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The first African Americans to serve in the Congress were Republicans elected during the Reconstruction Era. After the 13th and 14th Amendments granted freedom and citizenship to enslaved people , freedmen gained political representation in the Southern United States for the first time.
Nevertheless, many African Americans served in its legislature and Mississippi was the only state that elected African American candidates to the U.S. Senate during the Reconstruction era; a total of 37 African Americans served in the Senate and 117 served in the House. [59] [60]
After Congress passed the First Military Reconstruction Act of 1867 and ratified the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1870, African Americans began to be elected or appointed to national, state, county and local offices throughout the United States. [1] Four of the five office holders served in a New England state.
The Reconstruction era was a period in United States history and Southern United States history that followed the American Civil War and was dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of the abolition of slavery and the reintegration of the eleven former Confederate States of America into the United States.
During the founding of the federal government, African Americans were consigned to a status of second-class citizenship or enslaved. [3] No African American served in federal elective office before the ratification in 1870 of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Fifteenth Amendment prohibits the federal and state ...
The "Original 33" were the first 33 African-American members of the Georgia General Assembly. They were elected to office in 1868, during the Reconstruction era. They were among the first African-American state legislators in the United States. Twenty-four of the members were ministers.
The first two African-American senators represented the state of Mississippi during the Reconstruction era, following the American Civil War. 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.
Freedmen voting in New Orleans, 1867. Reconstruction lasted from Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 to the Compromise of 1877. [1] [2]The major issues faced by President Abraham Lincoln were the status of the ex-slaves (called "Freedmen"), the loyalty and civil rights of ex-rebels, the status of the 11 ex-Confederate states, the powers of the federal government needed to ...