“First Colored Senator and Representatives”, 1872

Hiram Rhodes Revels was elected by the Mississippi legislature to the United States Senate in 1870.
Benjamin Sterling Turner represented Alabama in the House of Representatives from 1871 to 1873.
Josiah Thomas Walls was elected to represent Florida in Congress in 1870 and served three terms.
Joseph Hayne Rainey was the first African American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives and was the first black man to preside over the House. He served from 1870 until 1879.
Robert Brown Elliot was elected to Congress in 1870 and reelected two years later, serving from 1871 to 1874.
Robert Carlos De Large was elected to the House of Representatives in 1871.
Jefferson Franklin Long was the second African American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1870.

“First Colored Senator and Representatives” 1872

This engraving celebrated the election of first black senator and congressmen in 1870. For a brief period, emancipated slaves exercised the power of the majority in many southern congressional districts. After Federal troops were removed from the South in 1877, white southerners used violence and intimidation to regain political power.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress