Black Republicans in House of Representatives 116th Congress

Senator Hiram Revels, the first African American to serve in Congress.

Representative Shirley Chisholm was the first African-American woman to serve in Congress

From the first Us Congress in 1789 through the 116th Congress in 2020, 162 African Americans have served in Congress.^[1] Meanwhile, the total number of all individuals who take served in Congress over that menstruation is 12,348.^[2] Between 1789 and 2020, 152 have served in the House of Representatives, nine accept served in the Senate, and 1 has served in both chambers. Voting members have totaled 156, with vi serving every bit delegates. Political party membership has been, 131 Democrats, and 31 Republicans. While xiii members founded the Congressional Blackness Caucus in 1971 during the 92nd Congress, in the 116th Congress (2019-2020), 56 have served, with 54 Democrats and 2 Republicans (full seats are 535, plus 6 delegates).^[ane]

By the time of the beginning edition of the House sponsored book, Black Americans in Congress, in the bicentennial yr of 1976, 45 African Americans had served in Congress throughout history; that rose to 66 by the 2nd edition in 1990, and there were further sustained increases in both the 2008 and 2022 editions.^[iii] The showtime African American to serve was Senator Hiram Revels in 1870. The get-go to chair a congressional commission was Representative William L. Dawson in 1949. The first woman was Representative Shirley Chisholm in 1968, and the get-go to become Dean of the House was John Conyers in 2015. I fellow member, then Senator Barack Obama, went from the Senate to President of the United States in 2009.

The starting time African Americans to serve in the Congress were Republicans elected during the Reconstruction Era. Subsequently the 13th and 14th Amendments granted freedom and citizenship to enslaved people, freedmen gained political representation in the Southern Us for the first fourth dimension.^{[4] [v] [6]} In response to the growing numbers of Black statesmen and politicians, White Democrats turned to violence and intimidation to regain their political power.^[7]

By the presidential ballot of 1876, only three state legislatures were not controlled by whites. The Compromise of 1877 completed the menstruum of Redemption by white Southerners, with the withdrawal of federal troops from the Due south. State legislatures began to pass Jim Crow laws to plant racial segregation and restrict labor rights, movement, and organizing by black people. They passed some laws to restrict voter registration, aimed at suppressing the black vote. From 1890 to 1908, country legislatures in the Due south essentially disfranchised most black people and many poor white people from voting by passing new constitutions or amendments or other laws related to more restrictive balloter and voter registration and electoral rules. Equally a result of the Civil Rights Movement, the U.S. Congress passed laws in the mid-1960s to end segregation and enforce constitutional civil rights and voting rights.

As Republicans accommodated the stop of Reconstruction condign more ambiguous on ceremonious rights and with the ascension of the Republican lily-white move, African Americans began shifting away from the Republican Party.^[eight] During two waves of massive migration within the United States in the get-go half of the 20th century, more than six million African Americans moved from the Due south to Northeastern, Midwestern, and Western industrial cities, with five million migrating from 1940 to 1970. Some were elected to federal political function from these new locations, and most were elected as Democrats. During the Neat Depression, many black voters switched allegiances from the Republican Party to the Autonomous Party, in support of the New Deal economic, social network, and piece of work policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt'due south administration. This trend continued through the 1960s ceremonious rights legislation, when voting rights returned to the Due south, to present.

History of black representation [edit]

Reconstruction and Redemption [edit]

The correct of black people to vote and to serve in the Us Congress was established later the Civil War by amendments to the Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment (ratified December 6, 1865), abolished slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment (ratified July nine, 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 correct to vote on account of race, colour, or previous condition of servitude, and gave Congress the power to enforce the police by advisable legislation.

The first black to address Congress was Henry Highland Garnet, in 1865, on occasion of the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.^[9]

In 1866, Congress passed the Civil Rights Deed and the 4 Reconstruction Acts, which dissolved all governments in the former Amalgamated states with the exception of Tennessee. Information technology divided the South into 5 military districts, where the military through the Freedmen's Bureau helped protect the rights and safety of newly freed black people. The act required that the former Confederate states ratify their constitutions conferring citizenship rights on black people or forfeit their representation in Congress.^{[ citation needed ]}

Equally a result of these measures, black people acquired the right to vote across the Southern states. In several states (notably Mississippi and South Carolina), blackness people were the majority of the population. By forming coalitions with pro-Union white people, Republicans took control of the state legislatures. At the time, state legislatures elected the members of the U.s.a. Senate. During Reconstruction, only the state legislature of Mississippi elected any black senators. On February 25, 1870, Hiram Rhodes Revels was seated as the kickoff black fellow member of the Senate, while Blanche Bruce, besides of Mississippi, seated in 1875, was the second. Revels was the first black member of the Congress overall.^[10]

Black people were a majority of the population in many congressional districts across the S. In 1870, Joseph Rainey of South Carolina was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first directly elected black member of Congress to be seated.^[eleven] Black people were elected to national role also from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Northward Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

All of these Reconstruction era blackness senators and representatives were members of the Republican Political party. The Republicans represented the party of Abraham Lincoln and of emancipation. The Democrats represented the party of planters, slavery and secession.

From 1868, Southern elections were accompanied by increasing violence, specially in Louisiana, Mississippi and the Carolinas, in an effort by Democrats to suppress black voting and regain ability. In the mid-1870s, paramilitary groups such equally the White League and Red Shirts worked openly to turn Republicans out of function and intimidate black people from voting. This followed the earlier years of hush-hush vigilante activeness past the Ku Klux Klan against freedmen and allied white people.

Afterward the disputed Presidential election of 1876 between Democratic Samuel J. Tilden, governor of New York, and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, governor of Ohio, a national agreement betwixt Autonomous and Republican factions was negotiated, resulting in the Compromise of 1877. Under the compromise, Democrats conceded the election to Hayes and promised to acknowledge the political rights of black people; Republicans agreed to withdraw federal troops from the South and promised to appropriate a portion of federal monies toward Southern projects.

Disenfranchisement [edit]

With the Southern states "redeemed", Democrats gradually regained control of Southern legislatures. They proceeded to restrict the rights of the majority of black people and many poor white people to vote by imposing new requirements for poll taxes, subjective literacy tests, more than strict residency requirements and other elements difficult for laborers to satisfy.

By the 1880s, legislators increased restrictions on black voters through voter registration and election rules. In 1888 John Mercer Langston, president of Virginia State Academy at Petersburg, was elected to the U.S. Congress equally the first African American from Virginia. He would likewise be the last for nearly a century, equally the state passed a disenfranchising constitution at the turn of the century that excluded black people from politics for decades.^[12]

Starting with the Florida Constitution of 1885, white Democrats passed new constitutions in ten Southern states with provisions that restricted voter registration and forced hundreds of thousands of people from registration rolls. These changes effectively prevented virtually black people and many poor white people from voting. Many white people who were also illiterate were exempted from such requirements equally literacy tests by such strategies as the gramps clause, basing eligibility on an ancestor'southward voting status equally of 1866, for instance.

Southern state and local legislatures also passed 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, reaching a peak in the final decade of the 19th century.

The final black congressman elected from the South in the 19th century was George Henry White of Due north Carolina, elected in 1896 and re-elected in 1898. His term expired in 1901, the same twelvemonth that William McKinley, who was the last president to have fought in the Civil War, died. No black people served in Congress for the next 28 years, and none represented any Southern state for the next 72 years.

The modernistic era [edit]

Map of congressional districts represented by African Americans in the 117th Congress (2021-2023).

From 1910 to 1940, the Great Migration of Black people from the rural South to Northern cities such equally New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland began to produce black-majority Congressional districts in the North. Black people could exercise their right to vote. In the two waves of the Corking Migration through 1970, more than half dozen and a half meg black people moved n and west and became highly urbanized.

In 1928, Oscar De Priest won the 1st Congressional District of Illinois (the S Side of Chicago) equally a Republican, becoming the outset blackness congressman of the modern era. Arthur Wergs Mitchell became the get-go African-American Democrat elected to Congress when he replaced De Priest in 1935. De Priest, Mitchell and their successor, William Dawson, were the just African Americans in Congress up to the mid-1940s, when additional black Democrats began to be elected in Northern cities. Dawson became the first African American in history to chair a congressional committee in 1949. De Priest was the terminal African-American Republican elected to the Business firm for 58 years, until Gary Franks was elected to represent Connecticut's 5th in 1990. Franks was joined by J.C. Watts in 1994 but lost his bid for reelection 2 years later. Later Watts retired in 2002, the House had no black Republicans until 2010, with the elections of Allen Due west in Florida's 22nd and Tim Scott in South Carolina's 1st. Westward lost his reelection bid in 2012, while Scott resigned in January 2013 to accept engagement to the U.Southward. Senate. Ii new blackness Republicans, Will Hurd of Texas's 23rd district and Mia Dear of Utah's fourth district, were elected in 2014, with Honey being the first ever blackness Republican adult female to be elected to Congress. She lost reelection in 2018, leaving Hurd every bit the only blackness Republican member of the U.Southward. House.

The election of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 led to a shift of black voting loyalties from Republican to Democrat, every bit Roosevelt'southward New Deal programs offered economic relief to people suffering from the Smashing Depression. From 1940 to 1970, nearly five one thousand thousand black Americans moved north and also westward, especially to California, in the 2nd wave of the Dandy Migration. Past the mid-1960s, an overwhelming bulk of blackness voters were Democrats, and nearly were voting in states outside the former Confederacy.

It was non until subsequently passage by Congress of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the issue of years of effort on the role of African Americans and allies in the Civil Rights Motion, that black people within the Southern states recovered their power to do their rights to vote and to live with full ceremonious rights. Legal segregation ended. Accomplishing voter registration and redistricting to implement the sense of the police took more time.

On January three, 1969, Shirley Chisholm was sworn as the nation'south start African-American congresswoman. 2 years later, she became i of the xiii founding members of the Congressional Blackness Caucus.

Until 1992, nigh black House members were elected from inner-metropolis districts in the Due north and West: New York Urban center, Newark, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis and Los Angeles all elected at least i blackness member. Following the 1990 census, Congressional districts needed to be redrawn due to the population shifts of the country. Various federal courtroom decisions resulted in states' creating districts to provide for some where the majority of the population were African Americans, rather than gerrymandering to exclude black majorities.^{[ commendation needed ]}

Historically, both parties have used gerrymandering to gain political reward, past cartoon districts to favor their own party. In this instance, some districts were created to link widely separated black communities. As a event, several black Democratic members of the House were elected from new districts in Alabama, Florida, rural Georgia, rural Louisiana, North Carolina, S Carolina and Virginia for the first time since Reconstruction. Additional black-majority districts were as well created in this mode in California, Maryland and Texas, thus increasing the number of black-bulk districts.^{[ citation needed ]}

The creation of black-majority districts was a procedure supported by both parties. The Democrats saw it every bit a ways of providing social justice, as well equally connecting easily to black voters who had been voting Democratic for decades. The Republicans believed they gained past the change, as many of the Democratic voters were moved out of historically Republican-majority districts. By 2000, other demographic and cultural changes resulted in the Republican Party holding a majority of white-majority House districts.

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 bulk of African-American residents. 9 African Americans have served in the Senate since the 1940s: Edward W. Brooke, a Republican from Massachusetts; Carol Moseley Braun, Barack Obama, and Roland Burris (appointed to fill a vacancy), all Democrats from Illinois; Tim Scott (initially appointed to fill a vacancy, but after elected), a Republican from South Carolina; Mo Cowan (appointed to fill a vacancy), a Democrat from Massachusetts; Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, Kamala Harris, a Democrat from California and Raphael Warnock a Democrat from Georgia.

List of African Americans in the United States Congress [edit]

United States Senate [edit]

United States House of Representatives [edit]

Meet also [edit]

• African-American officeholders in the The states, 1789–1866
• Blackness suffrage in the United States
  • African-American women's suffrage motion
• Ceremonious rights move (1865–1896)
• Congressional Black Caucus
• List of African-American United States Cabinet Secretaries
• List of African-American U.Due south. state firsts
• Listing of first African-American mayors
• Negro Republican Political party
• Politics of the United states

Notes [edit]

1. ^ ^{a b} Brudnick, Ida A.; Manning, Jennifer E. (January 22, 2020). African American Members of the U.S. Congress: 1870-2019 (PDF) (Report). Congressional Inquiry Service. pp. i, five.
2. ^ "Full Members of the House & Land Representation - US Business firm of Representatives: History, Fine art & Athenaeum". history.house.gov . Retrieved 2020-08-14 .
3. ^ "The Historiography of Black Americans in Congress | US Business firm of Representatives: History, Art & Archives". history.house.gov . Retrieved 2020-08-13 .
4. ^ Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution of United States(1865)
5. ^ Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of The states(1865)
6. ^ "ten-alphabetize :: Reconstruction :: Politics :: Lest We Forget". lestweforget.hamptonu.edu . Retrieved 2021-03-thirteen .
7. ^ "Southern Violence During Reconstruction | American Experience | PBS". www.pbs.org . Retrieved 2021-03-13 .
8. ^ "Party Realignment - United states of america House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives". history.house.gov . Retrieved 2020-06-24 .
9. ^ Garnet, Henry Highland (1865). A memorial discourse; by Henry Highland Garnet, delivered in the hall of the House of Representatives, Washington Urban center, D.C. on Sabbath, February 12, 1865. With an introduction, past James McCune Smith, Thou.D. Philadelphia: Joseph Wilson. Retrieved June 9, 2019.
10. ^ "First African American Senator". U.S. Senate. Retrieved July 25, 2012.
11. ^ "Joseph Hayne Rainey" Archived 2012-06-25 at the Wayback Motorcar, Black Americans in Congress, Office of the Clerk, US Congress, accessed 30 March 2011
12. ^ "Black Americans in Congress – John Mercer Langston". U.S. Firm of Representatives. Archived from the original on July 2, 2012. Retrieved July 27, 2012.

References [edit]

• Bailey, Richard. Black Officeholders During the Reconstruction of Alabama, 1867–1878. New S Books, 2006. ISBN 1-58838-189-seven. Bachelor from author.
• Brown, Canter Jr. Florida's Black Public Officials, 1867–1924. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998. ISBN 0-585-09809-three
• Clay, William L. Merely Permanent Interests Blackness Americans in Congress, 1870–1991. Amistad Press, 1992. ISBN 1-56743-000-seven
• Dray, Philip. Capitol Men the Ballsy Story of Reconstruction Through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen. Houghton Mifflin Co, 2008. ISBN 978-0-618-56370-8
• 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 0-87289-385-5
• Gill, LaVerne McCain. African American Women in Congress Forming and Transforming History. Rutgers University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-8135-2353-two
• Hahn, Steven. A Nation Under Our Anxiety: Black Political Struggles in the Rural Due south From Slavery to the Bully Migration. 2003. ISBN 0-674-01169-4
• Haskins, James. Distinguished African American Political and Governmental Leaders. Phoenix, Arizona: Oryx Press, 1999. ISBN 1-57356-126-6
• Middleton, Stephen. Black Congressmen During Reconstruction : A Documentary Sourcebook. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2002. ISBN 0-313-06512-viii
• Rabinowitz, Howard North. Southern Black Leaders of the Reconstruction Era. University of Illinois Printing, 1982. ISBN 0-252-00929-0
• Walton, Jr., Hanes; Puckett, Sherman C.; Deskins, Jr., Donald R. (2012). The African American Electorate: A Statistical History. Congressional Quarterly Printing. ISBN9780872895089.

External links [edit]

• African American Members of the U.s. Congress: 1870-2012 A 66-page history produced by the Congressional Inquiry Service.
• Blackness Americans in Congress, Function of the Clerk, U.Southward. House of Representatives
• Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007 C-Span video with Matt Wasniewski as the presenter. He discusses the history of African Americans in Congress since 1870 (164 minute in length).

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Americans_in_the_United_States_Congress

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