African Americans in The United States Congress - The Modern Era

The Modern Era

The Great Migration of blacks from the rural south to northern cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland from 1910 to 1940 began to produce black-majority Congressional districts in the North. Blacks could exercise their right to vote. In the two waves of the Great Migration, more than six and a half million blacks 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. DePriest was also the last black Republican in the House for 56 years.

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 blacks moved north and also west, especially to California, in the second wave of the Great Migration. By the 1960s, virtually all black voters were Democrats and most were voting in states outside the former Confederacy.

It was not until passage through Congress of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, recognizing years of effort on the part of African Americans and allies in the Civil Rights Movement, that blacks 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.

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.

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. 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.

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 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.

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. Other demographic and cultural changes resulted in the Republicans' holding a majority of white-majority House districts by 2000.

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. Because of this, an African-American candidate cannot rely on the black vote alone to be elected to the Senate. The candidate must reach out to other races and groups to become elected to the United States Senate and to many congressional seats. Four African Americans have served in the Senate since the 1940s: Edward W. Brooke, a Republican from Massachusetts; and Carol Moseley Braun, Barack Obama, and Roland Burris (appointed to a vacancy) – all Democrats from Illinois.

In the last several decades, numerous African Americans have created similar multi-racial coalitions to be elected as mayors of cities (including those without a black majority). (See List of first African-American mayors.)