African Americans in Southern Politics

U.S. Senator Hiram Rhodes Revels, the first African-American in the Congress.

After the Civil War, Republicans took control of all Southern state governorships and state legislatures, except for Virginia. The Republican coalition elected numerous African Americans to local, state, and national offices. Though they did not dominate any electoral offices, black men as representatives voting in state and federal legislatures marked a drastic social change.

At the beginning of 1867, no African-American in the South held political office, but within three or four years a significant minority of office-holders in the South were black. About 137 black officeholders had lived outside the South before the Civil War. Some had escaped from slavery to the North, become educated, and returned to help the South advance in the postwar era. Others were free blacks before the war, who had achieved education and positions of leadership elsewhere. Other African-American men who served were already leaders in their communities, including a number of preachers. As happened in white communities, not all leadership depended upon wealth and literacy.

There were few African Americans elected or appointed to national office. African Americans voted for white candidates and for blacks. The Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed the right to vote, but did not guarantee that the vote would be counted or the districts would be apportioned equally. As a result, states with majority African-American population often elected only one or two African-American representatives in Congress. Exceptions included South Carolina; at the end of Reconstruction, four of its five Congressmen were African American.

Hiram Rhodes Revels (September 27, 1827 – January 16, 1901) was the first African American to serve in the United States Senate. Because he preceded any African American in the House, he was the first African American in the U.S. Congress as well. He represented Mississippi in 1870 and 1871.

Joseph Hayne Rainey (June 21, 1832 – August 1, 1887) was the first African American to serve in the United States House of Representatives, the second black person to serve in the United States Congress, the first African American to be directly elected to Congress (Revels had been appointed), and the first black presiding officer of the United States House of Representatives. Born into slavery, he was freed in the 1840s when his father purchased his and his family's freedom.