I occasionally get caught going down a historical wormhole and discover depressing and/or discouraging things.
Recently, I discovered that, at least as of this writing, a total of 1,974 people have been US Senators. Of that total, 10 of them have been black. That is 1/2 of 1 percent of all US Senators.
Obviously, there was no hope before The Civil War. After The Civil War, the 14th amendment (1868) granted citizenship to all and the 15th amendment (1870) gave the vote to all men.
Amazingly enough, it was shortly after The Civil War that the first two black Senators were appointed by their respective state legislatures. Hiram Rhodes Revel was appointed in 1870 to fill out the final year of a term. Blanche Bruce was appointed in 1875 and served a full term.
Unless you’re really on top of your post Civil War history, you might not guess which state both of those men represented. Mississippi! Yes, the state whose flag to this day contains elements from the Confederate battle flag, that only officially ratified the 13th amendment banning slavery in the year 2013, and that even now has an official state holiday for Robert E Lee, was the first state to have black senators.
If you wonder why, of course the answer is Reconstruction. The victorious Union government managed the Southern state governments during that time to ensure that civil rights would actually be implemented. So called carpetbaggers and scalawags formed biracial governments.
Southern states fought external oversight and gradually gained back the power that they lost during The Civil War. Reconstruction officially ended in 1877. This ushered in wonderful things like Jim Crow laws where blacks were, in all but name, second class citizens.
To make the obvious point that racism isn’t just relegated to the Southern states, it wasn’t as if the Northern states were electing a bunch of black Senators during this time either.
In fact, after Bruce was appointed in 1875, the next black Senator wouldn’t be voted into office until Edward Brooke of Massachusetts. He was elected in 1966, nearly 100 years after the previous black Senator had served.
That apparently was enough for a while. The next black Senator to be elected was Carol Mosley Braun from Illinois, elected in 1992. Also from Illinois was Barack Obama, elected in 2004.
It seems crazy to me that it took until 2004 to have 5 black Senators to have ever served. youTube was founded only a month after Obama was sworn in to begin his first senatorial term, for fuck’s sake.
Next up was Roland Burris, once again from Illinois. He was appointed to serve Obama’s term after Obama was elected President. Similarly, Mo Cowan from Massachusetts was appointed to serve the remaining term of John Kerry after he was appointed Secretary of State.
Tim Scott from South Carolina was also appointed to fill a term (in this case, the Senator chose to leave government). However, after he completed the interim appointment, he was able to win election on his own.
The final two, Cory Booker from New Jersey and Kamala Harris from California, both won elections to the Senate.
What does all of this tell us?
Well, first of all, Reconstruction ended way too soon. The fact that it took nearly 100 years after Reconstruction for a black Senator to serve is proof of that.
Racism is a national pastime. A grand total of six states have had black senatorial representation. Granted, it’s a bit much expecting Wyoming (.9% black population) to have a black Senator, but how about states like Louisiana, Delaware, or Michigan?
Of the ten that served, three of them didn’t even serve a full term. That tells me that those three were, by and large, at best symbolic appointments.
Of the ten, only five of them first got into the Senate by winning a popular vote. That tells me that, even now, after having had a black President, the will of the people is still not particularly friendly towards black candidates.
Not exactly headline news, but lordy, 1/2 of 1%?
dorkenstein 