African Americans in the United States Congress
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Since 1870 there have been 106 African American members of the United States Congress. This figure includes four non-voting members of the House of Representatives, representing the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
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History of African American representation
The right of African Americans to vote and to serve in the United States Congress was established after the Civil War by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment (ratified December 6, 1865), abolished slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment (ratified July 9, 1868) made all those born or naturalized in the United States citizens. The Fifteenth Amendment (ratified February 3, 1870) forbade the denial or abridgement of the right to vote, and gave Congress the power to enforce the law by appropriate legislation.
In 1866 Congress passed the Civil Rights Act and the Reconstruction Act, which dissolved all governments in the former Confederate states (except Tennessee) and divided the South into five military districts to protect the rights of the newly freed blacks. The act required that the ex-Confederate states ratify constitutions conferring citizenship rights on blacks or forfeit their representation in Congress.
As a result of these measures, blacks acquired the right to vote across the Southern states. In several states (notably Mississippi and South Carolina) blacks were the majority of the population, and were able, in coalition with pro-Union whites, to take control of the state legislatures, which at that time elected members of the United States Senate. In practice, however, only Mississippi elected black Senators. On February 25, 1870, Hiram Revels became the first black member of the Senate.
Blacks were a majority of the population in many Congressional districts across the South. In 1870 Joseph Rainey of South Carolina became the first black member of the United States House of Representatives. Blacks were also elected from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia.
All of these Reconstruction era black Senators and Representatives were Republicans. The Republicans were the party of Abraham Lincoln and of the Emancipation Proclamation, while the Democrats were the party of slavery and secession. Until 1876 the Republicans made genuine efforts to ensure that southern blacks were able to vote.
After the deal with the southern states that secured the election of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, however, Republican interest in southern blacks faded, and the white Democrats gradually regained control of the Southern legislatures and restricted the rights of blacks to vote. The last black Congressman elected from the South was George W. White of North Carolina, elected in 1897. After his term expired in 1901, there were no blacks in the Congress for 28 years.
The migration of blacks from the South to northern cities such as New York and Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s began to produce black-majority Congressional districts. In 1928 Oscar DePriest won the 1st Congressional District of Illinois (the South Side of Chicago) as a Republican, becoming the first black Congressman of the modern era.
DePriest was defeated by a Democrat in 1934: he was the last black Republican in the House for 56 years. The election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 led a shift of black voting loyalties from Republican to Democrat as the Democrats became the party of economic advancement and (some time later) civil rights for black Americans. By the 1960s virtually all black voters were Democrats. Two black Republicans have been elected since 1991, but both from white-majority districts.
Until 1992 most black House members were elected from inner-city districts in the North and West: Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York City, Newark, New Jersey, Philadelphia and St. Louis all elected at least one black member. The only southern cities to have black majority districts were Atlanta, Houston, Memphis and New Orleans. The only Southern rural area to have a black majority district was the Mississippi Delta area in Mississippi.
At the redistricting following the 1990 census, however, southern states were required by a series of court decisions to create districts with black majorities. This was done by a process of gerrymandering, often creating grotesquely-shaped districts to link widely separated black communities. In this way black members were elected from Alabama, Florida, rural Georgia, rural Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia for the first time since Reconstruction. Additional black majority districts were also created in this way in California, Maryland and Texas. This greatly increased the number of black-majority districts.
This process was naturally supported by black Democrats, but it was also supported by Republicans, since the process of segregating black voters into black majority districts required removing the overwhelmingly Democratic black voters from all the other districts, making them easier for Republicans to win. It also had the effect of making the Democratic Party more clearly "black" in Southern states, thus further alienating white voters. By 2000 most white-majority House districts in the South were held by Republicans.
Since no state has had a black majority since the 1940s, black candidates cannot be elected to the United States Senate by black voters alone. Three African Americans have been elected to the Senate in the modern era: Edward W. Brooke, a liberal Republican from Massachusetts, and Carol Moseley Braun and Barack Obama, both Democrats from Illinois.
List of African Americans in the United States Congress
United States Senate
In the Reconstruction era
- Senator Hiram Rhoades Revels (Republican, Mississippi) 1870-1871
- Senator Blanche K. Bruce (Republican, Mississippi) 1875-1881
In the modern era
- Senator Edward W. Brooke (Republican, Massachusetts) 1967-1979
- Senator Carol Moseley Braun (Democrat, Illinois) 1993-1999
- Senator Barack Obama (Democrat, Illinois) from 2005
United States House of Representatives
In the Reconstruction era
- Representative Joseph H. Rainey (Republican, South Carolina) 1870-1879
- Representative Jefferson F. Long (Republican, Georgia) 1870-1871
- Representative Robert C. DeLarge (Republican, South Carolina) 1871-1873
- Representative Robert B. Elliott (Republican, South Carolina) 1871-1874
- Representative Benjamin S. Turner (Republican, Alabama) 1871-1873
- Representative Josiah T. Walls (Republican, Florida) 1871-1873, 1873-1875, 1875-1876
- Representative Richard H. Cain (Republican, South Carolina) 1873-1875, 1877-1879
- Representative John R. Lynch (Republican, Mississippi) 1873-1877, 1882-1883
- Representative James T. Rapier (Republican, Alabama) 1873-1875
- Representative Alonzo J. Ransier (Republican, South Carolina) 1873-1875
- Representative Jeremiah Haralson (Republican, Alabama) 1875-1877
- Representative John A. Hyman (Republican, North Carolina) 1875-1877
- Representative Charles E. Nash (Republican, Louisiana) 1875-1877
- Representative Robert Smalls (Republican, South Carolina) 1875-1879, 1882-1883, 1884-1887
- Representative James E. O'Hara (Republican, North Carolina) 1883-1887
- Representative Henry P. Cheatham (Republican, North Carolina) 1889-1893
- Representative John M. Langston (Republican, Virginia) 1890-1891
- Representative Thomas E. Miller (Republican, South Carolina) 1890-1891
- Representative George W. Murray (Republican, South Carolina) 1893-1895, 1896-1897
- Representative George Henry White (Republican, North Carolina) 1897-1901
In the modern era
- Representative Oscar DePriest (Republican, Illinois) 1929-1935
- Representative Arthur W. Mitchell (Democrat, Illinois) 1935-1943
- Representative William L. Dawson (Democrat, Illinois) 1943-1970
- Representative Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (Democrat, New York) 1945-1967, 1967-1971
- Representative Charles C. Diggs, Jr. (Democrat, Michigan) 1955-1980
- Representative Robert N.C. Nix, Sr. (Democrat, Pennsylvania) 1958-1979
- Representative Augustus F. Hawkins (Democrat, California) 1963-1991
- Representative John Conyers, Jr. (Democrat, Michigan) from 1965
- Representative William L. Clay, Sr. (Democrat, Missouri) 1969-2001
- Representative Louis Stokes (Democrat, Ohio) 1969-1999
- Representative Shirley Chisholm (Democrat, New York) 1969-1983
- Representative George W. Collins (Democrat, Illinois) 1970-1972
- Representative Ronald V. Dellums (Democrat, California) 1971-1998
- Representative Ralph H. Metcalfe (Democrat, Illinois) 1971-1978
- Representative Parren H. Mitchell (Democrat, Maryland) 1971-1987
- Representative Charles B. Rangel (Democrat, New York) from 1971
- Representative Yvonne Brathwaite Burke (Democrat, California) 1973-1979
- Representative Cardiss Collins (Democrat, Illinois) 1973-1997
- Representative Barbara Jordan (Democrat, Texas) 1973-1979
- Representative Andrew Young (Democrat, Georgia) 1973-1977
- Representative Harold E. Ford (Democrat, Tennessee) 1975-1997
- Representative Julian C. Dixon (Democrat, California) 1979-2000
- Representative William H. Gray, III (Democrat, Pennsylvania) 1979-1991
- Representative Mickey Leland (Democrat, Texas) 1979-1989
- Representative Bennett McVey Stewart (Democrat, Illinois) 1979-1981
- Representative George W. Crockett (Democrat, Michigan) 1980-1991
- Representative Mervyn M. Dymally (Democrat, California) 1981-1993
- Representative Gus Savage (Democrat, Illinois) 1981-1993
- Representative Harold Washington (Democrat, Illinois) 1981-1983
- Representative Katie Hall (Democrat, Indiana) 1982-1985
- Representative Major Owens (Democrat, New York) from 1983
- Representative Edolphus Towns (Democrat, New York) from 1983
- Representative Alan Wheat (Democrat, Missouri) 1983-1995
- Representative Charles Hayes (Democrat, Illinois) 1983-1993
- Representative Alton R. Waldon, Jr. (Democrat, New York) 1986-1987
- Representative Mike Espy (Democrat, Mississippi) 1987-1993
- Representative Floyd Flake (Democrat, New York) 1987-1998
- Representative John Lewis (Democrat, Georgia) from 1987
- Representative Kweisi Mfume (Democrat, Maryland) 1987-1996
- Representative Donald Payne (Democrat, New Jersey) from 1989
- Representative Craig A. Washington (Democrat, Texas) 1989-1995
- Representative Barbara-Rose Collins (Democrat, Michigan) 1991-1997
- Representative Gary Franks (Republican, Connecticut) 1991-1997
- Representative Bill Jefferson (Democrat, Louisiana) from 1991
- Representative Maxine Waters (Democrat, California) from 1991
- Representative Lucien Blackwell (Democrat, Pennsylvania) 1991-1995
- Representative Eva Clayton (Democrat, North Carolina) 1992-2003
- Representative Sanford Bishop (Democrat, Georgia) from 1993
- Representative Corrine Brown (Democrat, Florida) from 1993
- Representative Jim Clyburn (Democrat, South Carolina) from 1993
- Representative Cleo Fields (Democrat, Louisiana) 1993-1997
- Representative Alcee Hastings (Democrat, Florida) from 1993
- Representative Earl Hilliard (Democrat, Alabama) 1993-2003
- Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson (Democrat, Texas) from 1993
- Representative Cynthia McKinney (Democrat, Georgia) 1993-2003, 2005-
- Representative Carrie Meek (Democrat, Florida) 1993-2003
- Representative Mel Reynolds (Democrat, Illinois) 1993-1995
- Representative Bobby Rush (Democrat, Illinois) from 1993
- Representative Bobby Scott (Democrat, Virginia) from 1993
- Representative Walter Tucker (Democrat, California) 1993-1995
- Representative Mel Watt (Democrat, North Carolina) from 1993
- Representative Albert Wynn (Democrat, Maryland) from 1993
- Representative Bennie Thompson (Democrat, Mississippi) from 1993
- Representative Chaka Fattah (Democrat, Pennsylvania) from 1995
- Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (Democrat, Texas) from 1995
- Representative J.C. Watts, Jr. (Republican, Oklahoma) 1995-2003
- Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. (Democrat, Illinois) from 1995
- Representative Juanita Millender-McDonald (Democrat, California) from 1996
- Representative Elijah Cummings (Democrat, Maryland) from 1996
- Representative Julia Carson (Democrat, Indiana) from 1997
- Representative Danny K. Davis (Democrat, Illinois) from 1997
- Representative Harold Ford, Jr. (Democrat, Tennessee) from 1997
- Representative Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (Democrat, Michigan) from 1997
- Representative Gregory W. Meeks (Democrat, New York) from 1998
- Representative Barbara Lee (Democrat, California) from 1998
- Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones (Democrat, Ohio) from 1999
- Representative William Lacy Clay, Jr. (Democrat, Missouri) from 2001
- Representative Diane Watson (Democrat, California) from 2001
- Representative Frank Ballance (Democrat, North Carolina) 2003-2004
- Representative Artur Davis (Democrat, Alabama) from 2003
- Representative Denise Majette (Democrat, Georgia) 2003-2005
- Representative Kendrick Meek (Democrat, Florida) from 2003
- Representative David Scott (Democrat, Georgia) from 2003
- Representative Emanuel Cleaver (Democrat, Missouri) from 2005
- Representative Al Green (Democrat, Texas) from 2005
- Representative Gwen Moore (Democrat, Wisconsin) from 2005
Non-voting members
- Delegate Walter E. Fauntroy (Democrat, District of Columbia) 1971-1990
- Delegate Melvin Evans (Republican, Virgin Islands) 1979-1980
- Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (Democrat, District of Columbia) from 1991
- Delegate Victor O. Frazer (Democrat, Virgin Islands) 1995-1996
- Delegate Donna Christian-Christensen (Democrat, Virgin Islands) from 1997