Permanent Interests

The Expansion, Organization, and Rising Influence of African Americans in Congress, 1971 – 2007

Introduction

The modern era of African Americans’ nearly 140-year history in Congress began in 1971. Black Members enjoyed a tremendous surge in numbers, at least in the House, reflecting a larger historical process, as minority groups and women exercised their new freedom to participate in American society. Fully 71 percent of all African Americans who have served in Congress entered the House or Senate after 1970.¹ These startling gains derived from the legacy of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its subsequent extensions, as well as from Supreme Court decisions requiring legislative redistricting so that black voters could be represented more equitably.

Greater numbers of African-American Members provided renewed momentum for convening a formal group and, in 1971, 13 individuals created the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC).² The CBC became a focal point for addressing issues important to blacks nationally by acting as an advocacy group for African Americans within the institution and forming a potent bloc for pushing legislative items. A growing influence, more focused and forceful than in previous generations, accompanied the organizational trend. The electoral longevity of African-American Members (boosted by districts that were drawn with black majorities), coupled with the CBC’s lobbying of House leaders and progressive institutional reforms in the 1970s, placed many black Members in key committee and party leadership positions. Over time, black advancement within the institution changed Members’ legislative strategies. “Many of the [early] Black Caucus members came out of the heat of the civil rights struggle,” William (Bill) Gray III of Pennsylvania observed. “We have a group of new members whose strategies were shaped in the post-civil rights movement—who use leverage within the system. We see ourselves not as civil rights leaders, but as legislators…the pioneers had made it possible for us to be technicians.”³

The post-1970 generation of black Americans in Congress marked a watershed in American history—a transition from a period of prolonged protest to full political participation. Similar to other minority groups on Capitol Hill entering a stage of institutional maturity, African Americans faced new and sometimes unanticipated challenges resulting from their numerical, organizational, and leadership successes. Redistricting that dramatically boosted the numbers of African-American Members in the early 1990s evoked opposition that sought to roll back or dilute black voting strength. Moreover, by the end of the decade, redistricting had largely run its course in areas where black votes could be concentrated with a goal of electing more African Americans to Congress. The net result was that the number of African Americans in Congress leveled off by the early 1990s and hovered in the high 30s and low 40s for eight election cycles from 1992 through 2006. Although organizational trends provided African-American Members a forum to discuss their legislative agendas and strategies, black Members disagreed about many issues, partially because each Member represented the interests of a unique constituency. Finally, while African-American Members enjoyed unprecedented leadership strength for most of this era, greater power often placed black leaders in a quandary when the imperatives of promoting the leadership or party agenda conflicted with perceived “black interests.”

Background and Precongressional Experience

Like earlier generations of black legislators on Capitol Hill, the 86 African Americans who entered Congress in the period from 1971 through 2007 generally ranked far above the norm in terms of education, professional attainment, and civic achievements. Successful careers in state government propelled the large numbers of African Americans elected to Congress in the 1990s.⁴ Like all the previous generations of black Members, these individuals were typical of their peers among the general membership of the House and Senate—composed largely of business, law, public service, and other professional elites. They were exceedingly well educated, as was the general congressional membership, and their level of education ranked far above the statistical averages for the general U.S. population.⁵ They also largely experienced trends that were prevalent among the general congressional population, including a decline in prior military experience and a higher median age at first election.⁶

Civil Rights Activism

A defining precongressional experience for many in this generation was their shared background in local and national civil rights protests. Many of the Members from this era, especially those first elected in the 1970s and 1980s, came of age during the civil rights movement. Some were prominent figures. John R. Lewis of Georgia (elected in 1986) cofounded and led the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which became a pillar of the movement—staging sit-ins in segregated stores, participating in the Freedom Rides of 1961, and helping to organize the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Andrew Young of Georgia (elected in 1972) was a principal aide to Martin Luther King, Jr., serving as executive director and executive vice president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). King also tapped a young Washington minister, Walter Fauntroy, as director of the city’s SCLC bureau. As the SCLC’s congressional lobbyist, Fauntroy (elected the District of Columbia’s Delegate in 1971) honed his skills as a coalition-builder.

Early in their political careers, some future black Members of Congress also grappled with internal divisions in the civil rights movement between those who embraced King’s nonviolent protests and those who preferred a more aggressive and militant stance (such as Stokely Carmichael, who succeeded Lewis as head of SNCC).⁷ Out of this schism came the Black Power movement and the more radical black nationalist factions of the latter 1960s, such as the Black Panthers. “Black Power” had different meanings within the movement. For Carmichael’s cohorts, Black Power expressed frustration and rage with intransigent racism and advocated black separatism and the use of violence, if necessary, to achieve a measure of independence for African Americans. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., of New York, who served in the House in 1966 when Carmichael first employed the term, briefly allied himself with the “new black militants” and defined Black Power as “a new philosophy for the tough, proud young Negroes who categorically refuse to compromise any longer for their rights.”⁸ John Lewis, who resigned from SNCC in July 1966 because of its militancy and confrontational rhetoric, recalled that SNCC had used a similar phrase during the Selma protests but that “it had more to do with self-reliance than with black supremacy.” Lewis added that as articulated by Carmichael, Black Power “tended to create a schism, both within the movement itself and between the races. It drove people apart rather than brought them together.”⁹

Ronald Dellums of California, who represented an Oakland–Berkeley House district, found himself at the center of a virtual war between Black Panthers and the Oakland police force in the late 1960s. “The Black Panther Party for Self Defense” had been formed in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale to counter what both men believed to be a long history of police abuses against African-American citizens of Oakland. As a member of the Berkeley city council, Dellums once convinced Seale to disperse an angry, agitated crowd of Panther supporters at a council meeting, probably avoiding bloodshed. Dellums noted that juggling the complex and competing agendas of radical factions developed his political acumen by forcing him “to employ all the skills at my command to build legislative majorities.”¹⁰ A former member of the Chicago Black Panthers, Bobby Rush, who quit the group in the early 1970s because of its violent tactics, served a decade as a Chicago city councilman before winning election to the U.S. House in 1992.

Prior Elective Office

This generation’s elective experience differed significantly from that of previous generations. The vast majority of African Americans who entered Congress after 1970 held prior elective office (68 of the 86, or 79 percent), with a substantial increase in the numbers with service in state legislatures. Half (43) of the African Americans elected to Congress from 1971 through 2007 served as state legislators, 19 in the lower chamber, six in the upper chamber, and 18 in both chambers of their respective statehouses. Of these, several performed leadership functions in their respective chambers, including Barbara Jordan (president pro tempore of the Texas senate), Harold E. Ford, Sr., (majority whip of the Tennessee house of representatives), and Carol Moseley-Braun (assistant majority leader of the Illinois house of representatives).¹¹ This development, perhaps more than any other precongressional characteristic, brought black Members of Congress into near-total congruence with the experiential background of the general population of House and Senate membership.

Voting rights reforms and redistricting drove diversity trends in the state legislatures in the decades after Congress enacted civil rights legislation. For instance, between 1970 and 1992, the number of African Americans serving in state legislatures increased 274 percent (from 168 to 463). The growth occurred fastest in the South—where the largest number of blacks lived and where voting rights legislation and court decisions provided greater access to the ballot. From 32 seats in 1970, blacks held 226 in 1992—a gain of 894 percent.¹² These trends have continued, albeit more slowly, in the last 15 years. According to 2003 figures from the National Conference of State Legislators, 595 African Americans held seats in the upper or lower house in state legislatures, accounting for 8.1 percent of all (7,382) state legislators nationwide.¹³

At the state and the national levels, these gains have been particularly striking among women. Over time, African-American women have accounted for an increasing percentage of the sum total of black legislators in state capitals and in Washington, DC. For instance, in 1970 there were only 15 black women state legislators—accounting for less than 10 percent of all African-American state legislators. By 1992, the number of black women state legislators had increased to 131, or roughly 28 percent of all black state legislators. As with other women in Congress, legislative experience at the state level provided a vehicle for election to the U.S. Congress. In 1971, there was only one African-American woman in Congress—Shirley Chisholm of New York—among a total of 14 blacks in Congress. By late 2007, African-American women accounted for nearly one-third of all the sitting black Members of Congress.¹⁴

State legislatures were just one avenue to attain higher office. Traditional experience in local and municipal elective office also typified this post-1971 cohort of black Members of Congress. Fifteen served on city councils, and five were elected county council members or commissioners. Four persons served as mayors, nine served as local or municipal judges, and several others held other elected positions, such as school board member, recorder of deeds, and justice of the peace. Three individuals held high-ranking state or territorial positions: Mervyn Dymally, lieutenant governor of California; Melvin Evans, governor of the Virgin Islands; and G. K. Butterfield, North Carolina supreme court justice. Finally, several individuals held prominent federal positions prior to winning their first congressional election, including Eleanor Holmes Norton, commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the 1970s and Diane Watson, U.S. Ambassador to the Federated States of Micronesia from 1999 through 2000.

Creation And Evolution Of The Congressional Black Caucus

As the number of African Americans serving in Congress grew, a long-desired movement to form a more unified organization among black legislators coalesced. When Charles C. Diggs, Jr., of Michigan entered the House of Representatives in 1955, he joined black Members William Dawson of Illinois and Adam Clayton Powell—the largest delegation of African Americans on Capitol Hill since Reconstruction. “In Congress, there was little, if any communication between Dawson and Powell,” Diggs noted. “Their styles were different. In terms of exercise between them, there was not any.”¹⁵ Diggs keenly felt the isolation endured by black Members due to their small numbers in Congress and, in some cases, an inability to connect on a personal level. Frustrated that black Representatives lacked a forum to discuss common concerns and issues, Diggs proposed the organization of the Democratic Select Committee (DSC) at the opening of the 91st Congress (1969–1971), maintaining that the DSC would fill a significant void by fostering the exchange of information among the nine African Americans serving in Congress, as well as between black Representatives and House leadership. “The sooner we get organized for group action, the more effective we can become,” Diggs remarked.¹⁶ The informal group held sporadic meetings that were mainly social gatherings and had no independent staff or budget.

Newly elected Members and beneficiaries of court-ordered redistricting, William (Bill) Clay, Sr., of Missouri, Louis Stokes of Ohio, and Shirley Chisholm embraced the concept of a group for black legislators to “seize the moment, to fight for justice, to raise issues too long ignored and too little debated”—all of which quickly translated into a more influential association for African-American Members.¹⁷ Representative Clay and Stokes formed a fast and enduring friendship. Their close personal relationship boosted momentum to craft a permanent organization. Stokes drew upon his efforts to forge an independent political organization within his own district. “The thrust of our elections was that many black people around America who had formerly been unrepresented, now felt that the nine black members of the House owed them the obligation of also affording them representation in the House,” Stokes explained. He added that “in addition to representing our individual districts, we had to assume the onerous burden of acting as congressman-at-large for unrepresented people around America.”¹⁸

With the opening of the 92nd Congress (1971–1973), the number of black Representatives rose to 13—the greatest number of African Americans ever to serve simultaneously in Congress. The DSC met on February 2, 1971, and accepted a recommendation put forth by Clay to create a nonpartisan, formal network for African-American Members.¹⁹ Charles Rangel of New York, who narrowly defeated longtime Representative Powell in 1970, thought of a new name for the group: the Congressional Black Caucus.²⁰ The CBC elected Diggs as its first chairman. “Black people have no permanent friends, no permanent enemies…just permanent interests,” Clay declared—a theme that set the tone for the CBC during its formative years and evolved into its motto.²¹ Unlike many Members of Congress, Clay surmised, the participants in the new caucus did not owe their elections to traditional liberal or labor bases of support. “We were truly uninhibited, really free to decide our own issues, formulate our own policies, and advance our own programs,” Clay recalled. “Our mission was clear. We had to parlay massive voting potential into concrete economic results.”²²

In the midst of its transition to a more formal organization, the CBC waged its first public battle during the early months of 1971.²³ Upset with President Richard M. Nixon’s refusal to meet with the group, African-American Members made national headlines when they boycotted the January 1971 State of the Union address. “We now refuse to be part of your audience,” Clay wrote on behalf of the caucus, explaining that it perceived the President’s persistent refusal to grant them a White House meeting as symptomatic of the administration’s abandonment of African-American interests.²⁴ The group won a public relations victory when Nixon agreed to a March 1971 meeting. “Our people are no longer asking for equality as a rhetorical promise,” Diggs declared. “They are demanding from the national Administration, and from elected officials without regard to party affiliation, the only kind of equality that ultimately has any real meaning—equality of results.”²⁵ Press coverage provided instant national recognition for the CBC.²⁶ The CBC thereafter skillfully used such tactics to wield clout and build a reputation as a congressional irritant.²⁷

A rapid transformation took place in the organization’s early years as it began a maturation process. Heavy expectations were placed upon the group, initially leading the CBC to adopt a collective approach to representation to present a unified voice for black America.²⁸ The CBC collected and disseminated information on African-American preferences regarding policy, assisted individual black Americans with a range of requests by providing casework services, and spoke on behalf of special interest groups within the black community.²⁹

Countervailing currents pushed and pulled at the CBC membership, who represented diverse constituencies and practiced individual legislative styles. Representative Diggs, a strong backer of the collective leadership model, attempted to organize a national black political convention in 1972. Ultimately, the caucus declined to sponsor the event for fear it would lead to future obligations in which the CBC would not have direct oversight.³⁰ Shirley Chisholm’s 1972 presidential campaign also proved disuniting. The only woman among the CBC’s founders, Chisholm claimed that her gender, in addition to her willingness to form coalitions with liberal whites, Hispanics, and women, irritated her CBC colleagues. Indeed, some felt she betrayed the unified mission of the caucus by reaching out to other groups and undermined the effectiveness of the organization by placing gender above race. Only Ronald Dellums and Parren Mitchell of Maryland publicly endorsed Chisholm for President.³¹

Given the burdens and tensions that arose from collective representation, the organization shifted its emphasis. CBC members began classifying themselves as “just” legislators—moving away from the national spotlight and back to responding to the needs of their constituencies.³² That shift in priorities occurred largely under Stokes’s leadership after he succeeded Diggs in 1972 as CBC chairman.³³ During his two terms leading the CBC, Stokes downplayed the role of the caucus as a champion of African-American issues. “We had to analyze what our resources were, what we should be doing, and how best to do it,” he explained. “And our conclusion was this: if we were to be effective, if we were going to make the meaningful contribution to minority citizens in this country, then it must be as legislators. This is the area in which we possess expertise—and it is within the halls of Congress that we must make this expertise felt.”³⁴

According to political scientist Marguerite Ross Barnett, after spending its early years reacting to events, the CBC entered another stage of maturation in 1975 when it sought to foster a proactive, anticipatory method for crafting a legislative agenda. Key elements of the earlier organizational strategies informed this approach. By balancing collective leadership with individual representation, the CBC fully embraced the challenge of the dual role African-American legislators faced—speaking for the concerns of black America while simultaneously representing unique constituencies. Political scientist Carol Swain maintains that the group followed this blended leadership approach into the 1990s.³⁵

During this period the CBC also confronted questions about its identity and core values. In 1975, Fortney (Pete) Stark, a white Member representing a congressional district in Oakland, California, with a substantial African-American population, asked to join the all-black caucus. After intense deliberation, the group rejected Stark’s application. “The caucus symbolizes black political development in this country,” CBC Chairman Charles Rangel explained. “We feel that maintaining this symbolism is critical at this juncture in our development.”³⁶ The CBC retained its unwritten rule to limit membership to African Americans but briefly allowed whites to join as nonvoting associates. In 1988, 41 white Representatives joined the CBC when the caucus instituted its new policy.³⁷

Institutional Advancement

Member Characteristics: Electoral Longevity

Incumbency success rates for Members of Congress have risen throughout the 20th century for the entire congressional population. African Americans, of course, have been elected in their greatest numbers in an era in which incumbency rates have remained consistently at 95 percent (the rate in 1970) or greater—indeed in the late 1980s and the 1990s it reached 98 percent.³⁸ While the longevity of all Members of Congress increased, African-Americans’ longevity has exceeded the norm. From the World War II Era forward, black Members have served longer than the general membership.³⁹

The average length of service for former African-American Members elected between 1964 and 2004 reached 10.1 years—higher than the 8.65-year average for the entire congressional population during that time span.⁴⁰ Of the black Members who entered Congress after 1970, Charles Rangel has had the longest span of service: nearly 37 years at the end of 2007. In the history of African Americans in Congress, Rangel ranked second only to John Conyers of Michigan (also a current Member of the 110th Congress, 2007–2009), a Member for nearly 43 years by late 2007. During this era, Bill Clay, Sr., and Louis Stokes also accumulated three decades of service, with 32 and 30 years, respectively, at their retirements. By the 110th Congress, active African-American Members held an even more consequential service advantage: While the average length of service for the entire congressional population was at a near all-time high of 10.1 years, black Members averaged 12 years.⁴¹

Member Characteristics: Seniority and Leadership Posts

Longevity meant that many black Members of Congress in this era benefited from the long-standing tradition of parceling out desirable committee assignments and leadership positions to those who had accrued the most years of continuous service. The trend that awarded perquisites based on committee seniority solidified in the second decade of the 20th century in the House and remained dominant through the 1970s (and still figures prominently in the way assignments are distributed).⁴² “When I first came to Congress, I was opposed to the seniority system,” District of Columbia Delegate Walter Fauntroy remarked. However, he later said, “The longer I am here, the better I like it.”⁴³ Indeed, seniority boosted the influence of black Representatives and that of the CBC in the latter part of the century. “We don’t really think that racism in this country has so diminished that given the opportunity to vote on individuals based on their experience and ability that we could overcome that without the assistance of the seniority system,” Representative Rangel acknowledged.⁴⁴

Between 1971 and 1975, African-American Members eclipsed long-standing barriers on the three elite House committees: Appropriations, which originates all federal spending bills; Ways and Means, with power over taxation and revenue measures; and Rules, which reviews and structures bills passed by various committees in preparation for debate and vote by the full House. In 1971, Louis Stokes won a seat on the Appropriations Committee, becoming the first of 12 African Americans to serve on the panel in this era (the first black woman, Yvonne Brathwaite Burke of California, joined the committee in 1975). Stokes eventually served as one of the Appropriations “cardinals.”⁴⁵ As chairman of the Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development, and Independent Agencies in the 103rd Congress (1993–1995), Stokes oversaw a huge percentage of the discretionary spending in the annual federal budget. The first African American to lead an Appropriations subcommittee was Representative Julian Dixon of California, who chaired the District of Columbia Subcommittee beginning in the 97th Congress (1981–1983).

During this period, black House Members capitalized upon decentralizing reforms to solidify and extend gains in terms of committee assignments and leadership positions. In 1974, control of committee assignments of Democratic Members was transferred from the Ways and Means Committee (then chaired by Wilbur Mills of Arkansas) to the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, chaired by the Speaker of the House. The CBC used the opportunity to pressure House leaders, including Speaker Carl Albert of Oklahoma, to place African Americans on prominent committees. Under Representative Rangel’s leadership, the group struck a deal with Speaker Albert stipulating that at least one African-American Member would serve on each of the major standing committees.⁴⁶ The ability of the CBC to attain more-attractive committee assignments was one of a handful of “clear achievements of black representatives organizing as a Caucus.”⁴⁷ As a result of the new agreement between the CBC and the House leadership, each of the highest-ranking House committees included at least one African-American Member on its roster during the 94th Congress (1975–1977).⁴⁸

Throughout its history, the CBC continued to rally to the support of individual black Members seeking to make institutional inroads that would better position them to secure some of their legislative goals. One example was the case of Ronald Dellums, a vocal critic of the Vietnam War, who faced resistance when he announced his interest in serving on the Armed Services Committee, chaired by longtime southern Democrat F. Edward Hébert of Louisiana. The CBC, led by Stokes and Clay, drafted a letter to the Democratic leadership on behalf of Dellums. When Speaker Albert informed Stokes that the CBC could have a black Member on Armed Services, but not Dellums, Stokes angrily replied that “white people don’t tell black people who their leaders are.”⁴⁹ With the backing of the CBC, Dellums became the first black to serve on the Armed Services Committee.

Rising rank within the committee system had a reinforcing effect on the CBC. By the 99th Congress (1985–1987), CBC membership had grown to 20—only seven more than the original number in 1971.⁵⁰ But despite this modest numerical gain, African Americans chaired an unparalleled five standing committees, two select committees, and 16 subcommittees in the 99th Congress.⁵¹ “We don’t have to go hat in hand begging anybody,” Representative Clay observed. “In fact, it’s just the reverse. Now a lot of people have to come hat in hand [to us] asking us for favors.”⁵²

Of the 18 African Americans who have held House committee chairmanships in congressional history, 16 attained those positions in the post-1970 era. Five have held at least two chairmanships, and Augustus (Gus) Hawkins of California held chairmanships on four committees: Education and Labor; House Administration; Joint Committee on Printing; and Joint Committee on the Library.⁵³ Additionally, of the 46 African-American Members who have chaired subcommittees in Congress, 41 attained those posts for the first time in the post-1970 period.⁵⁴ Such presence within the echelons of the leadership constituted a significant base of institutional support. In summary, these developments indicated that African Americans were now represented throughout the committee structure of the House—ranging from constituency-oriented panels to power committees—and provided powerful evidence of their assimilation into the institution.⁵⁵

During the era from 1971 through 2007, black Members made history by attaining posts in the leadership ranks of both major parties in the House. John Conyers made the first effort to attain a leadership post by challenging then-Majority Leader Carl Albert for the speakership in 1971. Conyers lost the Democratic Caucus vote 220 to 20 in what was widely described as a symbolic undertaking.⁵⁶ But African-American Members made inroads in other leadership routes during this era. Barbara Jordan of Texas, Ralph Metcalfe of Illinois, and Harold E. Ford, Sr., of Tennessee, for instance, were early appointees to the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, which set the parameters of the party’s legislative agenda in addition to parceling out committee assignments. In 1983, Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill of Massachusetts chose Representative Rangel as a Deputy Majority Whip, making the New York Representative one of the most powerful Democrats in the House. John Lewis later served as Chief Deputy Democratic Whip.⁵⁷

Just four African Americans have held elected positions within the Democratic Caucus and Republican Conference. Shirley Chisholm held the position of Democratic Caucus Secretary in the 95th and 96th Congresses (1977–1981). Bill Gray made the most dramatic climb up the leadership ladder: After winning the position of Democratic Caucus chairman in December 1988, he made history six months later when his colleagues elected him Democratic (Majority) Whip. As the first African American to hold the post, Gray was the third-ranking Democrat in the House. Others followed his lead. In 1999, J. C. Watts of Oklahoma became the highest-ranking African American in the history of the Republican Party when his GOP colleagues elected him Chairman of the Republican Conference; he held the position until his retirement from the House in 2003.⁵⁸ James Clyburn of South Carolina served as Chairman of the Democratic Caucus for part of the 109th Congress, relinquishing that post to Rahm Emanuel of Illinois in November 2006, and becoming the second African American to hold the position of Majority Whip.⁵⁹

Legislative Interests

The legislative agendas of African-American Members in the post-1970 era reflected the diversity of their committee assignments and the range of interests within the general membership of Congress. Most sought to advance a broad progressive legislative agenda supported by advocacy groups such as the National Urban League and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)—extending voting rights protections, improving educational and economic opportunities, fostering urban renewal, and providing access to better health care. With greater frequency, some departed from traditional “black interests” and pursued legislative agendas that reflected the unique needs of their constituencies or their personal positions on issues.⁶⁰

Voting Rights

Extensions of civil rights era voting protections were a touchstone for African-American Members of Congress. Efforts to retain and expand upon the provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965—which Barbara Jordan once referred to as the “frontispiece” of the civil rights movement—provided continuity between Members of the civil rights generation and their successors in the post-1970 generation of Black Americans in Congress. Two extensions were of particular importance: the Voting Rights Acts of 1975 and 1982.

The Voting Rights Act of 1975 (P.L. 94–73) strengthened the provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (as well as its 1970 extension).⁶¹ The House passed the act on June 4, 1975, by a vote of 341 to 70. After Senate passage, and House acceptance of some Senate amendments, President Gerald R. Ford signed the measure into law on August 6, 1975, the 10th anniversary of the original landmark bill. As with earlier acts, jurisdictions covered by the 1975 extension had to submit to the U.S. Attorney General any changes in local and state election law for “preclearance”—a determination of whether the modification had discriminatory intent. The 1975 act also increased jurisdictions covered by the act to include locations in the North and West. Moreover, it applied not just to African Americans, but also “language minorities,” including Spanish speakers, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. It required bilingual elections in areas where there were large numbers of minorities whose English literacy was below the national average.⁶²

African-American Members played a prominent part in this debate. “The voting rights act may have overcome blatant discriminatory practices,” noted Barbara Jordan, testifying before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Constitutional Rights. But she added, “it has yet to overcome subtle discriminatory practices.” Charles Rangel agreed that the protections were needed. “Malevolent local government must not be exposed to any temptation to take back the political rights and powers that have so recently come to southern blacks,” Rangel said.⁶³ Andrew Young pointed to vastly improved registration numbers in the seven southern states covered by the original 1965 act (29 percent registered in 1964 had expanded to 56 percent in 1972) as well as in the number of elected black officials in the South (72 in 1965 compared with 1,587 in 1975). “The remarkable effect of this act is that it has a preventative effect,” Young observed. “There are some reports that the threat of suing examiners has a deterrent effect—that local registrars began to register black voters so that federal examiners would be kept out.”⁶⁴

The 1982 Voting Rights Act (P.L. 97–205) extension provided another victory for the civil rights movement and also paved the way for the expansion of Black American representation in Congress in the 1990s.⁶⁵ During floor debate prior to overwhelming passage by the House, a number of black Members of Congress spoke on behalf of the bill. Representative Bill Clay, Sr., cast the debate in broad terms: “Are we willing to continue our forward momentum in America’s bold and noble attempt to achieve a free and just democratic society? Or, will we embrace the politics of reversal and retreat; the super rich against the wretchedly poor, the tremendously strong against the miserably weak?”⁶⁶ The bill extended the act’s major provisions for 25 years. It also established a procedure by which jurisdictions that maintained a clean voting rights record for at least a decade could petition a panel of judges to be removed from the preclearance list. The bilingual election materials requirements established in the 1975 act were also enacted for another decade. Mickey Leland, who succeeded Representative Jordan in her Houston-centered district, addressed the House in Spanish to make a point about the need for extending those provisions. “Many of you cannot understand me,” Leland said in Spanish, “and if you cannot understand me…nor can you understand 17 percent of all the adult workers in the Southwest.…And even though you cannot understand me when I speak Spanish maybe you can begin to understand the hypocrisy of our political system which excludes the participation of Hispanic-Americans only for having a different culture and speaking a different language.”⁶⁷

Most significant, the Voting Rights Act of 1982 established that certain voting rights violations could be proven to be the result of voting modifications, even if intent could not be established. That section of the bill overturned a 1980 Supreme Court decision in Mobile v. Bolden (446 U.S. 55) that found a violation could be proven only if the intent to discriminate could be substantiated. This legislative instrument provided the basis for a round of creating majority-black districts following the 1990 Census, particularly in southern states.

Economic Opportunity

Another primary area of legislative concern for numerous African-American Members of this generation was the desire to promote economic opportunities for blacks as a means to further the political civil rights advances won in the 1960s. Economic disparities among racial groups remained a problem throughout this time period. One of Congress’s strongest supporters of urban economic aid, Representative Floyd Flake of New York noted, “We in America have created a Third World within our borders, if we conglomerate all of the rural and all of the urban communities in this Nation who are not able to provide the basic necessities for people who are part of those communities.”⁶⁸ For instance, from 1980 to 1990 the unemployment rate for blacks was more than double that of whites. Throughout that decade, the median income for African Americans constituted just 60 percent of the median income for whites.⁶⁹ Many of the Members profiled in this generation supported an array of programs to advance African-American economic equality, including job training programs, urban renewal projects, affirmative action programs, and “empowerment zones” (urban and rural areas designated to receive federal grants and loans for job training and tax incentives for minority-owned businesses). At times these positions were championed by the CBC; at others, individual Members acted as policy entrepreneurs.

The CBC consistently made the economic advancement of African Americans a top priority in its legislative agenda. For example, the caucus strongly backed the extension of the Office of Economic Opportunity programs under the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 (P.L. 88–452).⁷⁰ From 1974 to 1975, Gus Hawkins and Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota drafted a measure to drastically cut unemployment in the United States, which reached 8 percent among the general population and more than 13 percent for nonwhites by the mid-1970s.⁷¹ Concerned about the disproportionate joblessness rate for African Americans, each member of the CBC cosponsored the Humphrey–Hawkins Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act of 1978 (P.L. 95–523).⁷² Among its provisions, the act declared the federal government’s intention to promote full employment, real income gains, price stability, and a balanced budget. Signed into law on October 28, 1978, the final version of the bill failed to include the more ambitious full employment goals drafted by Humphrey and Hawkins, leading some analysts to describe the legislation as “an empty symbol.”⁷³ But the CBC’s ability to persuade President James Earl (Jimmy) Carter to publicly support a bill linked so closely to the caucus resulted in a noteworthy victory.⁷⁴ “We would never have struggled so hard to get this act passed if we did not consider it significant,” declared Representative Parren Mitchell.

Mitchell, the brother of longtime NAACP lobbyist Clarence Mitchell, Jr., used a networking strategy to help push legislation aimed at business development in African-American communities through the House. Primarily interested in promoting economic opportunities in inner cities, Mitchell assembled a “brain trust” of national advisers (mostly businessmen, lawyers, bankers, and economists) to make recommendations on policy and legislation.⁷⁵ The CBC embraced this approach, often calling upon subject experts for assistance in crafting legislation. Mitchell also employed his encyclopedic knowledge of House procedures—another facet of effective representation that many CBC Members refined during the period to promote the organization’s legislative agenda. Called the “Little General” for his ability to organize and coordinate support for key legislation, the Maryland Representative attached an amendment to a $4 billion public works program that required state and local governments applying for federal contracts to reserve 10 percent of the money for minority-owned companies.⁷⁶ Signed into law in 1977, the measure constituted not only a personal triumph for Mitchell but also a significant early legislative victory for the CBC. That success lent credibility to the group’s coalition-building efforts and burnished its reputation for using House procedures to achieve its legislative goals.

During the 1970s the CBC sporadically presented budget proposals that emphasized increased spending for domestic programs. However, in 1981 the group answered President Ronald W. Reagan’s call for alternatives to his fiscal plan, which emphasized defense spending, by drafting their own detailed budget.⁷⁷ The CBC plan received national attention but little backing in the House. As an annual offering of the period, the CBC alternative included a consistent call to increase federal funding for domestic programs, to slash defense spending, and to raise taxes for the wealthiest Americans. “Even in defeat we have a responsibility to fight the fight,” Dellums remarked about the persistent failure of an alternative annual budget to attract meaningful support in the House. “We have to articulate the alternative.”⁷⁸

District of Columbia

Another issue of ongoing importance to black Members of Congress was the matter of representation and “home rule” (self-government) for the city of Washington, DC. Since its creation after the Residence Act of 1790, the capital had been administered by a patchwork of governing mechanisms: an appointed mayor and elected city council (both a board of aldermen and common council); briefly, a territorial government in 1871, when the city was designated the “District of Columbia”; a presidentially appointed commission; and congressional committees. After 1960, because of its new majority-black urban population, congressional debates about representation and the administration of the District resonated within the larger African-American community.

Representative Charles Diggs, an ardent advocate for Washingtonians, became chairman of a District of Columbia subcommittee in 1967. Six years later, he chaired the full committee, symbolically marking the end of the exclusive history of white congressional control over the capital. In 1970, with Diggs’s leadership, the House passed the District of Columbia Act, which reinstituted the post of Delegate to represent the city in the House.⁷⁹ In March 1971, District residents elected Walter Fauntroy, a minister and civil rights activist, as the city’s first congressional Delegate in a century.

Fauntroy tirelessly advocated “home rule” in the District of Columbia. The CBC, seeking to increase the independence of the predominantly African-American population, joined him. Fauntroy oversaw a lobbying campaign aimed at building support from white Members who represented southern districts with a substantial black constituency. The effort prevailed. In December 1973, Congress passed a compromise measure—the District of Columbia Self-Government and Governmental Reorganization Act—that gave the District limited self-rule, permitting citizens to elect a mayor and a city council.⁸⁰

Based partially on the success of the “Fauntroy strategy,” the CBC later created the Action-Alert Communications Network (AACN) to mobilize support from nonblack legislators on a range of policy issues affecting black Americans.⁸¹ Encompassing the National Black Leadership Roundtable and the Black Leadership Forum, the AACN tapped into a network of national black organizations suited for grass-roots campaigns capable of applying pressure on white leaders with large African-American populations. “We are organizing ourselves to impact the political process, to reach out on a very careful basis in coalition with those whose interests coincide with ours,” Fauntroy remarked.⁸²

Other African-American Members played key roles in later decades. Julian Dixon, a District native who represented a Los Angeles-area district, became chairman of the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on the District of Columbia. During the 1980s and 1990s, Dixon was one of the city’s primary congressional allies during an era of budget woes. In 1991, after Fauntroy’s retirement from the House, Eleanor Holmes Norton won election as Delegate. An advocate for full congressional voting rights for the District, Norton has served as the District’s Delegate since then.

Conflicting Interests

Some Members promoted policy positions that put them at odds with the majority of their CBC colleagues—either because they were required to balance the unique demands of their constituencies or because of their individual ideological beliefs. For instance, Mike Espy of Mississippi was elected from a farming district in the 1980s with considerable cross-over support from white voters, making him the first black Representative from that state in more than a century. His legislative agenda reflected the conservative ideological contours of his rural constituency. Consequently, Espy belonged to a group of centrist Democrats; he opposed gun control measures and supported the death penalty—positions that were largely contradictory to those of black Representatives from urban areas.

Welfare policy proved to be a contentious subject during the latter decades of the 20th century. The CBC often found itself in conflict with the Reagan administration during the 1980s. Reagan met only once with the CBC—a marked reversal from the Carter administration, which, while it did not always back the organization’s initiatives, regularly consulted with African-American Members.⁸³ At the heart of this struggle lay the CBC’s fundamental disagreement with President Reagan’s core agenda: vastly increasing the defense budget to outpace the Soviets in a climactic Cold War arms race while scaling back social programs established in the 1960s.

Not all African-American Members were consonant on welfare. As chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Public Assistance in the 1980s, Harold E. Ford, Sr., proposed a welfare overhaul plan that linked benefits to work. Dubbed the “Family Support Program,” it required parents of children six and older to participate. In many respects Ford’s plan foreshadowed welfare reforms enacted in the mid-1990s.⁸⁴ Representative Floyd Flake, a minister representing a constituency in Queens, New York, also staked out an independent position on welfare reform. Flake’s bipartisanship with the new Republican majority in Congress in the mid-1990s caused friction with black colleagues. Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia convinced Flake to cosponsor the Community Renewal Act in 1997, which offered tax breaks and school vouchers (credits given to parents for partial or full reimbursement for their children to attend private school) to poor, urban neighborhoods.⁸⁵ Flake’s support of school vouchers, partially on the grounds that such schools had better graduation rates and that vouchers might force public schools to craft better curricula and focused budgets, drew the most criticism from his fellow Democrats.⁸⁶ “We get caught up in group-thought ideology, and we think that we all have to think alike, speak alike, say the same things, do the same things,” Flake observed after abruptly resigning from the House to return to the ministry. “I’ve never seen a leader who allows himself to be kept in the box. I am beyond race and party now.”⁸⁷

After many decades of near-exclusive Democratic Party affiliation among African Americans, three black Republican Members were elected to the House: Delegate Melvin Evans of the Virgin Islands (1979–1981), Representative Gary Franks of Connecticut (1991–1997), and Representative J. C. Watts (1995–2003). During his brief tenure in the House, Delegate Evans made history by becoming the first Republican member of the CBC. Franks, the first Republican African-American Representative elected to the House since Oscar De Priest, joined the CBC in the 102nd Congress (1991–1993). His contentious relationship with the organization revealed a new dynamic of conflicting partisan affiliations in the CBC. From its inception, the overwhelmingly Democratic organization billed itself as being nonpartisan, but the CBC denied Franks access to strategy sessions, and some individual members complained his presence undermined their mission. Franks eventually opted to skip CBC meetings, though he refused to resign.⁸⁸ Watts chose not to join the group.

Commemorative Legislation

African-American Members of Congress often used their influence to pass legislation commemorating great leaders and seminal events in the civil rights movement and to call attention to unrecognized black contributions to American history. Such efforts included the designation of February as Black History Month and, in the 1990s, the awarding of Congressional Gold Medals to distinguished African-American citizens. Some African-American Members also called for Congress to apologize for the institution of slavery and to study remedies, including reparations, for the harm done to blacks by slavery and subsequent racial discrimination.⁸⁹

One landmark commemorative achievement was the designation of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday as a national holiday. That effort began only days after King’s death in 1968 when Representative Conyers introduced legislation to designate a federal holiday in his honor; Conyers sponsored similar measures in each successive Congress for the next 15 years.⁹⁰ Senator Edward Brooke of Massachusetts offered a compromise measure in the Senate to mark King’s birthday as a “day of commemoration” when it became clear that Conyers and the CBC could not rally enough support for their bill in the House.⁹¹ His alternative measure failed to make headway in the Senate. By the mid-1970s, the CBC had elevated the King holiday to a major legislative priority. The caucus directed a successful campaign to build congressional support and to increase public knowledge of the bill.⁹² In 1979, the legislation had enough support to pass the House; however, the CBC withdrew the bill when an attached amendment called for a Sunday observance of the holiday instead of the originally proposed observance of King’s birthday on January 15, a compromise measure for Members concerned about the high cost of shutting down the federal government.⁹³

Freshman Representative Katie Hall of Indiana, chairwoman of the Post Office and Civil Service’s Subcommittee on Census and Population—the panel with jurisdiction over the bill—provided the necessary spark in the 98th Congress (1983–1985) when the CBC tapped her to introduce the legislation and to serve as the floor manager. Hall courted detractors by moving the proposed public holiday from a fixed date—King’s January 15 birthday—to the third Monday of January to prevent government offices from opening twice in one week, thereby saving money.⁹⁴ The House passed her version of the King holiday bill by a vote of 338 to 90; the Senate followed suit, 78 to 22. President Reagan, who initially opposed the legislation, signed the bill into law on November 2, 1983.⁹⁵ Some viewed the episode as a symbolic victory, but it constituted an important triumph for the CBC, which marshaled public support and exerted decisive institutional pressure to overcome an unsupportive President and also organized opposition in the Senate.

African-American Members also undertook numerous other efforts to recognize civil rights icons and distinguished public figures. In 1977, singer Marian Anderson became the first Black American to be awarded a Congressional Gold Medal—the highest honor the nation can bestow on outstanding citizens.⁹⁶ Representative Julia Carson of Indiana played a central role securing legislation to recognize Rosa Parks, whose act of civil disobedience (refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955) galvanized the modern civil rights movement. Additionally, Congress conferred an unprecedented honor on Parks by passing a resolution to have her body lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda from October 30 to 31, 2005—a distinction normally reserved for Presidents, military leaders, and other statesmen. Parks was the first woman ever accorded this honor.⁹⁷

In the 21st century, African-American Members of Congress pressed successfully for greater recognition of blacks’ contributions to congressional history in the art of the Capitol. Portraits of pioneering Representatives Joseph Rainey of South Carolina and Shirley Chisholm, as well as Senator Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi, were commissioned. Congress also created a task force to document the work of enslaved African Americans who labored to build the Capitol itself.

Foreign Policy: Africa and Apartheid

Since the 1950s, black Members of Congress perceived the Cold War through a complex frame of reference. Even the most outspoken Members, such as Adam Clayton Powell, broadly endorsed the Cold War containment strategy and the necessity to combat communist international aggression. But African Americans were keenly aware of the gap between American rhetoric about the necessity to defend democratic freedoms abroad and the practice of racial segregation at home. Further, they questioned Washington’s generous support for authoritarian regimes abroad, particularly in sub-Saharan African nations emerging from the yoke of decades of European imperialism. In the post-1970 period, leading African-American Members of Congress questioned the massive budgetary outlays that funded America’s decades-long struggle against the Kremlin.⁹⁸ Representatives Dellums and Mitchell warned that excessive spending on Cold War initiatives was especially detrimental to minority groups, postponing or eliminating long-delayed domestic social programs and urban renewal projects. Dellums opposed the military buildup under the Reagan administration in the 1980s and sharply criticized nuclear weapons programs such as the MX missile—a land-launched weapon that could deliver multiple, independently targeted nuclear warheads when it re-entered the earth’s atmosphere.

No single foreign policy issue united African Americans in Congress more than their efforts to overturn the South African government’s system of apartheid, the strict segregation of the races that began in 1948 and was imposed by whites descended from colonial immigrants. Even before the formation of the CBC in 1971, Charles Diggs used his position as chairman of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa to call attention to racial discrimination in South Africa. Other black Members followed suit, and ending apartheid became a central policy concern. During the next 15 years the CBC oversaw a torrent of activism to enact economic sanctions against South Africa.

According to political scientist Alvin Tillery, Representative Powell kindled Diggs’s interest in African foreign policy.⁹⁹ Diggs, who became the first black Member to travel to Africa (1957) and the first to serve on the Foreign Affairs Committee (1959), was known as “Mr. Africa” because of his knowledge of Sub-Saharan issues. When the Detroit-area Representative was appointed chairman of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa in 1969, he effectively used his position to draw attention to the continent. “I think if I had any one priority, it is to try to put Africa in proper perspective, to try to get the attention of policy makers in the government, the attention of the American investors in Africa and the attention of the American public, in general, and to arouse the substantive interest of black Americans,” Diggs remarked.¹⁰⁰

Diggs held a series of hearings on South Africa and led many fact-finding missions during his tenure on the Foreign Affairs Committee to highlight what he described as “an appalling amount of racial injustice in South Africa—a blatant, ever-present, and all-pervasive discrimination based on race, color, and creed.”¹⁰¹ From 1969 to 1971, he led an unsuccessful charge against the renewal of a special U.S. sugar quota for South Africa. “I have been in over 37 African countries, and the first question that is always asked at a press conference is when we are going to implement our pronouncements in the United Nations, and stop being inconsistent, by providing this kind of subsidy to South Africa, which is one of the most racist countries in the world.”¹⁰² Diggs cosponsored legislation calling for an end to the subsidy.¹⁰³ He also kept apartheid in the congressional spotlight with his criticism of the labor conditions of American companies in South Africa. He faulted the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and major U.S. carmakers for the discriminatory practices in their South African facilities. In 1971 he introduced a measure to implement fair employment practices for U.S. firms eligible for government contracts. Diggs also urged an end to new American investment in South Africa to protest apartheid.¹⁰⁴

With the establishment of the CBC in 1971, Diggs cultivated the group’s international agenda. “Diggs being the great leader that he was reckoned that getting us involved in foreign policy would make a big splash on the Hill,” Representative Clay recalled.¹⁰⁵ The CBC adopted this strategy to lend credibility to the fledgling caucus, and from its inception, the CBC took an active stance in the anti-apartheid movement.¹⁰⁶ In February 1971, Ronald Dellums introduced the first legislation for U.S. economic sanctions against South Africa, on behalf of the CBC.¹⁰⁷ Though the measure had little chance of passing the House, Dellums recollected, “Nonetheless, we had raised the issue before the elected representatives of the American people, and our resolution provided an organizing device for those on the outside to use to begin to build pressure on Congress for legislative action.”¹⁰⁸ The anti-apartheid bill emerged from a petition drafted by employees from a major U.S. camera and film company, who demanded that the corporation cease operations in South Africa. Responsible for producing photographs for the mandatory identity passbooks carried by blacks in South Africa—a major symbol of the racial oppression prevalent in the country—the corporation eventually bowed to public pressure and withdrew its business.¹⁰⁹

In 1975, the CBC helped establish the Black Forum on Foreign Policy, a legislative support group interested in better representation of black interests abroad. The Black Forum’s early mission epitomized a “detached study group” rather than a formal lobbying assembly.¹¹⁰ At a 1976 CBC conference, caucus members recognized the need for a more influential vehicle to shape American foreign policy in Africa and the Caribbean. The new lobbying group, renamed TransAfrica, began operations in Washington, DC, in 1978. TransAfrica employed a grass-roots strategy that mobilized local black leaders who were interested in foreign policy. The group also adopted an aggressive posture on South Africa, refusing to accept donations from U.S. corporations with business ties to South Africa and calling for tough economic sanctions against the African nation.¹¹¹

TransAfrica received a boost when Representative Andrew Young, one of the primary architects of the Black Forum on Foreign Policy, resigned from Congress in 1977 to accept President James Earl (Jimmy) Carter’s appointment as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Young became a conduit for black lobbyists to the Oval Office. But while TransAfrica advocated a boycott by American businesses in South Africa, Young and the Carter administration maintained that promoting U.S. economic involvement in South Africa would have a liberalizing effect on the white-controlled regime.¹¹² At the time, the internal resistance movement against apartheid had been sparked by the Soweto uprising of June 1976. When students gathered for a mass protest to oppose a new government regulation that instructors teach school in Afrikaans, the government brutally dispersed protestors; in the ensuing riots, hundreds were killed, including many children. The event shocked international observers and initiated a long period of internal turmoil in South Africa.

In 1981, the Reagan administration implemented a policy of “constructive engagement,” or maintaining diplomatic and economic relations with South Africa while advocating domestic reforms. Fearful that Reagan’s 1984 re-election would be interpreted as a mandate for the status quo of racial discrimination in South Africa, TransAfrica’s executive director Randall Robinson changed the tenor of the movement.¹¹³ On November 21, just weeks after the President’s landslide victory, Robinson, DC Delegate Walter Fauntroy, and Mary Frances Berry from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights staged a sit-in at the South African Embassy in Washington, DC.¹¹⁴ The resulting arrests of the high-profile protesters garnered national attention and sparked a new “direct action” approach by TransAfrica and the CBC. Fauntroy described the demonstration as an act of “moral witness” and indicated that a “national campaign” against apartheid would follow; a few days after the incident, Robinson, Fauntroy, and Berry formed the Free South Africa Movement (FSAM) to publicize racial inequality in South Africa and pressure the Reagan administration to toughen its stance toward the apartheid regime.¹¹⁵ The FSAM orchestrated a series of demonstrations outside the South African Embassy that tapped into the long domestic civil rights tradition of nonviolent protest. Charles Hayes of Illinois, Clay, and Dellums were among the first Representatives who were arrested. “I knew immediately why Fauntroy was calling,” Dellums remarked, recalling the coordinated effort by the FSAM to draw attention to South Africa. “’Hello, Walter’ I said. ’It’s a good day to go to jail. Where do you want me to be and what time?’ He laughed. ’How did you know?’ ’I just knew that it would one day be my turn, so when you called it was pretty easy to figure out why.’”¹¹⁶ The movement drew black and white Americans from all walks of life: national and local leaders, celebrities, teachers and students, and even Members of Congress who had been ambivalent about the issue. “It was very interesting to see colleagues from both sides of the aisle and of all races, who had previously paid little attention to our efforts, scramble to get arrested in front of the South African embassy and introduce sanctions when the [effects of the] movement hit home in their districts,” Dellums later observed.¹¹⁷ The protests, which eventually spread beyond the South African Embassy in Washington, DC, to other American cities, kept apartheid in the public eye.¹¹⁸

More than any other congressional cohort, African-American Members consistently drew attention to apartheid. Between the 92nd and 99th Congresses (1971–1987), black Representatives introduced more than 100 pieces of legislation concerning South Africa, encompassing issues such as diplomatic relations, economic sanctions, and trade restrictions.¹¹⁹ Representative Bill Gray, chairman of the House Committee on the Budget, compared the situation in South Africa to the history of segregation in the United States. “It took us 200, 300 years to eradicate apartheid here by law,” Gray observed. “People forget that only 20 years ago, when I came here to Washington, DC, as a boy, I couldn’t go into the downtown hotels.…We are only 20 years away from our own story, and that plays a part in our double standard” toward South Africa.¹²⁰ In 1985, Gray introduced a bill endorsed by the House leadership banning new loans and implementing limited economic sanctions in South Africa to “stop the future financing of apartheid.”¹²¹ The House approved the Anti-Apartheid Act of 1985 by a vote of 295 to 127, but soundly defeated a stronger disinvestment substitute put forth by Representative Dellums and backed by the CBC. The next month the Senate overwhelmingly passed a weaker version of the House anti-apartheid bill by a vote of 80 to 12.¹²² Wary of the mounting public pressure for action against South Africa, the President avoided a direct confrontation with Congress and a potential veto override by signing an executive order in September that included some of the congressionally approved sanctions. Gray described the action as “an ill-disguised and ill-advised attempt to circumvent an overwhelmingly bipartisan consensus in Congress.”¹²³

The push for a comprehensive sanctions bill against South Africa reached a crescendo in the second session of the 99th Congress. Gray’s anti-apartheid bill made it to the House Floor again for a vote, where it was expected to pass. For a second time, Dellums offered a substitute. In an unexpected move, the House approved Dellums’s measure by a voice vote. The bill called for a trade embargo and total disinvestment; it was the first legislation that mandated a withdrawal of American companies to pass either chamber. Elated and stunned, Dellums proclaimed, “We haven’t simply altered the debate on apartheid, we’ve changed the environment. Whatever the dynamics of that moment, its effect can’t be changed.”¹²⁴ A Senate bill sponsored by Richard Lugar of Indiana, which passed 84 to 14, resembled Gray’s more modest anti-apartheid legislation. In the interest of securing passage of a sanctions bill, CBC members, including Dellums, supported Lugar’s measure, which passed the House in September 1986 by a 308 to 77 vote.¹²⁵ President Reagan vetoed the anti-apartheid legislation, but on October 2, 1986, the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (CAAA) of 1986 became law when the Senate overrode the veto, following the House.¹²⁶ The historic legislation marked the first congressional override of a presidential veto on a major foreign policy issue since the enactment of the War Powers Resolution in 1973.¹²⁷ Mickey Leland observed, “This is probably the greatest victory we’ve ever experienced. The American people have spoken and will be heard around the world.”¹²⁸

After the passage of the CAAA, black Members continued their fight to abolish apartheid. In 1986, for instance, Gray led a delegation of Representatives to tour South Africa and observe the effects of the sanctions.¹²⁹ Leading the anti-apartheid movement on the Hill, Dellums persisted in introducing legislation for comprehensive economic sanctions.¹³⁰ When President George H. W. Bush considered rescinding sanctions against South Africa, Dellums and the CBC remained firm in their conviction that “sanctions should be lifted only when the oppressed people of South Africa say they should be lifted.”¹³¹ With the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990 and the establishment of majority rule in South Africa in 1994, the CBC achieved its longtime goal of contributing to the abolishment of apartheid.¹³²

Crafting An Identity on Capitol Hill

As African-American Members entered Congress during this era, they encountered an institution that, like American society generally, was becoming more accessible and offered more opportunities for minority participation. Though there were exceptions, the culture of overt racism of earlier decades—discrimination in the House Restaurant and barbershop, insulting floor tirades by pro-segregationist Members, and many other, unspoken slights—had largely vanished. Black Members now embarked on the mature phase of their institutional advancement by accruing service, winning better committee assignments, and gaining the attention and trust of House and Senate leadership. However, their ascent in Congress was accompanied by new challenges and questions about their identity and legislative strategies on Capitol Hill.

Like their predecessors in the previous century, African-American Members of Congress who served after 1970 generally perceived themselves as surrogate representatives for the larger black community. In the CBC’s 1971 meeting with President Nixon, Representative Diggs said, “Our concerns and obligations as members of Congress do not stop at the boundaries of our districts, our concerns are national and international in scope. We are petitioned daily by citizens living hundreds of miles from our districts who look on us as Congressmen-at-large for black people and poor people in the United States.”¹³³ Cardiss Collins, one of the few women members of the caucus in its early years, agreed: “Our main goal is to have greater influence. It’s that simple. When we represent black people in our districts, we are representing all black people because their needs are very similar.”¹³⁴

Never a monolithic group, the black Members of Congress became, if anything, more fragmented in the modern era because of their changing stature and growing numbers within the institution. While most black Members understood and accepted their role as surrogate representatives, there was no consensus on how to pursue the legislation that was important to their broad constituency. “We all have basically the same goals,” Mickey Leland observed. “The question is how to attain those goals.”¹³⁵

Some, such as Barbara Jordan, chose an insider route that often took precedence over racial or gender issues. “I sought the power points,” she once said. “I knew if I were going to get anything done, [the congressional and party leaders] would be the ones to help me get it done.” Jordan was careful not to align herself too closely with the agenda of any special interest group, including the CBC and the Women’s Caucus, both of which she nevertheless joined. “I am neither a black politician nor a woman politician,” Jordan said in 1975. “Just a politician, a professional politician.” Her choice of seating in the House Chamber was revealing. Jordan chose to sit in the center aisle (away from the section customarily occupied by the CBC) because she could hear better, be seen by the presiding officer, and save a seat for colleagues who wanted to stop and chat. Her seating preference as well as her loyalty to the Texas delegation agitated fellow CBC members, but both were consistent with Jordan’s strategy for seeking congressional influence.¹³⁶ Similarly, Julian Dixon accrued influence in the institution by working quietly with various factions. Syndicated political columnist David Broder observed, “Dixon is a fascinating example of the emerging alternative style of black leadership: a person who makes his way not by the militance of his advocacy of civil rights or other racially linked issues, but on the basis of personal and intellectual qualities that cross racial and ideological divisions and make an effective bridge-builder.”¹³⁷

In many respects, Representatives Jordan and Dixon introduced a new legislative style that emerged among black Members during this generation: In de-emphasizing race, they served to foster a consensus-crafting approach among various factions. One political observer described this shift among black House Members in the 1980s, suggesting they bore “striking similarities” to their “independent” contemporary colleagues in both major parties. “First, they worked painstakingly to build their own organizations to win election,” political commentator Richard Cohen wrote. “Once in the House, they have become issue activists and coalition builders eager for influence, not necessarily inclined to await the delayed rewards of the seniority system.”¹³⁸ Political scientists also noted a gradual shift in the style of African-American representation during this era. During the 1960s and 1970s, legislative reformers and civil rights advocates emphasized the need for “descriptive” representation, i.e., electing more blacks to Congress with the goal of providing better representation for the African-American community. But by the latter part of the 20th century, many black Members of Congress had a new focus: “substantive” representation, which involved a connection between constituents and their Representatives that was based on legislative agenda and achievements rather than solely on the color of their skin.¹³⁹

Even those who were elected to Congress because they dissented from the prevailing political establishment underwent a process of institutional integration that conferred upon them legislative success and leadership positions. Several Members adapted their activism to prevailing institutional norms. Elected to Congress from the epicenter of the anti–Vietnam War movement, Ronald Dellums was a prime example. Soon after being elected to the House, he introduced legislation to investigate alleged U.S. war crimes in Southeast Asia, as well as a measure to impose penalties on the apartheid regime in South Africa. Dellums declared, “I am not going to back away from being called a radical. If being an advocate of peace, justice, and humanity toward all human beings is radical, then I’m glad to be called a radical.”¹⁴⁰ He worked his way onto the Armed Services Committee largely to try to curb vast Pentagon expenditures. Dellums was literally denied a seat at the table when he first joined that panel: He was forced to share a single chair with Patricia Schroeder of Colorado (then the only woman on the committee) by Chairman F. Edward Hébert of Louisiana as a sign of contempt.¹⁴¹ But Dellums’s activism was tempered by the need to craft legislation through compromise. Contrary to opponents’ expectations, Dellums forged a reputation as an effective coalition builder to achieve his legislative goals; for instance, he allied with fiscal conservatives to halt production of the controversial B-2 bomber in the early 1980s. In 1993, partially reflecting the degree to which the Bay Area Representative had mastered institutional politics, Dellums became the senior Democrat and assumed the chair of the Armed Services Committee. “If you are around the House long enough, you learn its rules and customs and come to understand that no point of principle is served by remaining a permanent outsider,” Dellums reflected in retirement. “My constituency, like any other, had sent me to Washington to legislate. I owed them nothing less than my best.”¹⁴²

Other Members of this generation followed a similar trajectory. For instance, Delegate Walter Fauntroy drew upon his experience in the civil rights movement and as a community activist in Washington, DC, to develop effective coalitions in the House on issues ranging from apartheid to home rule in the District of Columbia; he eventually chaired more than a half-dozen House subcommittees.¹⁴³ As supporters, and in some cases, participants, in the civil rights movement, many of the founding members of the CBC initially believed that working outside the system—following Powell’s militant example during his House career—would best serve African Americans. But gradually it became apparent that working with House leaders, particularly with high-ranking Democratic Members, could produce measurable and substantive results. Mickey Leland, a self-described “revolutionary,” explained that many of his black colleagues could now bargain for legislative goals from a position of strength. “We understand that in order to get our point across we don’t have to jump up and down on the table or shoot off fireworks to get the attention of the leadership,” Leland remarked. “We go in and negotiate.”¹⁴⁴

Over time, black Members forged alliances with congressional groups with similar policy goals. “The technique now is coalitions,” Julian Dixon remarked in the 1980s. “I don’t think we want to stand alone on the issues. The numbers tell us we won’t be successful.”¹⁴⁵ Representative Schroeder, a cofounder of the Women’s Caucus, acknowledged the necessity for cooperative efforts among minorities in Congress during the 1980s: “It seemed that the three chairpersons of the women’s, black and Hispanic caucuses have been sewn together around issues of equal concern, such as hunger, the feminization of poverty, the extension of the Voting Rights Act and the reauthorization of the civil rights commission.”¹⁴⁶

African-American politicians’ electoral success in the latter half of the 20th century presented new challenges. New black Members, including more women and southern blacks, altered the gender and the geographic composition of the CBC. In 1997, Maxine Waters of California became the first woman elected to head the CBC since Cardiss Collins held the position in the 96th Congress (1979–1981), indicating the growing influence of women in the caucus; in the subsequent decade, Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas (107th Congress, 2001–2003) and Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick of Michigan (110th Congress) also chaired the CBC.¹⁴⁷ The influx of new Members from rural and suburban districts modified the substance of the caucus, which historically had fielded Representatives from northern cities.¹⁴⁸ New committee assignments and issues that were significant to southern and rural districts, such as support for the space industry and tobacco farmers, were included in black Members’ more diversified approach to the political landscape.¹⁴⁹

Consequently, the CBC had difficulty sustaining the collective voice envisioned by its founders in 1971. Although most black Members still represented majority-black districts, the swelling membership of the caucus and the conflicting opinions of its individual members resulted in internal divisions.¹⁵⁰ Still, the group managed to focus on the common goals of opposing racism and backing equal opportunity. “Like coalition building in any context, holding the Black Caucus together required fluidity and flexibility, the constant search for common ground, and no rigid tests of membership,” Representative Dellums later noted, “otherwise the fate of other caucuses and coalitions that had arisen during the same period would have befallen the CBC as well.”¹⁵¹

In 1992, with the election of the second Democratic President during the CBC’s history, William J. (Bill) Clinton, political commentators believed the group would be able to advance a broad legislative agenda. Yet, much as with President Carter, the CBC was often at odds with the Clinton administration, particularly because of its willingness to compromise with conservatives on Capitol Hill.¹⁵² Many black Members dissented from key administration policies, such as portions of the 1993 Clinton budget, the North American Free Trade Agreement, relations with Haiti, and the controversial nomination (and then withdrawal) of civil rights scholar Lani Guinier for Assistant U.S. Attorney General for Civil Rights. However, the CBC’s clout ensured that the President seriously considered the group’s point of view and often consulted the caucus regarding policy affecting African Americans.¹⁵³

After the Republicans won control of Congress in 1995—and a majority in the House for the first time in 40 years—the CBC’s legislative momentum and hard-fought institutional gains dissipated. The institutional structure of the House, which favors the majority, relegated Democratic black Representatives to a secondary role, much like the status of their white Democratic colleagues. Nevertheless, many members of the caucus promised to continue their mission, regardless of the party change. “The Congressional Black Caucus has got to yell louder and scream or be steamrollered,” asserted Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, epitomizing the pitched partisanship during the latter half of the decade.¹⁵⁴ Political scientist Robert C. Smith, writing shortly after the GOP takeover, voiced widely shared frustration with black Members’ inability to advance a legislative agenda. Despite numerical gains, the attainment of leadership positions, and prominent civil rights efforts, “blacks in Congress are frequently an isolated, invisible, inconsequential minority unable to enact (or often even to get serious debate and deliberation on) proposals it deems minimally necessary to meliorate the problems of joblessness, crime and dispossession that plague its core constituency.”¹⁵⁵

Still, the change in party control—largely the result of southern white Democrats in the House being replaced by an insurgent Republican Party in the South—had ancillary benefits for black Members. In the minority Democratic Party, black Members now represented a larger percentage of the Democratic Caucus.¹⁵⁶ Given the relative electoral safety of their districts, this increase portended significant consequences for boosting blacks into a greater share of leadership roles in the party as they collectively accounted for greater percentages of the more experienced cadre of Democrats.¹⁵⁷

Conflicting Imperatives: Black Interests Versus Party Agenda

While the institutional headway made by African-American Members during the 1970s and 1980s strengthened the collective authority of the CBC, it posed new challenges to the cohesiveness of the organization. Its success advancing black Representatives into the upper echelons of the institutional establishment raised expectations for the group and for individual Members to produce immediate, tangible results for Black Americans. Moreover, some black Members began to experience conflicting pressures between their allegiance to the CBC, their responsibilities as committee and party leaders, and their debt to the Democratic leaders who had placed them in positions of power. The development of conflicts between individual aspirations and collective goals was a sign of African-American institutional maturation, and other minority groups in Congress experienced such conflicts as well. A similar process unfolded among women Members of Congress, often creating tension between the institutional apprenticeship generation of the 1940s and 1950s, who had attained leadership positions, and the feminist activists who followed them.¹⁵⁸

This theme recurs throughout the service of this generation of Black Americans in Congress. The career of Representative Bill Gray provides an illustrative example. As chairman of the House Budget Committee for the 99th and 100th Congresses (1985–1989), Gray asserted his independence: “I am not here to do the bidding of somebody just because they happen to be black. If I agree with you, I agree with you. I set my policy.”¹⁵⁹ Once he rose to the chairmanship of the Budget Committee, Gray encouraged the CBC to continue submitting an alternative budget, although he did not publicly support it. His decision to vote “present” when the CBC measure came to the House Floor disrupted the public solidarity of the organization and angered some of his black colleagues, who thought Gray was placing personal interests ahead of caucus goals.¹⁶⁰ Similarly, Julian Dixon, who chaired the CBC in the 98th Congress, refused to bring the Caucus’s alternative budget to the House Floor for a vote. House leaders had asked Dixon, also a subcommittee chairman of the Appropriations Committee, to pledge his support for the House Budget Committee’s budget proposal to attract rank-and-file Democrats’ votes for the measure. Knowing he could extract some concessions for his support, the CBC chairman agreed. “Our purpose, hopefully, is not to go down to defeat with honor,” Dixon explained. “Our purpose is to have some success.”¹⁶¹

Investigations, Corruption, and Race

Concerns about public corruption became commonplace in the post-Watergate Era as the number of Americans who trusted their government decreased. That distrust was magnified by a growing adversarial relationship between the press and public officials. Throughout this period, a number of African-American officeholders, including a significant number of black Members of Congress, observed that federal investigations into political corruption unfairly targeted black politicians.¹⁶² This perception may have been partially due to an increase in the total number of corruption probes conducted by the federal government, which soared more than 2,300 percent between 1970 (63) and 1991 (1,452).¹⁶³ Additionally, the number of black officials who held public positions increased from 1,469 in 1970 to 6,681 in 1987. Nevertheless, African-American officials seemed disproportionately targeted. One study found that of the 465 political corruption probes initiated by the Justice Department between 1983 and 1988, 14 percent investigated black officeholders—even though they represented just 3 percent of all U.S. officeholders.¹⁶⁴ Black Members of Congress often believed they were the targets of such investigations, asserting that they were singled out for scrutiny on racial grounds and were held to higher standards than their white counterparts. Some interpreted such scrutiny as a coordinated effort to silence black officeholders by “diluting [their] influence and credibility.”¹⁶⁵ Representative Bill Clay, Sr., maintained that the legal problems encountered by Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and Harold Ford, Sr., were examples of a “pattern” of investigatory practices and “harassment.”¹⁶⁶

From 1981 to 1993, roughly half the members of the CBC were the subjects of federal investigations or indictments, though few were convicted.¹⁶⁷ Bill Clay, Sr., claimed that federal investigations and political corruption probes into the careers and personal lives of black officeholders were often part of a long-standing “conspiracy to silence dissent.” According to Clay, business and “elite” interests—using government, judicial, and law enforcement mechanisms as well as a pliant press—sought to ruin the reputations of those who spoke out about racial, economic, or social inequality.¹⁶⁸ Some political observers did not fully agree with that viewpoint. “There is no question there is real racism in our country,” said African-American journalist Juan Williams in 1987, but he added, “Unfortunately, it is not the case that racism explains all charges of corruption.” Some prominent black officials, such as then-Virginia Governor L. Douglas Wilder and Representative John Lewis, publicly disputed the conspiracy viewpoint. An official from a black political organization succinctly described the relationship between blacks’ new role in the political process and the increased scrutiny by public officials: “White folks are in a fishbowl; they get to swim. Black folks are in a test tube; they have to go straight up or down.”¹⁶⁹

Within Congress, African-American Members were appointed to chair the House Standards of Official Conduct (Ethics) Committee more often than any other congressional panel.¹⁷⁰ In the 1980s and 1990s, respected insiders such as Representatives Stokes and Dixon led the Ethics Committee, once during a highly sensitive investigation into alleged standards violations by Speaker Jim Wright of Texas. The scandal with the strongest effect on black Members during this era occurred in 1992 when the press publicized General Accounting Office and House internal investigations revealing that dozens of lawmakers (some 220 former and current Members) had overdrawn their accounts at the informal House “Bank” run by the House Sergeant at Arms. Nine African-American Members revealed that they had written checks without sufficient funds, and five were on the list of the “worst offenders” that was released by the House Ethics Committee.¹⁷¹ The occurrence of the scandal in an election year, with the economy in recession, magnified voters’ discontent with incumbents. However, only one black incumbent, Charles Hayes, lost his primary re-election campaign in the Chicago district he had represented for a decade; his name appeared on a list that was leaked days before the contest.¹⁷² As in the preceding generation, African Americans who faced such investigations or congressional disciplinary actions enjoyed unusually strong loyalty from their constituencies.

Redistricting And “Deracrialization”: Opportunities And Limits

The return of African Americans to Congress in the third generation (1929–1970) and the phases of rapid expansion (1971–1977, 1991–1995) in the fourth generation are attributable to unique historical forces, the intervention of the courts, and legislative remedies. These developments include the Great Migration, which concentrated blacks in northern cities; the passage and implementation of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act (and its extensions); and court decisions in subsequent decades that supported the creation of majority or minority congressional districts.

Title 2 of the Voting Rights Act Amendment of 1982 was critical to the development of racial redistricting after the 1990 Census. That provision marked a significant shift from an emphasis on “process-oriented” remedies, which focused on providing minority voters equal access and opportunity (such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965) to an emphasis on end results achieved by prohibiting electoral arrangements that had the intent or the effect of diluting minority votes. In addition, the growing number of African-American state legislators on key committees with oversight of election and redistricting issues (by one account, 17 percent of all black state legislators in 1992 served on such committees) significantly boosted black electoral prospects in the early 1990s.¹⁷³

Redistricting imposed by the courts and the decennial reapportionment mandated by the Constitution were carried out by state legislatures and accounted for major changes in 1992, in combination with an anti-incumbent mood and the election of a Democratic President for the first time in 12 years. That year, more blacks were elected to Congress than in any previous decade (16 Representatives and one Senator), and 13 of the 16 newly elected black House Members were from districts that had been redrawn for black majorities. The other new black Representatives succeeded retiring or defeated black incumbents.¹⁷⁴ “I think the Congressional Black Caucus has moved to a whole other level,” Ronald Dellums observed.“We can win. We’ve gone beyond just being ‘the conscience of the House.’”¹⁷⁵

At the opening of the 103rd Congress African-American representation reached a then-historic high of 40, including the first black woman Senator, Carol Moseley-Braun. Moseley-Braun’s election was significant for other reasons, too: She became just the fourth African American ever to serve in the upper chamber and the first to be elected as a Democrat. She won decisively in majority-black districts in Chicago but also drew broad-based support from voters from across the state, including a core black constituency, women, and liberal whites.¹⁷⁶ Her campaign strategy was essentially one of “deracialization,” a term coined by political scientists to describe an African-American candidate running in a majority-white jurisdiction (often against a white opponent) and energetically seeking white voter support. Black candidates who employed this method avoided strong racial appeals. This strategy was not new; in the 1980s, House Members John Lewis and Mike Espy both won election in districts that, while majority black, required them to develop significant coalitions of both white and African-American voters.¹⁷⁷

Nevertheless, African Americans seeking election to the Senate faced an obstinate, seemingly insuperable barrier. Lingering racial prejudices, difficulty in securing funding, and the diminished strength of black voting blocs in statewide elections cumulatively discouraged many qualified blacks from seeking a Senate seat. The major parties nominated only nine African Americans as Senate candidates in the 20th century, and these included Brooke and Moseley-Braun.¹⁷⁸ Reflecting on his career as the longest-serving African American in the chamber’s history, Senator Brooke noted that when he came to Washington in 1967, Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, a former House Member, was the lone woman. But by 2007, 16 women served in the Senate—many of whom had served in the House. No such transition has yet occurred for black Members. To date, no African-American Representatives have been elected to the Senate, though several have attempted to make this transition, including Alan Wheat, Denise Majette, and Harold Ford, Jr. The lack of black representation in the Senate “deeply saddened” Brooke and, he added, remained “a blight on the American electorate that should be removed.”¹⁷⁹ In 2004, Barack Obama—a theretofore little-known Illinois state senator—won election to a seat held by retiring incumbent Peter Fitzgerald, who had defeated Senator Moseley-Braun in her 1998 re-election bid. Employing a campaign strategy (running against African-American GOP nominee Alan Keyes) that echoed Moseley-Braun’s efforts, the charismatic and energetic Senator Obama rapidly evolved into a serious contender for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. However, halfway through his first Congress he remained the only African-American Senator, as were his four African-American predecessors.

While race-based redistricting of the early 1990s dramatically boosted the number of black Americans in the House, it also produced a tide of lawsuits by voters whose former districts were bifurcated and dissected by state legislatures. In 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court rendered a judgment in Shaw v. Reno (509 U.S. 630) that reinstated a suit by five North Carolinians who charged that one of the state’s new congressional districts (a district represented by Representatives Mel Watt that wound along the I-85 corridor and took in several urban areas) violated their 14th Amendment rights to equal protection under the law by diluting their votes. In a 5 to 4 decision, the court questioned the constitutionality of drawing congressional districts with “bizarre” shapes. While the decision did not overturn a lower-court ruling that rejected the suit, it was returned to the lower courts with what seemed to be a new standard for scrutiny.¹⁸⁰

Within a few years, Shaw v. Reno spawned redistricting challenges in a number of states, with the potential to affect the boundaries of roughly a dozen U.S. congressional districts represented by African Americans. On June 29, 1995, the Supreme Court struck down Georgia’s congressional district map in the case of Miller v. Johnson (515 U.S. 900), a case brought by plaintiffs in a district represented by Representative Cynthia McKinney that stretched from Atlanta to the Georgia coast—some 260 miles away.¹⁸¹ The judgment called into question the creation of any district in which race was the “predominant factor.” Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy explained, “just as the state may not, absent extraordinary justification, segregate citizens on the basis of race in its public parks, buses, golf courses, beaches, and schools,” the government also “may not separate its citizens into different voting districts on the basis of race.” The decision reconfigured McKinney’s district, as well as that of another African-American Member from Georgia, Sanford Bishop. Over the course of the next several years, lawsuits challenged the boundaries of African American-held seats in Florida, Texas, Virginia, and South Carolina.¹⁸²

Virtually all of the black Members whose districts were reconfigured midway through the decade emerged unscathed, and in many cases, reapportionment after the 2000 Census reinforced their positions. Cleo Fields of Louisiana, who spent much of his second term in Congress fighting redistricting challenges in court, was the only casualty. In 1996 a federal district court that relied on the Shaw v. Reno and Miller v. Johnson rationale struck down the Louisiana legislature’s redrawing of Cleo Fields’s Z-shaped district, which included jurisdictions in the state’s northern, eastern, and southern quadrants. Fields’s district was reconfigured so that it no longer had a majority-black population; of even greater significance, his hometown was outside the boundaries of the new district. Consequently, Fields declined to run against the longtime incumbent who represented the new district. The long-term impact of these decisions was ambiguous, with opinion closely divided over the issue. Racially gerrymandered districts remained a politically contentious electoral device on both sides of the political spectrum.¹⁸³ Liberals believed the districts offered “descriptive” rather than “substantive” representation, and those from the civil rights generation suggested that lumping blacks into specially designated districts ran counter to the movement’s goal of fostering commonality among blacks and whites. In the mid-1990s, John Lewis expressed the concern that majority-black districts could “ensnare blacks in separate enclaves, the exact opposite of what the civil rights movement intended.”¹⁸⁴ Conservatives have argued that the creation of the districts endorsed a kind of “racial apartheid” and, more pointedly, that those elected from such districts—which were created to express the interests of a particular racial group—would as a matter of practical politics place their primary allegiance with that group rather than the entire constituency.

Despite major gains in the 1990s, African Americans were still considerably underrepresented in Congress and the state legislatures. According to figures from the 2000 Census, African Americans constituted roughly 12.5 percent of the U.S. population, but accounted for 8.1 percent of the total number of state legislators nationally in 2003 and just 8 percent of the membership in the 110th Congress.¹⁸⁵

Conclusion

The post-1970 generation of Black Americans in Congress exemplified the maturation of African-American influence on Capitol Hill in nearly every quantifiable measure. By the beginning of the 21st century, the number of black Members of Congress had increased dramatically, expanding their hold on leadership positions, practicing legislative entrepreneurship, developing important coalition—and consensus—building specialties, and winning key legislative triumphs. Despite the attendant growing pains, these were remarkable achievements in an institution that was often resistant to change.

The inception and growth of the CBC during this era marked a principal institutional development in the story of Black Americans in Congress. The caucus acquired stature rapidly, transforming itself from a congressional irritant to a potent bloc for advocating issues and promoting African Americans to positions of power within Congress. Examining the historic power of the CBC to shape legislation, political scientist Milton D. Morris observes, “There is no clear evidence of influence beyond routine advocacy and/or a contact point for the interested black public, but as a vehicle for articulating positions held by African American members of Congress it almost certainly strengthens their voice on selected issues.”¹⁸⁶ The marked increase in the number of Black Americans in Congress during the 1990s renewed hope and expectations that the CBC would play a more influential role in Congress.

A new era began in the 110th Congress when the Democrats regained control of the House for the first time in 12 years. The change in party control amplified the power of the all-Democratic CBC. Once again, seniority positioned the longest-serving African Americans for influential roles throughout the committee system and the House leadership. When the 110th Congress convened in January 2007, African Americans held the chairmanships of five full House committees and 17 subcommittees. In all, 22 of the 43 African Americans in Congress—51 percent—held committee leadership positions.¹⁸⁷ Leadership positioning for African Americans crystallized as a significant institutional strength—an ironic development in light of the immense power wielded just decades earlier by entrenched southern conservative committee chairs who used it to thwart civil rights legislation.

The debate about minority districts during the 1990s touched on a broader dialogue about representation in a democratic government. Whether descriptive or substantive representation best advanced the interests of African Americans was not resolved. Some believed majority–minority districts to be necessary for the democratization of the political process: Most important, they provide historically underrepresented African-American voters representation in Congress, and instead of promoting the notion that only blacks can or should represent black voters, they foster political commonality. As political scientist David T. Canon explains, “factions within the African-American community produce candidates with different ideological backgrounds and different visions of the representation of racial interests. One significant effect of this ideological diversity among black candidates is to give a centrist coalition of moderate white and black voters the power to elect the black candidate of their choice in many districts.”¹⁸⁸ In essence, descriptive representation and substantive representation were not mutually exclusive.

Such coalition-building may well be the key to creating an even larger and more influential role for future Black Members of Congress. Undoubtedly, new challenges lie ahead, but even a brief survey of African-American history on Capitol Hill since 1870 reveals a pattern: Through distinct stages—symbolic, apprentice, and mature—black Americans have persisted, overcoming obstacles to achive a position of unprecedented influence in Congress. In legislating for an uncertain future, current black Members and their successors will be able to draw strength from their predecessors’ historic accomplishments and experiences.