Senator Tim Scott was appointed to the US Senate in December 2012
until the November 2014 election to fill the position after Jim DeMint
resigned. This week he was elected to finish the last two years of
DeMint's original term. (So there were two US Senate races in South
Carolina this year.) Scott, the first African-American to represent
South Carolina in the US Senate, defeated Democrat Joyce Dickerson, also
an African-American, to become the first
elected
African-American from South Carolina. This got me thinking about
whether there had been a US Senate race where two African-Americans were
the candidates. It turns out there was one before as people in
Illinois will surely remember.
There have only been nine African-American US Senators, beginning with two from Mississippi -
Hiram Rhodes Revels and Blanche Bruce.
Both were Republicans, the party of Lincoln. They were both appointed
by the Mississippi State Legislature. (US Senators were not directly
elected by the voters until after the
17th Amendment was ratified in 1913.)
In 1966 Massachusetts Republican
Edward Brooke became the first African-American to be elected to the Senate.
In 1992
Carol Moseley Braun, Democrat in Illinois, became the second to be elected to, and the first woman African-American in, the Senate.
In 2002 Democrat
Barack Obama defeated Republican and also African-American Alan Keyes. Yes, this was the
first time two African-Americans ran for the US Senate against each other.
When Obama was elected President, another African-American,
Roland Burris, was appointed to finish his term.
Then came the appointment of
Tim Scott to replace DeMint followed by the appointment of
Mo Cowan of Massachusetts to replace John Kerry when he was appointed Secretary of State.
Finally,
Cory Booker,
Democrat of New Jersey, was elected in a special election to fill the
vacancy after Senator Frank R. Lautenberg's death. Booker was reelected
in this week's election.
So, a total of nine black US Senators. Of those,
- two were appointed by the Mississippi state legislature
- three were appointed, one of those going on to get elected for another term (Scott)
- four elected to office the first time
A sidenote to the unexpected Democratic loss of the Maryland
governorship is that the Democratic candidate, Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown,
is African-American.
You can get more on that story here.
The outlines of this post come from a
Wikipedia List of African-Americans in The US Senate, which also puts these numbers into context:
"As of 2014, there have been 1,950 members of the United States Senate, but only nine have been African American."
That Wikipedia entry also had a strange side note of sorts about P.B.S. Pinckback titled:
"African Americans elected to the U.S. Senate, but not seated"
It doesn't say anything more about how that happened, but there are footnotes.
Google turns up almost nothing on Pinchback. A footnote in the Wikipedia piece leads to an
essay on Black politicians and the post civil war South
from the US House of Representatives History, Art, and Archives pages
that probably offers the most meat. Here's most of what they say about
Pinchback:
"In a unique case of double
contested elections, African-American Pinckney B. S. Pinchback of
Louisiana was elected simultaneously to both the Senate and House.
Pinchback lost the contested House seat and, citing claims of fraud in
the state legislature, the Senate denied him his seat as well. Serving
as provisional governor of Louisiana at the time, Pinchback signed his
own election certifications."
I suspect that Pinchback would make a great doctoral dissertation and/or book.
For
people wondering how I got into this, I'm updating my older posts on
Blacks in Congress to reflect this week's election. This is one of the
sidebars that's delaying posting that one.
(Directions: It's at the far east side of campus. Go into UAA just east of the library at the light. Turn right at the Administration building. Then that road gets you to the theater/arts building.)
