African Americans in the United States Congress

Since 1868, 123 African Americans have served in the United States Congress. This figure includes five non-voting members of the House of Representatives who represented the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands. In addition, in 1868, one candidate was elected to the House but was not seated due to an election dispute.

History of African American representation

Reconstruction and Redemption

The right of Blacks to vote and to serve in the United States Congress was established after the Civil War by the Fifth,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 people born or naturalized in the United States citizens. The Fifteenth Amendment (ratified February 3, 1870) forbade the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, 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 with the exception of Tennessee, and divided the South into five military districts to protect the rights of newly freed blacks. The act required that the former Confederate states ratify their 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, by forming coalitions 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 Rhodes Revels became the first black member of the Senate and thereby also the first black member of the Congress.

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 and thereby the first directly elected black member of Congress. Blacks were also elected from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia.

All of these Reconstruction era black senators and representatives were members of the Republican Party. To many blacks, the Republicans represented the party of Abraham Lincoln and of the Emancipation Proclamation, while the Southern Democrats represented the party of slavery and secession. Until 1876, the Republicans made genuine efforts to ensure that southern blacks were able to vote.

After the disputed Presidential election of 1876 between Democratic Samuel J. Tilden, governor of New York, and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, governor of Ohio, an agreement between Democratic and Republican factions were negotiated, resulting in the Compromise of 1877. Under the compromise, Democrats conceded the election to Hayes and promised to acknowledge the political rights of blacks; Republicans agreed to no longer intervene in southern affairs and promised to appropriate a portion of federal monies toward southern projects.

Disfranchisement

With the southern states "redeemed", Democrats gradually regained control of Southern legislatures and restricted the rights of blacks to vote.

By the 1880s, legislators increased restrictions on black voters through voter registration and election rules. From 1890 to 1908, starting with Mississippi, white Democrats passed new constitutions in ten Southern states with provisions that restricted voter registration by Literacy tests, poll taxes, and residency requirements that forced hundreds of thousands of people from registration rolls, and prevented most blacks and many poor whites from voting. Some whites were exempted from literacy tests by such strategies as the grandfather clause, basing eligibility on an ancestor's status as of 1866, for instance. Southern states and local governments also gradually adopted Jim Crow laws that segregated transportation, public facilities and daily life. Finally, racial violence in the form of lynchings and race riots increased in frequency.

The last black congressman elected from the South in the nineteenth century was George Henry White of North Carolina, elected in 1897. His term expired in 1901, the same year that William McKinley, the last president to have fought in the Civil War, died. No blacks served in Congress for the next 28 years, and none represented any southern state for the next 64 years.

The modern era

The Great Migration of blacks from the rural south to northern cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland from 1910 to 1940 began to produce black-majority Congressional districts in the North, where blacks could exercise their right to vote. In the two waves of the Great Migration, millions of blacks moved north and became urban.

In 1928, Oscar De Priest 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 also the last black Republican in the House for 56 years.

The election of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 led to a shift of black voting loyalties from Republican to Democrat, as Franklin Roosevelt implemented programs to create economic protections and opportunities in the New Deal. From 1940 to 1970, nearly five million blacks moved north and also west, especially to California in a second wave of the Great Migration. By the 1960s, virtually all black voters were Democrats and most were voting in states outside the former Confederacy.

It was not until passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a culmination of years of effort by African Americans and allies, that blacks within the Southern states recovered their ability to exercise their rights to vote and to live with full civil rights. Legal segregation ended. Accomplishing voter registration and redistricting to implement the sense of the law took more time.

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.

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. Following the 1990 census, the districts needed to be redrawn due to the population shifts of the country. However, there were various court decisions to have districts created with the intent of creating some where the majority of the population were African Americans. In order to comply with the courts, the districts were redrawn by a process called gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is when the districts are drawn, the end results an oddly shaped map to encompass a particular group. In this case, grotesquely shaped districts were created to link widely separated black communities. Due to this method, several black members of the House 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, thus increasing the number of black-majority districts. The process was supported by both parties. The Democrats saw it as a way to connect to their black voters easily, which historically voted for the Democrats. The Republicans saw it as a way to win seats more easily, since many of the Democratic voters were moved from their districts. By the year 2000, this resulted in the Republicans holding a majority of white-majority House districts. However, this made the Democratic Party more clearly "black" in Southern states, thus further alienating white voters from the Democratic Party.

Since the 1940s, when decades of the Great Migration resulted in millions of African Americans having migrated from the South, no state has had a majority of African-American residents. Because of this, an African-American candidate cannot rely on the black vote alone to be elected to the Senate. This means the candidate must reach out to other races and groups to become elected to the United States Senate and to many congressional seats. Despite this issue, three African Americans have been elected to the Senate since the 1940s: 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 Reconstruction era

In modern era

Non-voting members

ee also

*Congressional Black Caucus

Notes

References

* Bailey, Richard. "Black Officeholders During the Reconstruction of Alabama, 1867-1878". New South Books, 2006. ISBN 1-58838-189-7. [http://web.archive.org/web/20010302105027/http://www.alabamablackhistory.com/ Available from author.]
*Brown, Canter Jr. "Florida's Black Public Officials, 1867-1924". Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998. ISBN 0585098093
* Foner, Eric. "Freedom's Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders during Reconstruction". 1996. Revised. ISBN 0-8071-2082-0.
* Freedman, Eric. "African Americans in Congress: A Documentary History". CQ Press, 2007. ISBN 0872893855
* Hahn, Steven. "A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South From Slavery to the Great Migration". 2003. ISBN 0-674-01169-4
*Haskins, James. "Distinguished African American Political and Governmental Leaders". Phoenix, Arizona: Oryx Press, 1999. ISBN 1573561266
* Middleton, Stephen. "Black Congressmen During Reconstruction : A Documentary Sourcebook". Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002. ISBN 0313065128
* Rabinowitz, Howard N. "Southern Black Leaders of the Reconstruction Era". University of Illinois Press, 1982. ISBN 0252009290

External links

* [http://baic.house.gov Black Americans in Congress] , Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives
* [http://www.blackhistorydaily.com/black_history/Government/ BlackHistoryDaily.com - African Americans in Government]
* [http://digital.library.unt.edu/govdocs/crs/permalink/meta-crs-7142 Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report "Black Members of the United States Congress: 1870-2005"]