Here’s Every Black U.S. Senator In American History

Circa 1870, from left: Sen. Hiram Revels of Mississippi with some of the first Black members of Congress, Benjamin Turner, Robert De Large, Josiah Walls, Jefferson Long, Joseph Rainey and Robert Brown Elliot. | Source: MPI / Getty

UPDATED: 3:30 p.m. ET, Nov. 13, 2024

Black history was made last week when voters elected U.S. Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland to the U.S. Senate. When they are sworn into office in January, it will mark the first time that two African American women serve in the U.S. Senate at the same time.

The duo will also be the fourth- and fifth-ever Black women U.S. Senators, bringing the total number of Black Senators to 14 in the Senate’s 235-year history. When the first Senate session begins next year, there will be four sitting U.S. Senators who are Black, the first time in history that many Black Senators have served at the same time.

Their historic elections follow last year’s nomination of Laphonza Butler, a Black woman who was selected by California Gov. Gavin Newsome to replace longtime Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Butler did not seek election this month.

Before the 2024 election, there had only been two other Black women elected to the U.S. Senate, and one of them was running for president this year.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) (C) meets with newly elected Democratic Senators, (L-R) Senator-elect Andy Kim (D-NJ), Senator-elect Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), Senator-elect Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) Senator-elect Adam Schiff (D-CA) Senator-elect Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE) and Senator-elect Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) at the U.S. Capitol Building on November 12, 2024, in Washington, D.C. | Source: Chip Somodevilla / Getty

The nearly all-white upper chamber of the U.S. Congress will maintain its slim racial diversity in Capitol Hill’s most exclusive club.

A glaring void of Black women senators was left after then-California Sen. Harris was elected U.S. Vice President in 2020, making her the first Black vice president in American history.

Hopes were raised when Newsom had the chance to fill Harris’ Senate seat with another Black woman. Instead, the 2021 Congress opened without a Black woman Senator for the first time in four years, a fate it faced for more than two years until Butler’s nomination.

Only in recent years has the election of Black candidates to the U.S. Senate picked up steam.

Circa 1883: Head-and-shoulders portraits of “Distinguished Colored Men” Frederick Douglass, Robert Brown Elliott, U.S. Sen. Blanche K. Bruce, William Wells Brown, Md., Prof. R.T. Greener, Rt. Rev. Richard Allen, J.H. Rainey, E.D. Bassett, John Mercer Langston, P.B.S. Pinchback and Henry Highland Garnet. | Source: Buyenlarge / Getty

It’s been more than 150 years since the first Black person was elected to the U.S. Senate, with another following four years later in 1874.

But it would be more than 90 years later until the next Black man was elected to the U.S. Senate.

It would be another quarter of a century until the next Black person — the first Black woman — would win a Senate election.

A little more than a decade later, America got its next Black Senator — one who would notably go on to become the first Black person elected president of the United States.

That seemingly opened the relative floodgates to usher in a historic era that would include four more Black U.S. Senators, culminating with three of whom had legitimate runs for the White House.

Scroll down to better acquaint yourselves with every Black U.S. Senator in American history, in chronological order.

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