Three of the 14 African-American senators held Illinois's Class 3 seat, including Barack Obama, who went on to become President of the United States.
The U.S. Census Bureau defines "African Americans" as citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa.
[citation needed] During the founding of the federal government, African Americans were consigned to a status of second-class citizenship or enslaved.
Hiram Rhodes Revels, the first African American to serve in the Senate, was elected in 1870[5] by the Mississippi State Legislature to succeed Albert G. Brown, who resigned during the Civil War.
Some Democratic members of the United States Senate opposed his being seated based on the court case Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) by the Supreme Court of the United States, claiming that Revels did not meet the nine-year citizenship requirement, but the majority of senators voted to seat him.
Every other Southern state also passed disfranchising constitutions by 1908, thus excluding African Americans from the political system in the entire former Confederacy.
Following Obama's election as president, the next two black senators, Tim Scott of South Carolina and Mo Cowan of Massachusetts, were both appointed by governors to fill the terms of Jim DeMint and John Kerry, respectively, who had resigned their positions.
[10] Harris was the second African-American woman to serve in the Senate, and, in 2020, was elected as the first female vice president of the United States.
The histogram below sets forth the number of African Americans who served in the United States Senate during the periods provided.