Congressional Black Caucus

Historical Context

The story of the Congressional Black Caucus is a subset of the story of people of African descent in America. The odyssey of black, colored, Negro, and African American folk in the United States has been a journey that spanned over 500 years. It began with the arrival of sub-Saharan Africans. The odyssey continued with a Virginia tobacco planter's well-documented account of the arrival of “20 odd negroes” who came to Jamestown, Virginia, via Cape Comfort in August 1619 as indentured servants. The wave of slave ships brought scores of Africans to America as the progenitors of the “Negro, colored, black and African American” people who would inhabit the Americas.

Originally with no political rights by law, African Americans used nonelectoral political tools to obtain full citizenship, with rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Methods for attaining these rights included organized work stoppages, political speech making, coalition building, revolt, protest, appeals to the international community during the abolitionist movement, and fighting on both sides of the U.S. Civil War. The end of the war brought an end to slavery and the rise of federally protected and states-based rights to the franchise.

The first African Americans to serve in the U.S. Congress arrived during Reconstruction, served from 1865 to 1901, and were all southern Republicans. One of two U.S. senators and 10 of the 21 congressmen were formerly enslaved. The first “colored” U.S. senator and six congressmen came as a result of the end of slavery, and represented former slave-holding states. Hiram Rhodes Revels served as senator from Mississippi. Robert Carlos De Large, Robert Brown Elliott, and Richard Harvey Cain were the three representatives from South Carolina. Benjamin Sterling Turner was from Alabama. The number of African Americans in Congress grew from zero in 1864 to two senators, and 21 representatives having served by 1901.

The 1877 Compromise, also known as the Great Betrayal, an informal, unwritten deal by Rutherford B. Hayes, resulted in a political pact between the southern legislative delegation and the presidential hopeful to pull back federal troops from the south in exchange for electoral college votes and, ultimately, the presidency. In response African Americans, over the ensuing decades, sometimes in coalition with progressives, launched civic and benevolence organizations, black political conventions, court cases, the civil rights movement, the Black Power movement, and lobbyist efforts aimed at presidents and members of Congress. Throughout that time, voting rights have served as a holy grail of political goals. Through its obtainment black elected officials were possible on the local, state, and federal levels of government. The Congressional Black Caucus was possible, in large measure, because of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat.

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