About Opentopia
Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

African Americans in the United States Congress

Encyclopedia : A : AF : AFR : African Americans in the United States Congress

 

Joseph Rainey, first black member of the U.S. House of Representatives
Joseph Rainey, first black member of the U.S. House of Representatives

Since 1870 there have been 106 African American members of the United States Congress. This figure includes five non-voting members of the House of Representatives, representing the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Contents

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 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 the 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, 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 Rhodes 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 members of the Republican Party. 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 disputed Presidential election of 1876 between Democratic governor of New York, Samuel J. Tilden and Republican governor of Ohio, Rutherford B. Hayes, an agreement between Democratic and Republican factions were negotiated upon resulting in the Compromise of 1877. Democrats conceded the election to Hayes and promised to observe the political rights of blacks. The Republicans conceded to no longer intervene in southern affairs and appropriate some federal money toward southern projects. With the southern states "redeemed", Democrats gradually regained control of the Southern legislatures and restricted the rights of blacks to vote.

By 1890, southern states began to disfranchise black voters. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and white primaries prevented many blacks from voting. Southern states and local governments gradually adopted laws that segregated blacks. Finally, racial violence in the form of lynchings and race riots increased in frequency.

The last black Congressman elected from the South was George Henry White of North Carolina, elected in 1897. His term expired in 1901, the same year the last President to have fought in the civil war – William McKinley – died. There were no blacks in the Congress for next 28 years.

The Great 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.

Following the 1990 census, the districts were needed to be redrawn due to the population shift 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 are 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 greatly increased 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 votes for the Democrats. The Republicans saw it as a way to win seats easier, since many of the Democrat 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 1940's, there is no state that has a majority of African-American residents. Because of this, the ability for an African American candidate to be solely elected by the black vote is not possible. This means the candidate must reach out to other races and groups to be able to elected to office, especially in the election for the United States Senate. Despite this issue, three African Americans have been elected to the Senate since that time: 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

In the modern era

United States House of Representatives

In the Reconstruction era

In the modern era

Non-voting members

See also

References

External links

United States Congress — (House of Representatives, Senate)
Members House: Current, Former, Districts | Senate: Current, Former, Current & Former by state
Groups African Americans, Asian Pacific Americans list, Caucuses, Committees, Demographics
House: Committees  | Senate: Committees, Women list
Leaders House: Speaker, Majority leader, Minority leader, Dem. leader, Rep. leader, Majority whip, Minority whip, Dem. whip, Rep. whip, Dem. caucus, Rep. conference, Dean
Senate: President pro tempore (list), Majority and Minority leaders, Dem. Leader, Rep. Leader, Majority whip, Minority whip, Dem. Caucus (Chair, Secretary, Policy comm. chair), Rep. Conference (Chair, Secretary, Policy comm. chair), Dean
Agencies & Employees Architect of the Capitol, Capitol guide service (board), Capitol police (board), Government Printing Office, Law Revision Counsel, Librarian of Congress, Poet laureate
House: Chaplain, Clerk, Doorkeeper, Historian, Page, Parliamentarian, Postmaster, Reading clerk, Sergeant at Arms
Senate: Chaplain, Curator, Page, Parliamentarian, Secretary, Sergeant at Arms
Politics & Procedure Act of Congress (list), Caucuses, Committees, Joint session, Delegations' partisan mix
House: Committees  | Senate: Committees, Filibuster, Traditions, Vice Presidents' tie-breaking votes
Buildings Capitol Complex, Capitol, Botanic Garden
House: Cannon, Ford, Longworth, O'Neill, Rayburn | Senate: Dirksen, Hart, Russell
Research Biographical directory, Congressional Quarterly, Congressional Record, Congressional Research Service,
Federal depository library, Library of Congress, The Hill, Roll Call, THOMAS

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: