although her resignation is effective at the end of the convention, Wasserman Schultz has essentially been forced out of having any public role in Philadelphia after leaked committee emails showed top DNC staffers scheming against the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Q&A: What's the deal with the leaked DNC emails?

Brazile, who was already the committee's vice chair of voter registration and participation, addressed the convention Tuesday night.

"I sat at the back of the bus at a time when America wasn't yet as great as it could be," she said in a rousing speech to the packed hall. "As long as she (Hillary Clinton) is in charge, we're never going back, and that's why I'm with her."

Brazile is joined this week by Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, who is serving as convention chairman, and the Rev. Leah Daughtry, a Washington D.C. pastor who is reprising her 2008 role as the convention's CEO.

Convention officials could not say definitively if this is the first time that three African American women have held the top three convention spots, but they said they could not remember another time that it has happened.

"When Democrats say ‘We the people,’ we mean all the people,” said Daughtry, speaking Monday during the first night of the convention. "All the people regardless of race, color, creed or ethnicity...We know that our diversity is not our problem. It is our promise."

All three women are used to making history.

Brazile was the first African-American to manage a major presidential campaign, working to try to elect former Vice President Al Gore in 2000. Fudge was the first African-American and first female mayor of Warrensville, Ohio. And Daughtry is the only person to serve as CEO twice — once when Democrats chose their first black nominee and now that they are about to nominate the first woman.

Join the discussion below, or Read more at Evening Sun.