African Americans in Congress
After the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, the 14th Amendment (1868) granted African Americans citizenship, and the 15th Amendment (1870) gave black men (but not women) the right to vote. In February 1870, Hiram Revels (Republican-Mississippi) became the first black senator, taking the seat once occupied by Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy. In December 1870, Joseph Rainey (Republican-South Carolina) became the first black representative.
Several Southern states sent African Americans to Congress during Reconstruction. But later efforts by white Southerners to restrict black voting, often through violence and intimidation, resulted in the defeat of most black incumbents. After 1901 no blacks served in Congress until the election of Oscar De-Priest (Republican-Illinois) in 1928. By then, Washington had become a segregated city, and DePriest had to struggle even for his staff members to eat in the Capitol restaurants. In 1934, Arthur Mitchell (Democrat-Illinois), also an African American, defeated DePriest, signifying a dramatic shift in African-American voters from the party of Lincoln to the party of Franklin D. Roosevelt. William Dawson (Democrat-Illinois) succeeded Mitchell and later became the first black member of Congress to chair a major committee. During the 1940s, Dawson and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (Democrat-New York) were the only black members of Congress. But beginning in the 1950s, the number of blacks winning election to the House slowly grew, first from Northern cities and then from Southern rural districts. In 1968, Shirley Chisholm (Democrat-New York) became the first black woman elected to Congress. By contrast to the growing number of black representatives, Edward Brooke (Republican-Massachusetts) and Carol Moseley-Braun (Democrat-Illinois) have been the only black senators to serve during the 20th century.
As their ranks increased, African-American representatives formed the Congressional Black Caucus. Begun in 1971, the Black Caucus has sought a leadership role among African Americans, speaking for their concerns and promoting their legislative interests. The Black Caucus has worked for civil rights and for equal opportunity in education, employment, and housing but also has taken stands on Presidential nominations and matters of foreign policy.
African Americans in the Executive Branch
Despite the abolition of slavery in 1865 and the extension of the vote in 1870, African Americans remained largely outsiders in American democracy. Post-Civil War Reconstructionist politics was full of fierce dispute over the role blacks should have in the political system: many Republicans worked to empower African Americans politically while reactionary Democrats sought to rebuild the antebellum South. Presidents began appointing African Americans to positions within the executive branch during the late 19th century. Former U.S. senator Blanche K. Bruce served as registrar of the Treasury, and the abolitionist Frederick Douglass was appointed U.S. minister to Haiti. Republican Presidents also appointed southern blacks as postmasters and to other federal patronage positions.
John Mercer Langston was elected clerk of a town in rural Ohio in 1855, making him the first black elected to public office. In organizing black political clubs around the country and helping to shape the post-Civil War Republican party's progressive relationship toward blacks, Langston had an important role in mobilizing African Americans. He was twice suggested as a candidate for Republican Vice President.
African Americans shifted political allegiance to the Democratic party during the Great Depression and New Deal in the 1930s. Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, high-level African-American appointees in several agencies met regularly in what was popularly known as the Black Cabinet to discuss racial policy. Mary McLeod Bethune was the founder of the National Council of Negro Women in 1935, and Roosevelt appointed her director of the Division of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration in 1936, a position she held until 1944. Along with the rest of the Black Cabinet, Bethune forced politicians to see African Americans as a significant population of voters who deserved representation.
Another member of the Black Cabinet, Robert Weaver, became the first African American appointed to the Presidential cabinet, when Lyndon Johnson named him as secretary of housing and urban affairs in 1966.
The first African American to run for President was Jesse Jackson. Although he lost the Democratic party nomination in 1984, and 1988, his campaigns proved that a black candidate could command a large audience and reflect a broad range of political interests. In 1984 Jackson garnered 21 percent of the popular vote in the primaries, and in 1988 his campaign registered more than 2 million new voters.
Jackson also opened the door for future black Presidential hopefuls. In 1996 Colin Powell, the first African American to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989–93), made a Presidential bid but ultimately decided not to run. Alan Keyes, a former member of Ronald Reagan's administration and a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Social and Economic Council, also made two bids for the Republican nomination, in 1996 and 2000.
African Americans in the Federal Judiciary
In 2000, 10.3 percent of the country's federal judges were African American, while more than 12 percent of the total U.S. population was African American. The Supreme Court included one black justice, Clarence Thomas. Only one other African American had ever sat on the Court: Thurgood Marshall, who served from 1967 to 1991.
Half of the 13 U.S. appellate courts included no one of African-American ancestry in 2000. The Fourth Circuit, which serves Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, has never had a black judge, even though 23 percent of the region's population is black. Civil rights organizations, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) have persistently called for the appointment of more African Americans and other minorities to the federal judiciary.
See also Chisholm, Shirley; Civil rights; Powell, Adam Clayton, Jr.; Reconstruction, congressional; Revels, Hiram R.
Sources
- William L. Clay, Just Permanent Interests: Black Americans in Congress, 1870–1991 (New York: Penguin, 1992).
- Dewey M. Clayton, African Americans and the Politics of Congressional Redistricting (New York: Garland, 1999).
- Bruce A. Ragsdale and Joel D. Treese, eds., Black Americans in Congress, 1870–1989 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1990).
- Carol M. Swain, Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of African Americans in Congress (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993)
