Credentials from the State of Mississippi for Senator-elect Hiram Rhodes Revels, dated January 25, 1870.
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In 1870, as Mississippi sought readmission to representation in the U.S. Congress, the Republican Party firmly controlled both houses of Congress and also dominated the southern state legislatures. That, along with the pending ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, set the stage for the election of Congress’s first African American members. One of the first orders of business for the new Mississippi state legislature when it convened on January 11, 1870, was to fill the vacancies in the United States Senate, which had remained empty since the 1861 withdrawal of Albert Brown and future Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Representing around one-quarter of the state legislative body, the black legislators insisted that one of the vacancies be filled by a black member of the Republican Party. “An opportunity of electing a Republican to the United States Senate, to fill an unexpired term occurred,” Revels later recalled, “and the colored members after consulting together on the subject, agreed to give their influence and votes for one of their own race for that position, as it would in their judgement be a weakening blow against color line prejudice.” Since Revels had impressed his colleagues with an impassioned prayer at the opening of the session, legislators agreed that the shorter of the two terms, set to expire in March 1871, would go to him.
On this day in 1870, a Black politician was seated in the United States Senate for the first time, but only after Republican leaders rebuffed a challenge based on the infamous Dred Scott decision. Hiram Rhodes Revels’s path to the Senate floor took him through numerous states as a freed black man born in North Carolina, schooled in Indiana and Ohio, and as a preacher and educator in Kansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Revels also served in the Civil War as a chaplain and he was at the battles of Vicksburg and Jackson in Mississippi. After the war, he settled in Natchez, Mississippi, continuing his educational and religious works. But Revels slowly became involved in politics, first as a local alderman in 1868, and then as a member of the Mississippi state senate in the state’s Reconstruction-era government in 1869. Revels caught the attention of leaders in the state Senate after he gave an inspirational prayer to open a session in January 1870. That session soon turned to the serious business of electing two U.S. Senators from Mississippi, to be sent to Washington after Mississippi was readmitted as a state in the Union. (In that era, state legislatures elected U.S. Senators until the 17th Amendment went into effect.) Seen as a moderate and as an educated man, Revels was put up for nomination and elected to the U.S. Senate by an 81 to 15 vote. He would fill the unexpired term of a Senator who quit in 1861, which ended in March 1871. However, when Revels arrived in Washington in late January 1870, it was clear he would have opposition from people who objected to a Black person serving in the U.S. Senate. There were still a handful of Southern Democrats in Congress and they raised several barriers. The first argument was that a Senate candidate had to be a United States citizen for at least nine years before assuming office. This logic pointed to the Supreme Court’s controversial Dred Scott decision from 1857, which was interpreted to state that Blacks of African-American ancestry weren’t American citizens and that Revels had only been a citizen since the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868. Another argument was that Mississippi was still under military rule and a civilian government needed to confirm Revel’s election. The issue came to a head on February 23, 1871, when Mississippi was officially admitted back into the Union, and a floor vote came up to seat Revels in the Senate. After two days of debate, the vote came to seat Revels. In an account from the New York Times, the historic nature of the moment was apparent. “Mr. Revels, the colored Senator from Mississippi, was sworn in and admitted to his seat this afternoon at 4:40 o'clock. There was not an inch of standing or sitting room in the galleries, so densely were they packed; and to say that the interest was intense gives but a faint idea of the feeling which prevailed throughout the entire proceeding,” the Times said. Republicans cut off objections from the southern Democrats, and the vote was 48-8 to let Revels take his Senate seat. “The ceremony was short. Mr. Revels showed no embarrassment whatever, and his demeanor was as dignified as could be expected under the circumstances. The abuse which had been poured upon him and on his race during the last two days might well have shaken the nerves of any one,” the Times said. Three weeks later, Revels gave his first speech to a packed Senate gallery about fears that Georgia would forbid blacks from holding public office using language that was part of its deal to gain admittance back to the Union. “I remarked that I rose to plead for protection for the defenseless race that now sends their delegation to the seat of Government to sue for that which this Congress alone can secure to them. And here let me say further, that the people of the North owe to the colored race a deep obligation that is no easy matter to fulfill,” he said. In his brief Senate career, Revels was seen as a moderate who opposed segregation and supported civil rights, but he also wanted amnesty for former Confederate soldiers. Revels chose not to seek more time in the Senate, and he left Washington in March 1871 to become the first president of what became Alcorn University, the first land grant school for African-Americans in the United States. Revels remained active in the religious and educational communities for the rest of his life. He died on January 16, 1901, as he was attending a religious conference. In 1875, Blanche Kelso Bruce, also of Mississippi and of African-American descent, was elected to the Senate and served a full six-year term. It would be another 92 years until Edward Brooke of Massachusetts became the third black to win a seat in the U.S. Senate. From the first United States Congress in 1789 through the 116th Congress in 2020, 162 African Americans served in Congress.[1] Meanwhile, the total number of all individuals who have served in Congress over that period is 12,348.[2] Between 1789 and 2020, 152 have served in the House of Representatives, 9 have served in the Senate, and 1 has served in both chambers. Voting members have totaled 156, with 6 serving as delegates. Party membership has been, 131 Democrats, and 31 Republicans. While 13 members founded the Congressional Black Caucus in 1971 during the 92nd Congress, in the 116th Congress (2019-2020), 56 served, with 54 Democrats and 2 Republicans (total seats are 535, plus 6 delegates).[1] By the time of the first edition of the House sponsored book, Black Americans in Congress, in the bicentennial year 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 2018 editions.[3] The first African American to serve was Senator Hiram Revels in 1870. The first to chair a congressional committee was Representative William L. Dawson in 1949. The first woman was Representative Shirley Chisholm in 1968, and the first to become Dean of the House was John Conyers in 2015. One member, then Senator Barack Obama, went from the Senate to President of the United States in 2009. The first African Americans to serve in the Congress were Republicans elected during the Reconstruction Era. After the 13th and 14th Amendments granted freedom and citizenship to enslaved people, freedmen gained political representation in the Southern United States for the first time.[4][5][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 election of 1876, only three state legislatures were not controlled by whites. The Compromise of 1877 completed the period of Redemption by white Southerners, with the withdrawal of federal troops from the South. State legislatures began to pass Jim Crow laws to establish 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, state legislatures in the 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 electoral and voter registration and electoral rules. As 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 end of Reconstruction becoming more ambiguous on civil rights and with the rise of the Republican lily-white movement, African Americans began shifting away from the Republican Party.[8] During two waves of massive migration within the United States in the first half of the 20th century, more than six million African Americans moved from the South to Northeastern, Midwestern, and Western industrial cities, with five million migrating from 1940 to 1970. Some were elected to federal political office from these new locations, and most were elected as Democrats. During the Great Depression, many black voters switched allegiances from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party, in support of the New Deal economic, social network, and work policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. This trend continued through the 1960s civil rights legislation, when voting rights returned to the South, to present. January 25, 1870, letter from the governor and secretary of state of Mississippi that certified the election of Hiram Rhodes Revels to the Senate. First black senator and representatives: Sen. Hiram Revels (R-MS), Rep. Benjamin S. Turner (R-AL), Robert DeLarge (R-SC), Josiah Walls (R-FL), Jefferson Long (R-GA), Joseph Rainey and Robert B. Elliott (R-SC) The right of black people to vote and to serve in the United States Congress was established after the Civil War by 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. 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 Act and the four Reconstruction Acts, which dissolved all governments in the former Confederate states with the exception of Tennessee. It divided the South into five 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.[10] As a result of these measures, black people acquired the right to vote across the Southern states. In several states (notably Mississippi and South Carolina), black 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 US Senate. During Reconstruction, only the state legislature of Mississippi elected any black senators. On February 25, 1870, Hiram Rhodes Revels was seated as the first black member of the Senate, while Blanche Bruce, also of Mississippi, seated in 1875, was the second. Revels was the first black member of the Congress overall.[11] Black people were a majority of the population in many congressional districts across the South. 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.[12] Black people were elected to national office also from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Texas and Virginia. All of these Reconstruction era black senators and representatives were members of the Republican 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, especially in Louisiana, Mississippi and the Carolinas, in an effort by Democrats to suppress black voting and regain power. In the mid-1870s, paramilitary groups such as the White League and Red Shirts worked openly to turn Republicans out of office and intimidate black people from voting. This followed the earlier years of secret vigilante action by the Ku Klux Klan against freedmen and allied white people. After 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 between Democratic 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. DisenfranchisementWith 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 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 University at Petersburg, was elected to the U.S. Congress as the first African American from Virginia. He would also be the last for nearly a century, as the state passed a disenfranchising constitution at the turn of the century that excluded black people from politics for decades.[13] 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 most black people and many poor white people from voting. Many white people who were also illiterate were exempted from such requirements as literacy tests by such strategies as the grandfather clause, basing eligibility on an ancestor's voting status as 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 last decade of the 19th century. The last black congressman elected from the South in the 19th century was George Henry White of North Carolina, elected in 1896 and re-elected in 1898. His term expired in 1901, the same year 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. 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 as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland began to produce black-majority Congressional districts in the North. In the North, Black people could exercise their right to vote. In the two waves of the Great Migration through 1970, more than six and a half million black people moved north and west and became highly urbanized. 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. Arthur Wergs Mitchell became the first African-American Democrat elected to Congress, part of the New Deal Coalition, when he replaced De Priest in 1935. De Priest, Mitchell and their successor, William Dawson, were the only 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 last African-American Republican elected to the House 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 two years later. After Watts retired in 2002, the House had no black Republicans until 2010, with the elections of Allen West in Florida's 22nd and Tim Scott in South Carolina's 1st. West lost his reelection bid in 2012, while Scott resigned in January 2013 to accept appointment to the U.S. Senate. Two new black Republicans, Will Hurd of Texas's 23rd district and Mia Love of Utah's 4th district, were elected in 2014, with Love being the first ever black Republican woman to be elected to Congress. She lost reelection in 2018, leaving Hurd as the only black Republican member of the U.S. House. The election of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 led to a shift of black voting loyalties from Republican to Democrat, as Roosevelt's New Deal programs offered economic relief to people suffering from the Great Depression. From 1940 to 1970, nearly five million black Americans moved north and also west, especially to California, in the second wave of the Great Migration. By the mid-1960s, an overwhelming majority of black voters were Democrats, and most were voting in states outside the former Confederacy. It was not until after passage by Congress of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the result of years of effort on the part of African Americans and allies in the Civil Rights Movement, that black people 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. On January 3, 1969, Shirley Chisholm was sworn as the nation's first African-American congresswoman. Two years later, she became one of the 13 founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Until 1992, most black House members were elected from inner-city districts in the North and West: New York City, Newark, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis and Los Angeles all elected at least one black member. Following the 1990 census, Congressional districts needed to be redrawn due to the population shifts of the country. Various federal court 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.[citation needed] Historically, both parties have used gerrymandering to gain political advantage, by drawing districts to favor their own party. In this case, some districts were created to link widely separated black communities. As a result, several black Democratic members of the House were elected from new districts in 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.[citation needed] The creation of black-majority districts was a process supported by both parties. The Democrats saw it as a means of providing social justice, as well as connecting easily to black voters who had been voting Democratic for decades. The Republicans believed they gained by 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 majority of African-American residents. Nine 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 later 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.
Page 2The 92nd United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, DC from January 3, 1971, to January 3, 1973, during the third and fourth years of Richard Nixon's presidency.
91st ← → 93rd United States Capitol (2002) The apportionment of seats in this House of Representatives was based on the 1960 Census. Both chambers maintained a Democratic majority.
Passing legislation on revenue-sharing was a key event of the congress. President Richard Nixon had it listed on his list of top policies to cover for the year. Nixon signed the bill into law at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. The law gained support from many state and local officials including: San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto whose city received $27 million in revenue-sharing money in the first year. Alito said that many projects that would not have been possible could now be done, "That will effectively enable us to meet those programs which up to now because of very tough budgeting we've had to trench."[1] The count below identifies party affiliations at the beginning of the first session of this Congress, and includes members from vacancies and newly admitted states, when they were first seated. Changes resulting from subsequent replacements are shown below in the Changes in membership section.
54 Democratic Senators 1 Independent Senator, caucusing with Democrats 44 Republican Senators 1 Conservative Senator, caucusing with Republicans This list is arranged by chamber, then by state. Senators are listed in order of class, and representatives are listed by district.
Senators are popularly elected statewide every two years, with one-third beginning new six-year terms with each Congress. Preceding the names in the list below are Senate class numbers, which indicate the cycle of their election. In this Congress, Class 1 meant their term began with this Congress, requiring reelection in 1976; Class 2 meant their term ended with this Congress, requiring reelection in 1972; and Class 3 meant their term began in the last Congress, requiring reelection in 1974.
House of RepresentativesThe names of members of the House of Representatives are preceded by their district numbers.
The count below reflects changes from the beginning of the first session of this Congress. Senate
House of Representatives
Lists of committees and their party leaders for members of the House and Senate committees can be found through the Official Congressional Directory at the bottom of this article. The directory after the pages of terms of service lists committees of the Senate, House (Standing with Subcommittees, Select and Special) and Joint and, after that, House/Senate committee assignments. On the committees section of the House and Senate in the Official Congressional Directory, the committee's members on the first row on the left side shows the chairman of the committee and on the right side shows the ranking member of the committee. Senate
House of Representatives
Joint committees
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In 1870 this person was the first black to serve in the u.s. house of representatives
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