Georgia’s U.S. Senate runoff on Tuesday, December 6, 2022, will decide whether the 2023 Senate holds the 50-50 chamber status quo, or gives Democrats a 51-49 majority.
The U.S Senate is 232 years old, and the Upper Chamber has had only 11 Black senators. If Herschel Walker wins the Georgia seat, he would be the 12th.
In modern times, two Black candidates have faced off only once before, 2004 in Illinois, where the GOP drafted perennial presidential aspirant Alan Keyes from the state of Maryland to run against Barack Obama, a young state senator who emerged from a large candidate field to become the Democratic nominee.
But the who’s, when’s, and where’s may surprise you. Illinois, Mississippi, and Massachusetts have each had two African Americans in the U.S.
Senate, with the entire nation dividing up the other five.
U.S. Senator Hiram Revels was the first, a former minister and barber, selected by the State of Mississippi and serving one year, 1870-1871, being sworn in just 22 days after the ratification of the 15th Amendment. The second was U.S. Senator Blanche K. Bruce, also selected by the Mississippi legislature, and serving from 18751881. Born into slavery, Bruce became a plantation owner and strong advocate for African American veterans of the Civil War.
World War II veteran and U.S. Senator Edward Brooke (R-Massachusetts) would serve two terms from 1967 to 1979. Brooke did not consider himself a trailblazer in terms of the politics of race, once quoted as saying, “I do not intend to be a national leader of the Negro people. I intend to do my job as a senator from Massachusetts.”
U.S. Senator Carol Moseley Braun (D-Illinois), a former U.S.
Attorney and Assistant Majority Leader in the Illinois General Assembly, would break the gender barrier for African American women, serving one term from 1993-1999.
Moseley lost her bid for re-election and later ran for president in 2004, but she would fall early in the field to another Democrat from Illinois, then a state senator, Barack Obama.
U.S. Senator Obama won his seat in 2004, after the GOP nominee, Jack Ryan, withdrew during a sex scandal and the Illinois GOP substituted out-of-state candidate Keyes. Four years into his first term and on the heels of releasing a political memoir that became a national bestseller, Obama would be elected as the first African American president.
Roland Burris, an Illinois Democrat was appointed to fulfill the final two years of Obama’s term in 2008, serving until November 2010. Citing fundraising challenges, Burris retired rather than seek re-election to a full six-year term.
In 2013, U.S. Senator Tim Scott (R-South Carolina), was appointed to fulfill an unexpired term and then re-elected to six-year terms in 2016 and again in 2022.
Also in 2013, U.S.
Senator William Cowan (D-Massachusetts) was appointed to fulfill the term of U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts), who left the Senate to become Secretary of State. Cowan served six months and with Tim Scott on the other side of the aisle, this was the first time two African Americans were serving in the Senate at the same time. Cowan chose not to seek a full term in the coming special election.
Dynamic Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker won a special election in October 2013. He was elected to his first full term in 2014 and then a second in 2020.
In 2017, Senator Kamala Harris, previously San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general, became California’s first Black U.S. senator. Senator Harris then ran for President in 2020 and was sworn in as vice-president to Biden in January 2021. She currently presides over the U.S. Senate.
Like Revels, America’s first black U.S. Senator, Reverend Raphael Warnock would follow a path from the pulpit into politics, with voters in the metro Atlanta suburbs giving him and fellow Democrat Jon Osoff twin runoff victories in January 2021, turning both of Georgia’s U.S.
Senate seats blue. After Warnock’s swearing-in, the U.S. Senate had for the first time three black members, Booker, Scott and Warnock, with Vice-President Harris presiding.
In the history of the body, that gives four Black senate seats to the GOP, seven to the Democratic Party, and six of those members come from only three states, with more seats filled by appointment than first won in a general election.
It would seem the South might be well due a bit less finger-wagging and lecturing about the state of race relations. And given the year is 2022, perhaps it’s time to bring that aggregate number of African Americans serving in the U.S. Senate to a nice even dozen.