Keeping the Faith

African Americans Return to Congress, 1929 – 1970

Introduction

With his election to the U.S. House of Representatives from a Chicago district in 1928, Oscar De Priest of Illinois became the first African American to serve in Congress since George White of North Carolina left office in 1901 and the first elected from a northern state. But while De Priest’s victory symbolized renewed hope for African Americans struggling to regain a foothold in national politics, it was only the beginning of an arduous journey. The election of just a dozen more African Americans to Congress over the next 30 years was stark evidence of modern America’s pervasive segregation practices.

The new generation of black lawmakers embarked on a long, methodical institutional apprenticeship on Capitol Hill. Until the mid-1940s, only one black Member served at any given time; no more than two served simultaneously until 1955. Arriving in Washington, black Members confronted a segregated institution in a segregated capital city. Institutional racism, at turns sharply overt and cleverly subtle, provided a pivotal point for these African-American Members—influencing their agendas, legislative styles, and standing within Congress. Pioneers such as Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., of New York, Charles C. Diggs, Jr., of Michigan, and Augustus (Gus) Hawkins of California participated in the civil rights debates in Congress and helped shape fundamental laws such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964. For the first time, African Americans made substantive, not merely symbolic, gains within the institution. William L. Dawson of Illinois and Representative Powell became the first blacks to chair standing congressional committees. Eight of these trailblazers would eventually lead one or more standing House committees.

Demographic shifts continued to transform the black political base during these decades, fundamentally recasting the background and experiences of black Members of Congress. None of the black Members from this period represented a southern district or state—a testament to the near-complete disfranchisement of southern blacks and a massive, decades-long migration of millions of African Americans employed in agricultural work in the South to urban areas in the North in search of industrial jobs. While their representation of northern cities alone would have distinguished this group of black Members from their Reconstruction-Era predecessors, they were also overwhelmingly Democratic, sharply contrasting with the uniformly Republican 19th-century African Americans in Congress. New Deal reforms providing a modicum of economic relief—and, more compellingly, the promise of fuller participation in American life—drew Black Americans away from the party of Lincoln and into a durable Democratic coalition built by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. With the exception of De Priest and Senator Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, all the black Members of Congress from this era were Democrats.

An atomistic individualism characterized the careers of African-American congressional pioneers in the early decades of this era. The burden of advocating black interests fell on the shoulders of a few Representatives: De Priest and Arthur Mitchell of Illinois in the 1930s and Powell and Dawson in the 1940s, joined by Diggs and Robert Nix of Pennsylvania in the 1950s. Seven of the 13 individuals to serve in this era were not elected until the 1960s, just as the civil rights movement led by Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., crested and compelled the federal government to enact legislative reforms. Yet this cohort formed a political vanguard that, in many respects, mirrored the experiences and trends reconfiguring black participation in modern American politics. Brooke—the first black U.S. Senator since Blanche Bruce of Mississippi during Reconstruction—entered the upper chamber in 1967; two years later, Representative Shirley Chisholm of New York became the first black woman tosere in Congress.

Like their Reconstruction-Era predecessors, these African-American Members endured racist slurs and prejudicial slights that complicated their development as legislators. Too few to effect change as a voting bloc within Congress, they acted either as public advocates commanding the spotlight on behalf of racial equality or as patient insiders who sought to deliver economic and political benefits to black constituents by accruing influence within the existing power structure. Yet the symbolism of this handful of black congressional careers initiated between the onset of the Great Depression and the social ferment of the late 1960s far exceeded the sum of its parts. Arguably for the first time, Black Americans who sent Members to Capitol Hill were substantively rewarded with legislative efforts made expressly on their behalf. “Keep the faith, baby,” Representative Powell famously intoned, “spread it gently and walk together, children.”¹ His oft-repeated words captured the essence of African Americans’ growing collective political activism.

Pre-Congressional Experience

Numerous parallels can be drawn between the black Congressmen of the Reconstruction Era and the 13 African Americans who were elected to Congress between 1929 and 1970. Many were born in the South, some into well-to-do circumstances. All were well educated, especially compared to the general population, and they drew from a growing reserve of political experience. Like most of their white congressional colleagues, 20th-century black Members of Congress tended to be selected from the elite of their communities. Each had bridged the gulf that separated blacks from the opportunities enjoyed by better-educated, more-affluent whites. A leading political scientist notes that “in terms of education, income, and occupation, these black representatives resemble their white counterparts more than they do their African-American constituents.”²

Six of the blacks elected to Congress from 1929 to 1970 were born into racially segregated circumstances in the South.³ Some participated in the Great Migration to northern and western urban areas with their parents (or, later, as young adults), attracted by better economic, social, and cultural opportunities.⁴ Born in Florence, Alabama, Oscar De Priest was 7 when his family joined the 1878–1879 exodus of some 60,000 black families from the Lower Mississippi Valley to Kansas; he eventually moved to Chicago as a young man. His successor, Arthur Mitchell, was born in Lafayette, Alabama, and taught school in the South before attending northern colleges to earn his law degree, eventually settling in Chicago in the 1920s—a decade when nearly 750,000 blacks moved to the North. William Dawson, who succeeded Mitchell, was born in Albany, Georgia, and attended school in the South before moving to Chicago prior to World War I. It was not until mid-century that the first black Members of Congress were elected to represent the cities where they were born and raised. These included Charles Diggs of Detroit (1954), John Conyers, Jr., of Detroit (1964), Louis Stokes of Cleveland (1968), William L. Clay, Sr., of St. Louis (1968), Shirley Chisholm of Brooklyn (1968), and George W. Collins of Chicago (1970).

Service in the U.S. Army played a formative role in the lives of a majority of these Members of Congress.⁵ For those born in the North, the military was a brusque introduction to blatantly segregationist practices. Both Diggs and Stokes, who were stationed in the Deep South, recalled instances of discrimination when African-American soldiers were refused food service, while white GIs and German prisoners of war dined together. “That was the shock of recognition to me, that an enemy was more welcome than a black,” Diggs observed.⁶ That experience sparked Diggs’s future political commitment to securing equal rights for African Americans. Shortly after taking office in 1943, William Dawson, who had graduated from the country’s first black officers’ candidate school in 1917, declared, “I know what segregation in the army means… is a damnable thing anywhere and I resent it.”⁷ As a Member of Congress during World War II, Dawson was a vocal proponent of integrating U.S. forces and, in 1944, when Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson suggested that black soldiers were unfit for combat duty, Dawson demanded his removal.⁸ Edward Brooke, who served during World War II in Europe in the segregated 366th Combat Infantry Regiment and later in the 224th Engineering Battalion, recalled, “The prejudice Negro soldiers faced in the army was underscored by the friendliness of the Italians, who were colorblind with regard to race…It was maddening to be given lectures on the evils of Nazi racial theories and then be told that we should not associate with white soldiers or white civilians.”⁹ After being drafted in 1953, five yearsafter the services were integrated by presidential order, William Clay, Sr., was stationed at Fort McClellan in Alabama—an army post that was still largely segregated, in Clay’s words, “with all the insobriety of the last Confederate general and the insolence of the last Confederate infantryman.” Clay organized a boycott against the segregated barbershop, a whites-only Post Exchange restaurant, and a segregated swimming pool. Later, Representative Diggs launched an investigation into base practices at Fort McClellan.¹⁰

Like their Reconstruction predecessors, 20th-century black political pioneers in Congress were exceedingly well educated—eclipsing the educational level of the average American and far surpassing the educational level of their fellow Black Americans.¹¹ All graduated from high school. Only one, De Priest, did not receive at least a partial college education; seven studied law at elite historically black institutions and Ivy League schools. As organs of political protest and racial advancement, African-American churches played a central role in the larger civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, but religious studies and service in the pulpit were not a prerequisite for black Members of Congress. Among these black Members, only Adam Clayton Powell, who succeeded his father as pastor of New York’s Abyssinian Baptist Church, was trained in the ministry.

Political opportunities were more often secular. The majority of the African Americans elected to Congress during this period had experience in elective office. Five served on city councils in major urban areas as a result of the growing population and influence of blacks in northern cities: De Priest, Dawson, and Collins served in Chicago, Powell served in New York City, and Clay served in St. Louis. Diggs, Hawkins, and Chisholm served in state legislatures. Edward Brooke served two terms as Massachusetts attorney general, becoming one of the highest-ranking African-American law enforcement officials in history.¹² Only Stokes, Nix, and Conyers won election to the House without having held an elective office, but all three had extensive local political experience.¹³ Reflecting inroads made by the modern women’s rights movement, gender diversity became a reality for Black Americans in Congress during this era.¹⁴ In 1968, Shirley Chisholm won a newly redistricted seat in Brooklyn, becoming the first African-American woman elected to Congress. She ran against James Farmer, a famous civil rights activist nominated as the Liberal-Republican candidate partly because he argued that the Democrats had for too long “thought they had [the black vote] in their pockets.” Chisholm and Farmer staked out similar economic and social positions, and their campaigns were nearly identical, but Farmer argued that women had been “in the driver’s seat” in black communities for an extensive period and that the district needed “a man’s voice in Washington.”¹⁵ Chisholm prevailed, becoming an overnight symbol of crumbling barriers for blacks in national political office. Within five years, Yvonne Brathwaite Burke of California, Barbara Jordan of Texas, and Cardiss Collins of Illinois joined her in the House. “The black man must step forward,” Chisholm was fond of saying, “but that doesn’t mean that black women have to step back.”¹⁶

Legislative and Electoral Characteristics

Committee Assignments

As in the Reconstruction Era, African-American Members through the mid-20th century were assigned largely to middling committee positions.¹⁷ Among black Members’ committee assignments were Invalid Pensions (3), Interior and Insular Affairs (3), Veterans’ Affairs (3), Indian Affairs (2), Post Office and Post Roads (2), Expenditures in the Executive Departments (2), and District of Columbia (2). No black Members served on the Agriculture Committee (despite House leaders’ initial attempt to assign Shirley Chisholm to the panel), largely because they represented northern industrialized districts. As in the 19th century, the Education and Labor Committee—which had oversight of federal laws affecting schools, workplaces, and unions—was the most common assignment, with four black Members in this era. There were a few exceptions to this pattern, however. William Dawson served on the Irrigation and Reclamation Committee in the 78th and 79th Congresses (1943–1947). That panel, which had wide-ranging jurisdiction over public lands and water projects, ranked in the top third of “attractive”committees. In 1965, John Conyers won a seat as a freshman on the influential Judiciary Committee, which was then under the leadership of liberal Democrat Emanuel Celler of New York. At the time, the assignment was an elite one, as Judiciary ranked behind only Ways and Means and Appropriations in terms of the number of Members who sought assignment there.¹⁸ Members also considered the Foreign Affairs Committee to be among the upper tier of House committee assignments because of its relative visibility. Charles Diggs won a seat on this panel in 1959, becoming its first African-American Member. Diggs’s appointment to the committee signified African Americans’ increasing interest in Cold War policies, particularly as they affected the rise of postcolonial independent states in Africa. By 1969, he chaired the Subcommittee on Africa and served as one of the principal organizers of the congressional anti-apartheid movement. Since Senators’ committee responsibilities tend to be broader than those of their House counterparts, the increased workload opened avenues onto important panels for Edward Brooke, who won assignments to the Senate Appropriations Committee, the Armed Services Committee, and the Joint Defense Production Committee.¹⁹

Longevity and Seniority

The turnover rate for incumbent black Members of Congress in the 20th century remained low. The creation of majority-black districts, particularly in the late 1960s and the 1970s, provided electoral safety for black House Members. Of all the African Americans who were elected to the House and the Senate from 1928 through 2007, only four were defeated in a general election: De Priest (1934), Brooke (1978), Delegate Melvin Evans of the Virgin Islands (1980), and Senator Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois (1998). All the other African-American Members who lost their seats (12) were defeated in the Democratic primaries (usually by other African Americans). These trends reflected the growing power of incumbency among the general congressional membership.²⁰

During this period, black Members of Congress tended to be slightly older upon their first election than the rest of the congressional population.²¹ The average age of African-American Members at their first election was 46.4 years; their white colleagues, who began their careers at marginally earlier ages, enjoyed a statistical, if not a determinative, advantage in accruing seniority at a younger age. Roughly one-third of black Members during this era were elected in their 30s, as was the general House population that was elected between 1930 and 1960. Moreover, four African-American Members elected in their thirties—Powell, Diggs, Conyers, and Clay—all had unusually long careers and eventually held a variety of leadership posts. At 31 years of age, Diggs was the youngest black Member elected during this period. Nix was the oldest; elected to the House for the first time at age 59, he claimed to be eight years younger than he actually was.

The trend toward increasing electoral safety led to longevity on Capitol Hill. Of the 13 African Americans elected to Congress between 1928 and 1970, 10 served at least 10 years; eight served more than 20 years.²² Longevity allowed Members to gain the seniority on committees they needed to advance into the leadership or request more-desirable committee assignments. Consequently, a number of milestones were established during this era. Representative Dawson became the first African American to chair a standing congressional committee when he earned the gavel on the House Expenditures in the Executive Departments Committee (later named the Government Operations Committee) in 1949. With the exception of the period from 1953 to 1955, when Republicans controlled the chamber, Dawson chaired the panel until his death in 1970. Representative Powell served as chairman of the Education and Labor Committee from 1961 to 1967, overseeing much of the education reform legislation passed during the Great Society. Additionally, Dawson, Powell, Diggs, and Nix chaired 10 subcommittees on six separate standing committees during this era.²³

Incumbency conferred a substantial amount of power. It discouraged opposition from within the party because in many instances the incumbent Member controlled or influenced much of the local political machinery. It also strengthened the intangible bonds between voter and Member. In some measure the electoral longevity of this set of African-American Members can be attributed to the power of the entrenched political machines that brought them to office. But Representatives’ familiarity, established through their longevity, also fostered loyalty among their constituents. Viewed by their primarily African-American communities as advocates for black interests, most of these Members cultivated unusually cohesive bases of support.²⁴ These relationships endured even when incumbents such as Adam Clayton Powell and Charles Diggs faced ethics charges or legal problems.²⁵

Party Realignment And The New Deal

The political realignment of black voters that began in the late 1920s proliferated during this era. This process involved a “push and pull”; the racial policies of Republicans alienated many black voters, while those of the northern wing of the Democratic Party attracted them.²⁶ In 1932, incumbent President Herbert Hoover received between two-thirds and three-quarters of the black vote in northern urban wards, despite his attempts to ingratiate himself with southern segregationists and his failure to implement economic policies to help blacks laid low by the Great Depression.²⁷ But most blacks cast their votes less because of Republican loyalty than because they were loath to support a candidate whose party had zealously suppressed their political rights in the South. Blacks mistrusted Franklin D. Roosevelt because of his party label, his evasiveness about racial issues in the campaign, and his choice of a running mate, House Speaker John Nance Garner of Texas.²⁸ As late as the mid-1930s, John R. Lynch, a former Republican Representative who represented Mississippi during Reconstruction and in the years immediately afterward, summed up the sentiments of older black voters and upper-middle-class professionals: “The colored voters cannot help but feel that in voting the Democratic ticket in national elections they will be voting to give their indorsement [sic] and their approval to every wrong of which they are victims, every right of which they are deprived, and every injustice of which they suffer.”²⁹

The Illinois First Congressional District provides a window into the process of black political realignment in northern cities. Prior to becoming solidly Democratic in 1934, the South Chicago district elected Republican Oscar De Priest in 1928, 1930, and 1932. Chicago’s Republican machine was firmly established and headed by William Hale (Big Bill) Thompson, who served as mayor from 1915 through 1923 and again from 1927 through 1931. Southern blacks, who swelled the city’s population during that period (giving it the second-largest urban black population nationally by 1930), encountered a Republican machine that courted the black vote and extended patronage jobs. The party offered these migrants an outlet for political participation that was unimaginable in the Jim Crow South. African Americans voted in droves for machine politicians like Thompson, who regularly corralled at least 60 percent of the vote in the majority-black Second and Third Wards. Mayor Thompson and the machine promoted black politicians such as De Priest who, in 1915, became the city’s first African-American alderman (the equivalent of a city councilman). Black voters remained exceedingly loyal to the Republican ticket, both nationally and locally.³⁰

Indeed, the most common political experience of African-American Members of this era came through their involvement in politics at the ward and precinct levels. The Chicago political machines run by Thompson and, later, Democrats such as Edward J. Kelly and Richard J. Daley, sent nearly one-third of the black Members of this era to Capitol Hill. Political machines awakened to and courted the growing African-American urban population long before the national parties realized its potential. At the beginning of this era, the relationship between black politicians and their sponsors was strong—and many black Members of Congress placed party loyalty above all else. But by the late 1960s, as black politicians began to assemble their own power bases, carving out a measure of independence, they often challenged the machine when party interests conflicted with racial issues that were important to the black community. Unlike earlier black Members, who relied on the established political machines to launch their careers, these Members, most of whom were native to the cities they represented, managed to forge political bases separate from the dominant party structure through long-established familial and community relations and civic engagement—and they routinely clashed with the entrenched political powers.³¹

Discontent with the Hoover administration’s halting efforts to revive the Depression-Era economy also loosened African-American ties to the party. Nationally, the staggering financial collapse hit blacks harder than most other groups. Thousands had already lost agrarian jobs in the mid-1920s due to the declining cotton market.32 Others had lost industrial jobs in the first stages of economic contraction, so blacks nationally were already in the grips of an economic depression before the stock market collapsed in October 1929. By the early 1930s, 38 percent of blacks were unemployed (compared to 17 percent of whites).³³ A Roosevelt administration study found that blacks constituted 20 percent of all Americans on the welfare rolls, even though they accounted for just 10 percent of the total population. In Chicago, one-fourth of welfare recipients were black, although blacks made up just 6 percent of the city’s total population.³⁴

Political opportunity (both for personal advancement and for the improvement of the black community) in the early 1930s also convinced some African-American politicians to change their party allegiance.³⁵ Arthur Mitchell and William Dawson epitomized a younger cadre of African Americans who were “ambitious and impatient with the entrenched black Republican leadership, [seeking] a chance for personal advancement in the concurrent rise of the national Democratic party…”³⁶ Paid to speak on behalf of Hoover’s 1928 presidential campaign, Mitchell encountered the De Priest campaign at a Chicago engagement and shortly thereafter joined the Second Ward Regular Republican Organization; he hoped to make an intraparty challenge to the incumbent. But after evaluating De Priest’s control of the machine, he switched parties to campaign for Roosevelt in 1932 and two years later successfully unseated De Priest, even though the incumbent retained the majority of the black vote. Mitchell became the first African American elected to Congress as a Democrat—running largely on a platform that tapped into urban black support for the economic relief provided by New Deal programs. “I was elected partly on the achievement of your administration …,” Mitchell wrote President Roosevelt shortly after starting his term in office, “and partly on the promise that I would stand [in] back of your administration.”³⁷

Even more telling was the defection of De Priest’s protégé, William Dawson, who, with the Representative’s backing, in 1932 won election as a Republican Second Ward alderman to the Chicago city council. After defeating De Priest in the 1938 GOP primary, failing to unseat Mitchell in the general election, and then losing his seat on the city council when De Priest allies blocked his renomination, Dawson seized the opportunity extended by his one time opponents. Allying with Democratic mayoral incumbent Ed Kelly, Dawson changed parties and became Democratic committeeman in the Second Ward, clearing a path to succeed Mitchell upon his retirement from the House in 1942. Dawson’s case epitomized the willingness of Democratic bosses like Kelly to recruit African Americans by using patronage positions.³⁸

Additionally, black voters nationwide realigned their party affiliation because of the growing perception that the interests of the black community were intertwined with local Democratic organizations. Local patronage positions and nationally administered emergency relief programs in Depression-Era Chicago and other cities proved alluring.³⁹ While New Deal programs failed to extend as much economic relief to Black Americans as to whites, the tangible assistance they provided conferred a sense that the system was at least addressing a few issues that were important to African Americans. For those who had been marginalized or ignored for so long, even the largely symbolic efforts of the Roosevelt administration inspired hope and renewed interest in the political process.⁴⁰ As younger black voters displaced their parents and grandparents, their electoral experiences and loyalties evolved largely alongside and within the Democratic machines that came to dominate northern city wards. By 1936, only 28 percent of blacks nationally voted for Republican nominee Alf Landon—less than half the number who had voted for Hoover just four years before.⁴¹ Over time, the party affiliations of blacks in Congress became equally one-sided. Including Oscar De Priest, just five black Republicans were elected to Congress between 1929 and 2007 (about 5 percent of the African Americans to serve in that time span).⁴²

The Limits of New Deal Reform

President Franklin Roosevelt remained aloof and ambivalent about black civil rights largely because his economic policies may have been compromised had he raised racial issues, angering southern congressional leaders. During Roosevelt’s first term, the administration’s emphasis was squarely on mitigating the economic travails of the Depression. This required a close working relationship with Congresses dominated by racially conservative southern Democrats, including several Speakers and most of the chairmen of key committees. “Economic reconstruction took precedence over all other concerns,” observes historian Harvard Sitkoff. “Congress held the power of the purse, and the South held power in Congress.”⁴³ There were no plausible scenarios in which the President could have confronted white supremacy head-on during the Depression.

However, other institutional and structural reforms implemented by the administration eclipsed the President’s impassivity toward black civil rights activists.⁴⁴ Absent Roosevelt’s hands-on involvement, progressive New Dealers advanced the cause of African Americans, transforming many blacks’ perceptions about the Democratic Party.⁴⁵ First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt prodded her husband to be more responsive and cultivated connections with black leaders, such as educator and women’s rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune. One historian describes the First Lady as an “unofficial ombudsman for the Negro.”⁴⁶ Harold Ickes, a key Roosevelt appointee and Secretary of the Interior Department, was another prominent advocate for blacks. A former president of the Chicago National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and a one-time Republican, Ickes banned segregation from his department; other heads of executive agencies followed his example. As director of the Public Works Administration, Ickes also stipulated that the agency’s federal contractors must hire a percentage of blacks equal to or higher than the percentage of blacks recorded in the 1930 occupational census.⁴⁷

Nevertheless, another failed attempt to push for anti-lynching legislation made it apparent that the extent of reform was limited. In this instance—unlike in the early 1920s when there were no blacks serving in Congress—an African-American Member of Congress, Arthur Mitchell, refused to endorse legislation supported by the NAACP. Moreover, Mitchell introduced his own anti-lynching bill in the 74th Congress (1935–1937), which critics assailed as a diluted measure that provided far more lenient sentences and contained many legal ambiguities. Given the choice, southerners favored Mitchell’s bill, although they amended it considerably in the Judiciary Committee, further weakening its provisions. Meanwhile, Mitchell waged a public relations blitz, including a national radio broadcast, on behalf of his bill. Only when reformers convincingly tabled Mitchell’s proposal early in the 75th Congress (1937–1939) did he enlist in the campaign to support the NAACP measure—smarting from the realization that Judiciary Committee Chairman Hatton Sumners of Texas had misled and used him. The NAACP measure passed the House in April 1937 by a vote of 277 to 120 but was never enacted into law. Instead, southerners in the Senate effectively buried it in early 1938 by blocking efforts to bring it to an up-or-down vote on the floor.⁴⁸ The rivalry between Mitchell and the NAACP forecast future problems while revealing that African-American Members and outside advocacy groups sometimes worked at cross-purposes, confounding civil rights supporters in Congress and providing opponents a wedge for blocking legislation.

The Second World War

World War II marked a watershed moment in African-American history. It brought economic opportunities and opened new avenues for participation in American society. On the eve of the war, roughly 75 percent of American blacks lived in the South, two-thirds of them in rural areas. For the year 1939, 87 percent of black families were estimated to live below the federal poverty level (compared to less than half of white families), and blacks’ per capita income was 39 percent that of whites. The war effort produced immense change by renewing the Great Migration, which had stalled during the Great Depression. Between 1940 and 1960, more than 4.5 million African Americans emigrated from the South to the urban North and the West. During the war years alone, approximately 700,000 black civilians left the South for destinations such as Los Angeles to take industrial jobs created by the demands of full-scale mobilization and to seek opportunities for political participation that did not exist in the South—where less than 5 percent of blacks were allowed to vote.⁴⁹

Roughly one million blacks served in the U.S. armed forces during World War II, with approximately half serving overseas. The war effort offered more opportunities than ever for African Americans to defend their country, though discrimination and segregation circumscribed their ability to contribute. While thousands of African Americans served in combat—among them the army’s 92nd and 93rd all-black divisions, as well as the famed 99th Pursuit Squadron (known as the Tuskegee Airmen)—the most common assignments for black servicemen were rear-guard mopping-up actions and menial supply and requisition roles. A lack of education among blacks generally and the prejudice of local draft boards and the military leadership accounted for much of the army’s reluctance to assign African Americans to combat roles.⁵⁰ In 1942, Representative Mitchell repeatedly called attention to British military reverses in Singapore, noting that the colonial power failed “due in part to its own discriminations” against the native people, which undermined morale. “America might suffer a like fate,” Mitchell warned, “if we insist upon destroying the morale of one-tenth of its fighting strength.”⁵¹ The American call to arms, Mitchell noted bitterly while reflecting on segregation in the army and the navy, “is for white people only, except where Negroes are needed to do the most menial service. Is this democracy? How long will this American practice be kept up?…While we are adjusting affairs the world over, we must not fail to adjust affairs in our own country and in our own hearts.”⁵²

Wartime experiences also mobilized black political activism. Enrollment in the NAACP, which soared from 50,000 on the eve of U.S. intervention in the war to 450,000 in 1946, constituted one measure of renewed political activity. The organization’s “Double V” campaign, with its slogan “Democracy Abroad—At Home,” called for victory over fascism abroad and victory over racism at home. In A Rising Wind (1945), influential NAACP Secretary Walter White suggested that although African Americans were maltreated and maligned even during the war effort, they were too resilient to wallow in “defeatist disillusionment.” Instead, White predicted, as the United States demobilized its wartime effort against the Axis Powers, homeward-bound African-American servicemen would enlist in the effort to conquer Jim Crow, “convinced that whatever betterment of their lot is achieved must come largely from their own efforts. They will return determined to use those efforts to the utmost.”⁵³ In this way African Americans’ wartime experiences helped foster the modern civil rights movement.

Equally significant, the war against fascism and totalitarian regimes reminded millions of Americans of democracy’s shortcomings on the segregated home front. A number of southern states still used the poll tax—a fee as high as $2, earmarked for school improvements, that voters had to pay before casting their ballots. The cost was prohibitive for poor voters, who were overwhelmingly black.⁵⁴ In a brief speech on the House Floor during a 1943 debate on a bill to outlaw the poll tax, freshman Representative William Dawson recalled his meager public education as a boy in Georgia, which was supplemented by private schooling, his family “slaved” to pay for. “You know that any method used to try to keep a citizen from exercising [the right to vote] is against the true spirit of the Constitution of the United States,” he told colleagues. “In the cause of the 13,000,000 patriotic and loyal Negro citizens I beseech the passage of this bill.” Several hours later, the House approved the measure by a sound 265 to 110 vote. However, the bill never cleared the Senate. In 1945, 1947, and 1949, the House again passed anti-poll tax bills. Over time, the measure became less controversial because fewer states employed the poll tax. Still, southern Senators blocked the legislation from being enacted.⁵⁵

Fair Employment Practices Committee

A critical moment in the development of black political activism came in 1941 when civil rights proponents, led by A. Philip Randolph, threatened to march on Washington, DC, to protest discrimination against blacks in the war industry. President Roosevelt consented to act only grudgingly, when his efforts to cajole and dissuade black leaders from vigorously protesting his inaction had been completely exhausted. On June 25, 1941, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, which declared “full participation in the national defense program by all citizens of the United States, regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin,” based on “the firm belief that the democratic way of life within the Nation can be defended successfully only with the help and support of all groups within its borders.” The order required that the federal government, unions, and defense industries “provide for the full and equitable participation of all workers.”⁵⁶ The President intended to mollify black protest in the face of probable U.S. intervention in World War II, but in issuing his executive order, he inspired black activists, who viewed it, and widely portrayed it, as a milestone victory in bending the federal government to their cause.

Roosevelt’s order also created the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) in the federal Office of Personnel Management to investigate complaints about hiring practices. Thousands availed themselves of the FEPC mechanism, though it drew harsh criticism from opponents of the administration’s New Deal programs and racial conservatives. In May 1944, congressional opponents of the FEPC, led by Representative Malcolm C. Tarver of Georgia, introduced a measure to repeal the $500,000 annual appropriation for the committee, presenting arguments on several fronts. Tarver suggested that the FEPC was an executive fiat “and does not have the approval or legislative sanction of Congress.”⁵⁷ Segregationist and avowed New Deal foe John Elliott Rankin of Mississippi declared that the FEPC was“ beginning of a communistic dictatorship, the likes of which America never dreamed.”⁵⁸

Only one African American—William Dawson of Chicago—served in Congress and could defend the record of the committee. Noting that he spoke for “more than a million Negro Americans fighting today with our armed forces and more than 13,000,000 here at home,” Dawson argued that the FEPC finally ensured blacks a fair part in the war production effort. “So when I hear some Members stand here and refer to it as a dictatorial committee, bent on making people do something that they do not wish to do, I know that they are not stating the facts to you. They are merely making statements in order to carry out their own purposes.”⁵⁹ Later that afternoon, the House voted 139 to 95 to agree to the amendment to pull funding for the FEPC. But the Labor Committee, chaired by sympathetic Representative Mary Norton of New Jersey, held hearings on permanently establishing the FEPC—a move that was backed by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt—and funding was temporarily restored.⁶⁰ Opponents of the FEPC prevailed in 1946, when they garnered enough support in both chambers to let the FEPC lapse. Twice, proponents of creating a permanent commission—prodded by liberals like Adam Clayton Powell and California Representative Helen Gahagan Douglas, who represented a large black constituency in Los Angeles—brought an FEPC bill before the House. A version of the bill passed the House in February 1950, but southern opponents had fatally weakened its enforcement powers. The measure, which provided only for investigatory and proposal functions, died later that year when it was filibustered in the Senate.

Postwar Foreign Policy and African-American Civil Rights

The Cold War, the great power rivalry that evolved between the United States and the Soviet Union in the aftermath of World War II, riveted international attention on U.S. segregation practices.⁶¹ Discrimination against millions of African Americans at home prompted criticism from allies and provided Kremlin propagandists with ample public relations opportunities. Members of the U.S. policymaking elite, who tended to cast the Soviet–American rivalry in terms of good versus evil, were keenly aware of the gap between their rhetoric about defending the “Free World” from communist “aggression” and democratic shortcomings at home, such as the Little Rock crisis of September 1957, when the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration was compelled to dispatch federal troops and marshals to integrate the city’s Central High School. Surveying the episode, widely respected foreign policy commentator Walter Lippmann noted, “the work of the American propagandist is not at present a happy one.” Segregation “mocks us and haunts us whenever we become eloquent and indignant in the United Nations…The caste system in this country, particularly when as in Little Rock it is maintained by troops, is an enormous, indeed an almost insuperable, obstacle to our leadership in the cause of freedom and human equality.”⁶²

U.S. officials viewed domestic civil rights through an ideological lens shaped by the Cold War that at times produced contrarian impulses.⁶³ In some measure, American officials’ increasing receptiveness to calls for civil rights at home in the 1950s and 1960s must be examined within the context of their desire to promote a positive image of America abroad, particularly in the contest for support in developing, decolonized countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America—principal proxy arenas for the Cold War.⁶⁴ As historian Thomas Borstelmann observes, U.S. officials often sought “to try to manage and control the efforts of racial reformers at home and abroad…They hoped effectively to contain racial polarization and build the largest possible multiracial, anti-Communist coalition under American leadership.”⁶⁵ Conversely, opponents of civil rights—often to great effect—labeled progressive reforms as communist-inspired. Moreover, investigatory panels such as the communist-hunting House Un-American Activities Committee (backed by arch segregationists such as Representative John E. Rankin) called prominent African Americans to testify during this era, questioning their ties to the American Communist Party and, by inference and innuendo, calling their patriotism into question.⁶⁶

African Americans’ participation in the international dialogue about civil rights and postcolonial self-determination is noteworthy. NAACP Secretary Walter White remarked that World War II gave African Americans “a sense of kinship with other colored—and also oppressed—peoples of the world,” a belief “that the struggle of the Negro in the United States is part and parcel of the struggle against imperialism and exploitation in India, China, Burma, Africa, the Philippines, Malaya, the West Indies, and South America.”⁶⁷ The Cold War certainly magnified these issues. As bellwethers of this international cognizance, Representatives Powell and Diggs made significant strides inserting themselves into the foreign policy debate, suggesting a growing black influence in shaping public perceptions about racism that transcended U.S. borders.⁶⁸

Powell emerged as a foreign policy innovator. Representing a polyglot district, the Harlem Representative catered to the many nationalist impulses of his constituency, pushing for more liberal immigration policies, which were important to the large West Indian immigrant community in his district. He often met with visiting African heads of state and, as a freshman Member of the House, introduced legislation that allowed for the naturalization of Filipinos and South Asian Indians.⁶⁹ A critic of the containment policy adopted by the Eisenhower administration, and particularly of the emphasis of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles on the need for allies to conform to liberal democratic ideals, he was stingingly critical of racial discrimination in the U.S. foreign policy apparatus. Noting in 1953 that the U.S. was “the most hated nation in the world today,” Powell called for immediate civil rights reforms, warning that otherwise “communism must win the global cold war by default.”⁷⁰

In April 1955, Powell attended the Bandung, Indonesia, Afro-Asian Conference, a gathering of developing nations which opposed the “neocolonialism” of the superpowers and included representatives from India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt, Ceylon, and Burma. U.S. officials refused to send an official representative to the conference, so Powell went as a private citizen even though the government asked him not to attend. His mere presence, he later told President Eisenhower, was “living proof to the fact that there is no truth in the Communist charge that the Negro is oppressed in America.”⁷¹ Powell, however, also powerfully endorsed the notion that smaller nations could remain unaligned and neutral in the larger Cold War struggle and questioned Washington’s embrace of the containment strategy and its missionary zeal for promoting free market trade. His efforts prodded the administration to install several African Americans as United Nations delegates and alternates in 1956.⁷²

Diggs and Powell also became the first black Members of Congress to visit Africa. Diggs was part of an official U.S. delegation led by Vice President Richard M. Nixon in 1957 that participated in Ghana’s celebration of independence from British rule and the inauguration of Kwame Nkrumah as prime minister. Powell, who had a longtime connection with Nkrumah—an attendee of his Abyssinian Baptist Church in the 1930s as a merchant seaman and as a foreign student—joined Diggs in an unofficial capacity in Ghana’s capital, Accra.⁷³ Diggs recalled that he and Powell “stood out there with tears coming down our cheeks” as the Union Jack (the British flag) was lowered and the new Ghanaian flag was raised in its place.⁷⁴ Diggs later attended the All-African Peoples Conference in Accra, organized by Nkrumah, as a show of Third World solidarity. Diggs returned from that visit convinced that the United States was “in danger of losing the present advantage it holds in Africa to the Soviet Union.” He added, “our Nation needs to be educated on the tremendous significance of the development of Africa.”⁷⁵ Believing he “could make a contribution” to improve relations between Washington and postcolonial African governments, Diggs requested and was awarded a spot on the Foreign Affairs Committee in January 1959.

American intervention in the Vietnamese civil war—between the communist regime in Hanoi and the U.S.-backed government in Saigon—was another key foreign policy issue for black Members of Congress. Representative Gus Hawkins opposed the war, based partly on impressions he formed while visiting South Vietnam in 1970 that the government routinely violated prisoners’ human rights. Others, such as Representative Robert Nix, supported the foreign policies of the two Democratic presidents—John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson—who broadened the U.S. military commitment and mission in Southeast Asia. As a Senate candidate in 1966, Edward Brooke was initially skeptical about the war. After an official visit to Vietnam, he asserted that the military policy of the Johnson administration was prudent because there was no prospect of meaningful negotiations with the North Vietnamese. Brooke tacked back toward a dissenting position when, in 1970, he opposed the Nixon administration’s policy of attacking communist sanctuaries in Cambodia. He eventually voted for the Cooper–Church Amendment of 1970, which prohibited the deployment of U.S. forces outside Vietnam.

The Civil Rights Movement And The Second Reconstruction, 1945—1968

The broad period from the end of World War II until the late 1960s, often referred to as the “Second Reconstruction,” consisted of a grass-roots civil rights movement coupled with gradual but progressive actions by the Presidents, the federal courts, and Congress to provide full political rights for African Americans and to begin to redress longstanding economic and social inequities. While African-American Members of Congress from this era played prominent roles in advocating for reform, it was largely the efforts of everyday Americans who protested segregation that prodded a reluctant Congress to pass landmark civil rights legislation in the 1960s.⁷⁶

During the 1940s and 1950s, executive action, rather than legislative initiatives, set the pace for measured movement toward desegregation. President Harry S. Truman “expanded on Roosevelt’s limited and tentative steps toward racial moderation and reconciliation.”⁷⁷ Responding to civil rights advocates, Truman established the President’s Committee on Civil Rights. Significantly, the committee’s October 1947 report, To Secure These Rights, provided civil rights proponents in Congress a legislative blueprint for much of the next two decades. Among its recommendations were the creation of a permanent FEPC, the establishment of a permanent Civil Rights Commission, the creation of a civil rights division in the U.S. Department of Justice, and the enforcement of federal anti-lynching laws and desegregation in interstate transportation. In 1948, President Truman signed Executive Order 9981, desegregating the military. Truman’s civil rights policies contributed to the unraveling of the solid Democratic South. Alienated by the administration’s race policies, a faction of conservative southerners split to form the Dixiecrats, a racially conservative party that nominated South Carolina Governor (and future U.S. Senator) Strom Thurmond as its presidential candidate in 1948.⁷⁸ President Dwight D. Eisenhower, though more cautious, also followed his predecessor’s pattern—desegregating Washington, DC, overseeing the integration of blacks to the military, and promoting minority rights in federal contracts.⁷⁹

The federal courts also carved out a judicial beachhead for civil rights activists. In Smith v. Allwright (321 U.S. 649, 1944), the U.S. Supreme Court, by an 8 to 1 vote, outlawed the white primary, which by excluding blacks from participating in the Democratic Party primary in southern states had effectively disfranchised them since the early 1900s. A decade later, the high court under Chief Justice Earl Warren handed down a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education (347 U.S. 483, 1954), a case that tested the segregation of school facilities in Topeka, Kansas. Brown sparked a revolution in civil rights with its plainspoken ruling that separate was inherently unequal. “In the field of public education, separate but equal has no place,” the Justices declared. Then, in the early 1960s, the Supreme Court rendered a string of decisions known as the “reapportionment cases” that fundamentally changed the voting landscape for African Americans by requiring that representation in the federal and state legislatures be based substantially on population. Baker v. Carr (369 U.S. 186, 1962) upheld the justiciability of lawsuits that challenged districts apportioned to enforce voting discrimination against minorities. Gray v. Sanders (372 U.S. 368, 1963) invalidated Georgia’s county unit voting system, giving rise to the concept “one man, one vote.” Two decisions in 1964, Wesberry v. Sanders (376 U.S. 1) and Reynolds v. Sims (377 U.S. 533), proved seminal. The court nullified Georgia’s unequal congressional districts in Wesberry while validating the 14th Amendment’s provision for equal representation for equal numbers of people in each district. In Reynolds, the Supreme Court solidified the “one man, one vote” concept in an 8 to 1 decision that expressly linked the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause to the guarantee that each citizen had equal weight in the election of state legislators.

However, Congress lagged behind the presidency, the judiciary, and, often, public sentiment during much of the postwar civil rights movement.⁸⁰ Southern conservatives still held the levers of power. Southerners continued to exert nearly untrammeled influence as committee chairmen (coinciding with the apex of congressional committee influence in the House and the Senate), in an era when Democrats controlled the House almost exclusively. In the 84th Congress (1955–1957), for instance, when Democrats regained the majority after a brief period of Republican control and embarked on 40 consecutive years of rule, 12 of the 19 House committees, including some of the most influential panels—Education and Labor, Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Rules, and Ways and Means—were chaired by southerners, who were largely unsympathetic to black civil rights.⁸¹ The powerful coalition of southern Democrats and northern Republicans that had arisen during the late 1930s as a conservative bloc against the economic and social programs of the New Deal continued for various reasons to impede a broad array of social legislation.

Several factors prevented the few African Americans in Congress from playing prominent legislative roles in institutional efforts to pass the major acts of 1957, 1964, and 1965. Black Members were too scarce to alter institutional processes or form a consequential voting bloc. Until the fall 1964 elections, there were only five African Americans in Congress: Dawson, Powell, Diggs, Nix, and Hawkins. John Conyers joined the House in 1965 and Brooke entered the Senate in 1967. These new Members had a limited amount of influence, although Hawkins scored a major success as a freshman when he helped shape the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as a member of Powell’s Education and Labor Committee, and Brooke helped secure the housing anti-discrimination provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 during his first term in the Senate. Yet while they were determined, energetic, and impassioned, there were too few African Americans in Congress to drive a policy agenda. Moreover, black Members themselves disagreed as to the best method to achieve civil rights advances, and individual legislative styles, conflicting loyalties (party versus activist agendas), and personality differences circumscribed their ability to craft a black issues agenda. Consequently, their uncoordinated and sporadic actions mitigated their potential effect. At key moments, some were excluded from the process or were inexplicably absent. Their symbolic leader, Powell, was too polarizing a figure for House leaders to accord him a highly visible role in the process. This perhaps explains why the Harlem Representative, despite his public passion for racial justice and his ability to deliver legislation through the Education and Labor Committee, was sometimes unusually detached from the legislative process.⁸²

With few well-placed allies, civil rights initiatives faced an imposing gauntlet in a congressional committee system stacked with southern racial conservatives. Under the leadership of Chairman Emanuel Celler for most of this period, the House Judiciary Committee offered reformers a largely friendly and liberal forum. On the House Floor, a group of progressive liberals and moderate Republicans, including Celler, Clifford Case of New Jersey, Jacob Javits of New York, Hugh D. Scott of Pennsylvania, Frances Bolton of Ohio, and Helen Gahagan Douglas, emerged as civil rights advocates. Case (1954), Javits (1956), and Scott (1958) were elected to the Senate and would influence that chamber’s civil rights agenda. But no matter how much support the rank-and-file membership provided, any measure that passed out of Judiciary was sent to the House Rules Committee, which directed legislation onto the floor and structured bills for debate. Chaired by arch segregationist Howard Smith of Virginia, this hugely influential panel became the killing ground for a long parade of civil rights proposals. Measures were watered down or were never considered. Smith often shuttered committee operations, retreating to his farm in Virginia’s horse country to stall deliberations. When he explained one of his absences by noting that he needed to inspect a burned-down barn, Leo Allen of Illinois, the ranking Republican on the Rules Committee, remarked, “I knew the Judge was opposed to the civil rights bill. But I didn’t think he would commit arson to beat it.”⁸³

The Senate’s anti-majoritarian structure magnified the power of southern racial conservatives. In contrast to the rules of the House, which strictly limited Members’ ability to speak on the floor, the Senate’s long-standing tradition of allowing Members to speak without interruption played into the hands of obstructionists. The filibuster, a Senate practice that allowed a Senator or a group of Senators to prevent a vote on a bill, became the chief weapon of civil rights opponents. In this era, too, Senate rules were modified, raising the bar needed to achieve cloture, i.e., to end debate and move to a vote on legislation. From 1949 to 1959, cloture required the approval of two-thirds of the chamber’s entire membership, rather than two-thirds of the Members who were present. Influential southern Senators held key positions in the upper chamber and, not surprisingly, were among the most skilled parliamentarians. Richard Russell of Georgia, a master of procedure, framed the opposition’s defense on constitutional concerns about federal interference in states’ issues, making him a more palatable figure than many of the Senate’s earlier racial conservatives such as Mississippi’s James K. Vardaman or Theodore Bilbo.⁸⁴ Russell attracted northern and western Republicans to his cause based on their opposition to the expansion of federal powers that would be necessary to enforce civil rights in the South. Mississippi’s James Eastland, another procedural tactician, who presided over the Judiciary Committee beginning in March 1956, bragged that he had special pockets tailored into his suits where he stuffed bothersome civil rights bills. Between 1953 and 1965 more than 122 civil rights measures were referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, but only one was reported back to the full Senate.⁸⁵

Despite such official intransigence, the nonviolent civil rights movement—contrasting sharply with the vicious southern backlash against it—transformed public opinion. Driven increasingly by external events in the mid-1950s—the Brown v. Board of Education decision and the rise of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)—support for the passage of major civil rights legislation grew in Congress. In Montgomery, Alabama, local activists led by King (then a 27-year-old Baptist preacher), had launched a boycott against the city’s segregated bus system. The protest began after the arrest of Rosa Parks, a seamstress and a member of the NAACP who defied local ordinances in December 1955 by refusing to yield her seat on the bus to a white man and move to the rear of the vehicle.⁸⁶ The year-long—and, ultimately, successful—boycott forged the SCLC, brought national attention to the struggle, and launched King to the forefront of a grass-roots, nonviolent humanitarian protest movement that, within a decade, profoundly changed American life.

Racial violence in the South, which amounted to domestic terrorism against blacks, continued into the middle of the 20th century and powerfully shaped public opinion. Though more sporadic than before, beatings, cross burnings, lynchings, and myriad other forms of white-on-black intimidation went largely unpunished. Nearly 200 African Americans are thought to have been lynched between 1929 and 1964, but that figure likely underrepresents the actual number.⁸⁷ In August 1955, a particularly gruesome killing galvanized activists and shocked a largely complacent nation. Emmett Till, a 14-year-old from Chicago who was visiting family in Mississippi, was shot in the head, and his lifeless body was dumped off a bridge, for the alleged “crime” of whistling at a white woman. Determined to expose the brutality of the act, his mother allowed the national press to photograph the boy’s remains, and thousands of mourners streamed past the open casket.

Charles Diggs’s visible role in the wake of the Till lynching “catapulted” him into the “national spotlight.”⁸⁸ At considerable personal risk, Diggs accompanied Till’s mother to the September 1955 trial at which the two accused murderers were acquitted in kangaroo court proceedings. Diggs’s presence in Mississippi demonstrated solidarity with (and hope for) many local African Americans. A black reporter covering the trial recalled that Diggs “made a difference down there…people lined up to see him. They had never seen a black member of Congress. Blacks came by the truckloads. Never before had a member of Congress put his life on the line protecting the constitutional rights of blacks.”⁸⁹ Diggs, who earlier had pushed for a U.S. Justice Department probe of the defrauding of black Mississippi voters, proposed to unseat the Members of the Mississippi delegation to the U.S. House on the grounds that they were elected by only a fraction of the state’s voters.⁹⁰ Diggs’s performance contrasted sharply with that of William Dawson, who represented the Chicago district where Till’s mother lived. In an open 1956 letter to Dawson, the NAACP questioned his failure to comment publicly on the Till lynching. Expressing further disappointment with Dawson’s support for reform legislation as a member of the Democratic committee writing the civil rights plank for the national party, the NAACP denounced him for “silence, compromise, and meaningless moderation” on civil rights matters.⁹¹

Adam Clayton Powell, dubbed “Mr. Civil Rights,” garnered national headlines during the 1940s and 1950s for his “Powell Amendment,” a rider prohibiting federal funds for institutions that promoted or endorsed segregation. Powell attached his amendment to a variety of legislative measures, beginning with a school lunch program bill that passed the House on June 4, 1946. “From then on I was to use this important weapon with success,” Powell recalled, “to bring about opportunities for the good of man and to stop those efforts that would harm democracy’s progress forward.” Beginning in 1955, Powell vowed to attach his rider to all education bills, starting with appropriations for school construction.⁹² His actions riled southern racial conservatives and stirred unease among otherwise liberal allies concerned that the amendment jeopardized social legislation.

Southern defiance, on display on Capitol Hill, crystallized in a bold proclamation conceived by Senators Russell, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, and Harry Flood Byrd, Sr., of Virginia. Titled the “Declaration of Constitutional Principles” and known colloquially as the Southern Manifesto, it attacked the Supreme Court’s Brown decision, accusing the Justices of abusing judicial power and trespassing upon states’ rights. Signed on March 12, 1956, by 82 Representatives and 19 Senators (roughly one-fifth of Congress), it urged southerners to exhaust all “lawful means” in the effort to resist the “chaos and confusion” that would result from school desegregation.

Civil Rights Act of 1957

In 1956, partly at the initiative of outside advocacy groups such as the NAACP, proposals by Eisenhower’s Justice Department under the leadership of Attorney General Herbert Brownell, and the growing presidential ambitions of Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson, a civil rights bill began to move through Congress. Southern opponents such as Senators Russell and Eastland, realizing that some kind of legislation was imminent, slowed and weakened reform through the amendment process. The House passed the measure by a wide margin, 279 to 97, though southern opponents managed to excise voting protections from the original language. Adam Clayton Powell and Charles Diggs argued passionately on the House Floor for a strong bill. Powell particularly aimed at southern amendments that preserved trials by local juries because all-white juries (since blacks were excluded from the voting process, they were also barred from jury duty) ensured easy acquittals for white defendants accused of crimes against blacks. “This is an hour for great moral stamina,” Powell told colleagues. “America stands on trial today before the world and communism must succeed if democracy fails…Speak no more concerning the bombed and burned and gutted churches behind the Iron Curtain when here in America behind our ’color curtain’ we have bombed and burned churches and the confessed perpetrators of these crimes go free because of trial by jury.”⁹³ In the Senate, Paul H. Douglas of Illinois and Minority Leader William F. Knowland of California circumvented Eastland’s Judiciary Committee and got the bill onto the floor for debate. Lyndon Johnson played a crucial role, too, discouraging an organized southern filibuster while forging a compromise that allayed southern concern about the bill’s jury and trial provisions.⁹⁴ On August 29 the Senate approved the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (P.L. 85-315) by a vote of 60 to 15.

The resulting law, signed by President Eisenhower in early September 1957, was the first major civil rights measure passed since 1875. The act established the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (CCR) for two years and created a civil rights division in the Justice Department, but its powers to enforce voting laws and punish the disfranchisement of black voters were feeble, as the commission noted in 1959. A year later, the Civil Rights Act of 1960 (P.L. 86-449)—again significantly weakened by southern opponents—extended the life of the CCR and stipulated that voting and registration records in federal elections must be preserved. However, southerners managed to strike a far-reaching provision to send registrars into southern states to oversee voter enrollment.

Though southern Members were heartened by these successes, consequential internal congressional reforms promised to end obstructionism. In 1961, Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas challenged Chairman Howard Smith directly by proposing to expand the Rules Committee by adding three more Members to the roster, a move that was intended to break Smith’s stranglehold over social legislation. Rayburn recruited a group of roughly two dozen northern Republicans who supported the reform and declared their intention to “repudiate” a GOP alliance with southern Democrats “to attempt to narrow the base of our party, to dull its conscience, to transform it into a negative weapon of obstruction.”⁹⁵ The forces of reform prevailed by a margin of 217 to 212. The support of moderate Republicans presaged the development of a coalition that would undercut the power of southern racial conservatives and pass sweeping civil rights laws.

Civil Rights Act of 1964

Pressure for change, as it did throughout the Second Reconstruction, came from outside the institution. By 1963, the need for a major civil rights bill weighed heavily on Congress and the John F. Kennedy administration. Protests at lunch counters in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960 were followed in 1961 by attempts to desegregate interstate buses by the Freedom Riders, who were arrested in Jackson, Mississippi. In April 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., led a large protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that was greeted with brutality. Birmingham Police Commissioner Eugene (Bull) Connor unleashed police dogs, and high-powered hoses on protesters. The images coming out of the Deep South horrified Americans from all walks of life. In August 1963, King and other civil rights leaders organized the largest-ever march on Washington, DC. Addressing hundreds of thousands of supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the world-renowned leader of a movement that rivaled that of his model, Mahatma Gandhi, delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

A reluctant Kennedy administration began coordinating with congressional allies to pass a significant reform bill. Freshman Representative Gus Hawkins observed in May 1963 that the federal government had a special responsibility to ensure that federal dollars did not underwrite segregation practices in schools, facilities for vocational education, libraries, and other municipal entities, saying, “those who dip their hands in the public treasury should not object if a little democracy sticks to their fingers.” Otherwise “do we not harm our own fiscal integrity, and allow room in our conduct for other abuses of public funds?”⁹⁶ After Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, invoked the slain President’s memory to prod reluctant legislators to produce a civil rights measure.

In the House, a bipartisan bill supported by Judiciary Chairman Celler and Republican William McCulloch of Ohio worked its way to passage. McCulloch and Celler forged a coalition of moderate Republicans and northern Democrats while deflecting southern amendments determined to cripple the bill. Standing in the well of the House defending his controversial amendment and the larger civil rights bill, Representative Powell described the legislation as “a great moral issue…what we are doing [today] is a part of an act of God.”⁹⁷ On February 10, 1964, the House, voting 290 to 130, approved the Civil Rights Act of 1964; 138 Republicans helped pass the bill. In scope and effect, the act was among the most far-reaching pieces of legislation in U.S. history. It contained sections prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations (Title II); state and municipal facilities, including schools (Titles III and IV); and—incorporating the Powell Amendment—in any program receiving federal aid (Title V). The act also prohibited discrimination in hiring and employment, creating the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to investigate workplace discrimination (Title VII).⁹⁸

Having passed the House, the act faced its biggest hurdle in the Senate. President Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana tapped Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota to build Senate support for the measure and fend off the efforts of a determined southern minority to stall it. One historian notes that Humphrey’s assignment amounted to an “audition for the role of Johnson’s running mate in the fall presidential election.”⁹⁹ Humphrey, joined by Republican Thomas Kuchel of California, performed brilliantly, lining up the support of influential Minority Leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois. By allaying Dirksen’s unease about the enforcement powers of the EEOC, civil rights proponents then co-opted the support of a large group of midwestern Republicans who followed Dirksen’s lead.¹⁰⁰ On June 10, 1964, for the first time in its history, the Senate invoked cloture on a civil rights bill (by a vote of 71 to 29), thus cutting off debate and ending a 75-day filibuster—the longest in the chamber’s history. On June 19, 1964, 46 Democrats and 27 Republicans joined forces to approve the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 73 to 27. President Johnson signed the bill (P.L. 88-352) into law on July 2, 1964.

Voting Rights Act of 1965

Passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 dealt the deathblow to southern congressional opposition. Momentum for tougher voting rights legislation—expanding on the provisions of Section I of the 1964 act—built rapidly because of President Johnson’s continued determination and unfolding civil rights protests. On March 7, 1965, marchers led by future U.S. Representative John R. Lewis of Georgia were savagely beaten at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Many of the protestors were kneeling in prayer when state troopers clubbed and gassed them on what would later be known as “Bloody Sunday.” Television cameras captured the onslaught and beamed images into the homes of millions of Americans. As with the brutality in Birmingham, public reaction was swift and, if possible, even more powerful. “The images were stunning—scene after scene of policemen on foot and horseback beating defenseless American citizens,” Lewis wrote years later. “This was a face-off in the most vivid terms between a dignified, composed, completely nonviolent multitude of silent protestors and the truly malevolent force of a heavily armed, hateful battalion of troopers. The sight of them rolling over us like human tanks was something that had never been seen before.”¹⁰¹

After President Johnson addressed a Joint Session of Congress to speak about the events in Selma, legislative action was swift. A bill moved through both chambers that suspended the use of literacy tests for a five-year period and provided for sending federal poll watchers and voting registrars to states with persistent patterns of voting discrimination. It required Justice Department pre-clearance of any change to election statutes. Finally, the bill made obstructing an individual’s right to vote a federal crime. On May 26, 1965, the Senate passed the Voting Rights Act by a vote of 77 to 19. Among the African-American Members who spoke on behalf of the bill on the House Floor was freshman John Conyers, Jr. Joined by Representatives Diggs, Hawkins, and Powell, Conyers had visited Selma in February 1965 as part of a 15-Member congressional delegation that investigated voting discrimination.¹⁰² The experience convinced him that there was ”no alternative but to have the federal Government take a much more positive and specific role in guaranteeing the right to register and vote in all elections…surely this Government cannot relax if even one single American is arbitrarily denied that most basic right of all in a democracy—the right to vote.”¹⁰³ The House passed the act by a vote of 333 to 85 on July 9, 1965. An amended conference report passed both chambers by wide margins and President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (P.L. 89-110) into law on August 6, 1965.¹⁰⁴

The measure dramatically increased voter registration in the short term. By 1969, 60 percent of all southern blacks were registered. Predictably, the bill’s impact was most dramatic in the Deep South. In Mississippi, for instance, where less than 7 percent of African Americans qualified to vote in 1964, 59 percent were on voter rolls by 1968.¹⁰⁵ By 1975, approximately 1.5 million African Americans had registered to vote in the South.¹⁰⁶

Coupled with the “one man, one vote” standard, which set off a round of court-ordered redistricting, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 reshaped the electoral landscape for African Americans. In southern states, particularly in cities such as Atlanta, Houston, and Memphis, the creation of districts with a majority of African-American constituents propelled greater numbers of African Americans into Congress by the early 1970s. In northern urban areas, too, the growing influence of black voters reshaped Congress. Blacks constituted a growing percentage of the population of major U.S. cities (20 percent in 1970 versus 12 percent in 1950), partly because in the 1960s whites left the cities in droves for the suburbs.¹⁰⁷ In 1968, Louis Stokes (Cleveland), Bill Clay (St. Louis), and Shirley Chisholm (Brooklyn) were elected to Congress from redrawn majority-black districts in which white incumbents chose not to run.¹⁰⁸ By 1971, the number of African-American Members in the House was more than double the number who had served in 1965.

Civil Rights Act of 1968

The era’s final major piece of civil rights legislation reflected the changing emphasis of the civil rights movement itself: Having secured a measure of political rights, black leaders now emphasized the importance of equal economic and educational opportunity. Congressional action in this area was measured; the national mood and major events had begun to turn against reform. The ambitious agenda of federal programs known as the Great Society had begun to wane. Initiated by President Johnson in the mid-1960s, these programs were in many ways conceived of as an extension of New Deal reforms. Great Society legislation marked the zenith of federal activism—addressing civil rights, urban development, the environment, health care, education, housing, consumer protection, and poverty. With Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, the administration won the enactment of a number of far-reaching programs, among them several that exist today, such as Medicare, which provides health coverage for the elderly, and Medicaid, which provides the poor with access to hospitalization, optional medical insurance, and other health care benefits.¹⁰⁹

But the cost of the deepening U.S. military commitment in Vietnam rapidly bled dry Great Society programs that, in part, addressed concerns about economic equality raised by black leaders. Moreover, middle-class whites in northern and western states who had empathized with the nonviolent protests of southern blacks were far more skeptical of the civil rights militants who were bent on bringing the movement to their doorsteps, typified by Stokely Carmichael, the Black Panthers, and the Black Power movement. Major urban rioting, particularly the devastating 1965 riot in Watts, Los Angeles (in Representative Gus Hawkins’s district) turned mainstream white opinion even further from the cause. Widespread rioting in April 1968 after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.—federal troops were deployed even in Washington, DC—reinforced white alienation. Nevertheless, in early March 1968, the Senate approved the Civil Rights Act of 1968 by a 71 to 20 vote. The measure outlawed discrimination in the sale and rental of roughly 80 percent of U.S. housing (the proportion handled by agents and brokers) by 1970 and meted out federal punishment to persons engaged in interstate activities to foment or participate in riots. The bill also extended constitutional rights to Native Americans. Days after King’s murder in Memphis, Tennessee, the House followed the Senate’s lead by a vote of 250 to 172.

Crafting an Institutional Identity

Confronting Racism

Across the decades, African-American Members’ encounters with institutional racism and segregation on Capitol Hill, though gradually declining in intensity, provided a common and uniting experience. In the years leading up to the Depression and World War II, Washington had the feel of a slow, sleepy, southern town in contrast to the bustle and cultural multiplicities of northern metropolitan cities like New York, Boston, and Chicago. Washington also embraced southern segregationist practices. Southbound travelers embarking on journeys at the Union Station terminal boarded segregated train cars. Formal as well as informal racial codes also existed in the city’s restaurants, department stores, movie theaters, and boarding houses well into the 1950s. Washington’s legion of federal civil servants were separated according to race; until the eve of World War II, applicants for federal jobs were required to submit a personal photograph, providing a de facto method of racial discrimination. Even after the Eisenhower administration officially desegregated the capital city, blacks and whites remained separate, living in distinct neighborhoods, attending separate churches, and enrolling in separate schools.¹¹⁰

Congress itself practiced latent and blatant institutional racism, ranging from the denial of prominent committee assignments and any real voice in the leadership to segregated barbershops and dining facilities and the open disparagement of black Members by their colleagues. For instance, in 1929 southern Members objected to being sworn in on the House Floor with Representative De Priest, occupying an office next to his, or serving on a committee with him.¹¹¹ Capitol Hill associations and social clubs with congressional ties were uneasy welcoming black Members or their families. The Congressional Club—an organization chartered in the early 1900s initially for spouses and daughters of Representatives and Senators, Supreme Court Justices, and Cabinet members—considered a bylaw that would deny membership to De Priest’s wife, Jessie, but rejected it due to the scrutiny of the national press.¹¹²

Despite the segregation prevalent on Capitol Hill during this era, growing numbers of African Americans were employed there. In 1949, Alice Dunnigan of the Associated Negro Press—one of the first black journalists credentialed to work in both the Senate and the House press galleries—wrote a four-part series titled “A Visit to the Nation’s Capitol” that appeared in the Tuskegee Institute’s Service magazine. Dunnigan interviewed dozens of African Americans, some of whom had been employed on Capitol Hill for three decades or more in a variety of capacities: barber, messenger, library assistant, doorkeeper, guard, head waiter, chef, filing clerk, driver, carpenter, secretary, guard, and committee clerk. According to Dunnigan, one-third of the 1,500 persons employed by the Office of the Architect of the Capitol in 1949 were African Americans. Among the individuals Dunnigan interviewed were Jesse Nichols, a document clerk and librarian who was one of the first blacks to hold a clerical position in the Senate.¹¹³ Dunnigan also chronicled the story of Christine Ray Davis, the first African-American chief clerk of a congressional committee—a position she assumed in 1949 when William Dawson became chairman of the House Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Department. As chief clerk, Davis was the highest-paid black woman in the federal government and, Dunnigan noted, the first African-American congressional aide with unrestricted access to the House Floor.¹¹⁴

Speaking Out Against Segregation

Black Members of Congress facing segregation were left with two alternatives that were less than ideal: meet institutional segregation frontally to publicize the folly of racist practices, or minimize its significance by gaining positions of influence, thereby ameliorating segregation from within the institution. Individuals’ personalities often governed that choice, though just as often, purposeful legislative calculations factored into black Members’ response to racism in the House and the Senate. There was little middle ground. Those who confronted racism openly suffered the wrath of white supremacists, and those perceived as less than zealous in the pursuit of civil rights were scorned by black activists.

Oscar De Priest chose to combat segregation in Congress directly by addressing the issue on the House Floor and by using the power of the press.¹¹⁵ His arrival on Capitol Hill was met with outright contempt. One well-publicized episode involved an invitation to his wife, Jessie, to a traditional White House tea hosted by First Lady Lou Henry Hoover. Southern legislators howled in indignation, and the Mississippi legislature passed a resolution calling on President Herbert Hoover to give “careful and thoughtful consideration to the necessity of racial preservation of the racial integrity of the white race,” because “such an exhibition of social equality at the White House tends to destroy such racial integrity.”¹¹⁶ The First Lady divided the party into sessions, carefully selecting invitees to Jessie De Priest’s group and providing the wives of southern Members an alternative time to attend. Undeterred, Jessie De Priest attended the event while her husband dismissed critics as “cowards.”

De Priest became an advocate for desegregation because of the environment he encountered, not because of his political background. During a tough re-election bid in 1934, his anti-segregationist rhetoric increased as Election Day approached. Initially inclined to win over his House colleagues by his example as a Member, he later declared, “but if securing their respect means sacrificing my race, that respect I do not seek any longer.” De Priest continued, “I am sorry I have to devote my time trying to watch the needs of the American Negro. I wish I could devote my time, like you gentlemen devote your time, trying to watch the interests of all the American people instead of just 12,000,000 of them.”¹¹⁷ In 1934, the Illinois Representative waged a public campaign to stop segregation in the House Restaurant.“If we allow segregation and the denial of constitutional rights under the Dome of the Capitol, where in God’s name will we get them?” De Priest demanded. Though De Priest shamed the House into creating a special investigatory committee, the majority of its members were Democrats who acceded to the wishes of southern racial conservatives by refusing to recommend reforms.¹¹⁸ De Priest also protested efforts to segregate other House facilities, such as the barbershop, and pressured Speaker Henry T. Rainey of Illinois to permit a black minister to offer an opening session prayer in the House.¹¹⁹

Despite his raw personal courage, De Priest failed to achieve any lasting reform—a setback that made him look ineffective in the eyes of his Chicago-area constituents and left him vulnerable to political attack. His lack of legislative influence also diminished his national status as a hero among African Americans. Some even implied that he lacked familiarity with the larger black community and the resolve to pursue and achieve substantive legislative victories. Even after De Priest had begun advocating federal pensions for former slaves, the African-American Atlanta Daily World complained he was “conspicuous by his silence on important questions. As a legislator, as a statesman, as a student of those things affecting the Negro’s welfare, he has been a grand and glorious flop.”¹²⁰

The role of agitator and public advocate for civil rights suited Adam Clayton Powell. Charismatic, flashy, and photogenic, Powell developed a national following based as much on his style as on his legislative substance. In an era in which the press proved exceedingly forgiving of politicians’ personal eccentricities, Powell stood out: driving a blue Jaguar, dressing impeccably, smoking cigars, and enjoying the company of beautiful women. He was as much at home on the French Riviera as he was in Harlem. “For years his life was so flamboyant that it verged on caricature, yet he got away with it, not only politically but somehow esthetically,” noted one observer. While others advocated Black Power, Powell “stood for Black Pleasure.”¹²¹

Substantively, Powell served as a prototype of the new, activist African-American politician. His loyal Harlem constituency provided a solid base of support that allowed him to pursue issues affecting the black community nationwide. Some anticipated his arrival on Capitol Hill, others dreaded it. But no one doubted it would be eventful. Speaker Sam Rayburn, who often counseled new Members on the folkways of the institution, called Powell into his office and lectured him from behind his desk. “Adam, everybody down here expects you to come with a bomb in both hands. Now don’t do that, Adam…Just see how things operate here. Take your time. Freshmen members of Congress are not supposed to be heard and not even to be seen too much. There are a lot of good men around here. Listen to what they have to say, drink it all in, get reelected a few more times, and then start moving. But for God’s sake, Adam, don’t throw those bombs.” Powell replied, “Mr. Speaker, I’ve got a bomb in each hand, and I’m going to throw them right away.” Rayburn burst into jovial laughter, and according to Powell, the exchange marked the beginning of a long friendship.¹²²

On multiple fronts, Powell waged a direct, combative campaign against segregation on Capitol Hill. He helped to desegregate the House Press Gallery and to make available more opportunities for black reporters. He repeatedly challenged House Restaurant policy by bringing black staffers and guests to the segregated dining room. He also publicly confronted some of the most ardent segregationists in the House. His long-standing feud with Representative John E. Rankin often spilled out onto the House Floor. At one point Powell said he planned “to baptize Rankin or drown him.” Rankin, who called Powell’s election to the House a “disgrace,” refused to sit near him on the floor, but Powell stalked Rankin and sat as close to him as possible (forcing him one day to move five times).¹²³ Powell used his personal charisma calculatingly, providing the black community with an unflinching, activist political hero. “I’ve always got my mouth open, sometimes my foot is in it, but it is always open,” Powell said. “It serves a purpose; it digs at the white man’s conscience.”¹²⁴ But it also incurred substantive legislative costs. Whereas Powell’s flamboyance and public refusals to brook racist policies won him many supporters, they also limited his effectiveness as a legislator; a growing contingent of politicians found it impossible to work with such a militant Member.

Taking note of the experiences of Members such as De Priest and Powell, other black Members of Congress purposefully pursued an institutionalist strategy. But by seeking to advance within the institutional power structure or to remain loyal to the party and/or the local political machine that propelled them into office, they often attracted the enmity of fellow blacks and civil rights advocates who believed they were subordinating the interests of the black community for their own aggrandizement. Representative Arthur Mitchell, the first black Democrat elected to Congress, chose to work within the power structure of the Democrat-controlled House. During his four terms in Congress, the Chicago Representative worked closely with many white colleagues, adopting the philosophy of patient cooperation and accommodation that was advocated by his mentor, Booker T. Washington, whom Mitchell hoped to honor by establishing a national shrine.¹²⁵ Mitchell watched the futile battle of his predecessor, De Priest, against segregationist practices in the Capitol and calculated another course. In a pointed remark aimed at De Priest, Mitchell informed constituents shortly after his first election, “I think the people are tired of bombast, ballyhoo, and noise, where we should have constructive thought, honest action and real statesmanship.”¹²⁶ But Mitchell’s reluctance to push issues important to the African-American community soon disappointed black civil rights activists. Particularly galling to the black press and the NAACP were his apparent lack of interest in an assignment on the District of Columbia Committee—with oversight of the capital and its large black population—and his refusal to address the poor treatment of black journalists covering Capitol Hill.¹²⁷ Yet, over time and after taking stock of the depth of segregationist sentiment in the House, Mitchell became more committed to civil rights reform, particularly legislation to curb discrimination in the federal civil service.

Other black Representatives drew similar criticism. The NAACP excoriated William Dawson, Mitchell’s successor, arguing that he did not adequately support reforms. Dawson’s loyalty to the Daley political machine in Chicago created constant tension with his black House colleagues because he rarely took a public stance regarding race relations. But Dawson’s association with Daley accorded him tangible power in the House. For these reasons, his career often is juxtaposed with that of Powell’s in analyses of the legislative styles and strategies of black Members of Congress.¹²⁸ Unlike Dawson, Powell forswore machine politics, promising to “never be a machine man.”¹²⁹ The Harlem Representative typically backed Democratic legislation and leaders, but his primary allegiance resided with his constituents and the advancement of African-American rights, not with the party.¹³⁰

Powell’s style was the exception rather than the rule. Ideological approaches and legislative strategies disposed most black Members of Congress from this era to a less confrontational style. Robert Nix rebuffed activist critics who demanded he become more vocal on race issues, suggesting that his role as an insider who rose to chair a full committee produced more tangible results for blacks. “I’ve seen people come into this Congress feeling it was incumbent upon them to give everybody hell, talking about the wrongs and fancied wrongs that happen every day,” Nix observed. “They didn’t correct a damn thing… The legislation they sought to present to the House later on received little interest from any source.”¹³¹ Los Angeles Representative Gus Hawkins, who eventually chaired two full House committees, was highly successful at exerting insider influence but rarely sought the limelight. Reacting to criticism that he should do more to publicize the cause of racial equality, Hawkins said, “I’ve always felt, why yell if you can get the same result by being mild?…The loudmouths are well known, but they’re not very effective.”¹³² Hawkins never deviated from his conviction that the best way to help African Americans and other minorities was to focus on economic issues rather than on race.¹³³

Senator Brooke, who opposed the glorification of black militants, also conformed easily to the Senate traditions that rewarded moderation and collegiality.¹³⁴ By the late 1960s, many African-American politicians found themselves in an uncomfortable middle ground between an entrenched and unrepentant white power structure and younger, assertive black activists who promoted the Black Power movement, which appealed to racial pride and called for the creation of distinctive cultural and political organizations.¹³⁵ Adopting the approach that blacks “must win allies, not conquer adversaries,” Brooke drew harsh criticism from more-radical black politicians, who advocated confrontational action as an answer to racial discrimination.¹³⁶ Brooke blamed the press for focusing too much attention on radical activists, arguing that “the emphasis should be placed on the great, great majority of people in the Negro community who merely want improved conditions, who want government to respond responsibly to their needs and who at the same time recognize the need to help themselves.”¹³⁷

Of this group of contemporaries, Charles Diggs emerged as a unique figure, able to blend Powell’s activism with the institutional effectiveness of other well-placed cohorts. Like Powell, Representative Diggs often sought out the limelight to publicize civil rights issues, for instance, when he visited Selma, Alabama, and interviewed local blacks in the spring of 1965. But he possessed a measure of pragmatism Powell sometimes lacked. In addition to crafting a foreign policy agenda for future generations of black Members, Diggs was instrumental as chairman of the District of Columbia Committee in establishing home rule for the nation’s capital and in addressing the needs of its majority-black population. Diggs also displayed organizational prowess by creating in 1969 the Democratic Select Committee (DSC), a group of black Members who championed legislation important to African Americans nationally and a precursor to the Congressional Black Caucus. To a considerable degree, African-American Members’ approaches to racial issues on Capitol Hill were shaped by their legislative styles. Some, like Powell, preferred the “show horse” legislative style, using the press to publicize an issue or a legislative agenda to rally attention and build public support. Others, such as Dawson and Hawkins, exemplified the low-key “work horse” style, focusing on committee work, policy minutiae, and/or parliamentary procedure to cultivate their legislative agendas.¹³⁸ These styles were self-reinforcing and usually reflected Members’ status within the organization. For instance, an insider often adopted the work horse style, whereas the show horse style offered a remedy for those outside the institutional circles of power and influence, who lacked the ability to introduce legislative initiatives through normal channels.

Conclusion

Many of the changes that occurred during the long generation from 1929 until 1970—brought about by social movements, legal advances, and institutional evolution—profoundly altered the landscape on Capitol Hill for the post–civil rights generation of African-American Members. Compared with their 20th-century predecessors, black Members who came to Capitol Hill in the 1970s would encounter an institution that was more accessible and more favorable to their legislative interests. Court-ordered redistricting in the wake of the Supreme Court’s enunciation of the “one man, one vote” principle, coupled with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, dramatically expanded the rolls of black voters and led to the creation of majority-black districts, paving the way for an increase in the number of blacks in Congress. Until 1968, men had represented the black community almost exclusively, but in the decade after Shirley Chisholm’s election, black women (including some from the South and the West) won election to Congress, portending significant changes in the gender ratio of African Americans in Congress. In 1970, George Collins became the first African American in the 20th century elected to a district that was not majority-black (it would subsequently become majority-black after redistricting). During the next decade this trend accelerated, as districts where blacks did not constitute a majority elected more black Members to the House, including Parren Mitchell of Maryland, Ronald Dellums of California, and Andrew Young of Georgia.¹³⁹ Long-simmering interest in institutional reform also benefited these newcomers as reformers sought to deprive entrenched committee chairmen of their power and distribute it more evenly among the rank and file. The assignment of a number of incoming black Members to top-tier committees derived from this decentralization of power.

Perhaps the most consequential legacy of Black Americans in Congress from the pioneer era was the drive for organizing black power and interests. By the late 1960s, although African Americans were slowly making inroads in terms of committee assignments, they had relatively little power to command public and institutional attention and sustain a legislative agenda. No African American in either of the major parties held a top elected leadership position in either chamber during this 41-year era.¹⁴⁰ Furthermore, the limitations to black Members’ ability to drive legislation were painfully apparent. Representatives Powell and Diggs became adept at garnering publicity, but as Diggs admitted, their efforts amounted to little more than “individualistic policies.”¹⁴¹ The multitude of expectations held by their constituents and black voters outside their districts, doubtlessly magnified black Members’ frustration and sense of isolation.¹⁴² Within this context, Diggs’s efforts to create a unified caucus acquired new importance and urgency in the subsequent decade. Diggs’s DSC, which evolved into the Congressional Black Caucus in the early 1970s, provided a forum for black Members to address “black interests” and shape institutional priorities. After decades in a largely unsympathetic and sometimes-hostile political wilderness on Capitol Hill, African Americans stood on the verge of achieving unprecedented influence.