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1876's Congress had eight Black members
A record that lasted
It was also the last time Congress would have that many Black representatives for almost 100 years.
A turning point
The photograph was sealed in the safe at a turning point. Reconstruction, the plan for a fully multiracial democracy in the United States for the first time, was just about to be abandoned. The country was only 11 years past the end of the Civil War, in which three-quarters of a million Americans died, and a spirit of reform, especially under the banner of the women's suffrage movement, was still running strong.
The 44th Congress sat in Washington amid a lot of political tumult, with the commercial hoopla of the centennial all around it. Its portrait was one of several in the safe, alongside Lincoln, Grant, and Anna Dean herself.
Why did Reconstruction end after 1876?
The 1876 presidential election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden was disputed over electoral votes in several Southern states. A special electoral commission awarded the presidency to Hayes in early 1877. Many historians describe a Compromise of 1877 in which Southern Democrats accepted Hayes in exchange for the removal of federal troops from the South. Hayes ordered the last troops out of Southern capitals that spring, and Reconstruction ended.
How did Black men win seats in Congress?
The Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 granted citizenship to people born in the country, and the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 barred denying the vote on grounds of race. Black men, many of them formerly enslaved, then voted in large numbers across the South and elected Black candidates. Hiram Revels of Mississippi became the first Black senator in 1870, and Joseph Rainey of South Carolina became the first Black member of the House the same year.
Why did Black representation in Congress collapse afterward?
After Reconstruction, Southern states used poll taxes, literacy tests, and violence at the polls to keep Black citizens from voting. Mississippi's 1890 constitution became a model for other states. George Henry White of North Carolina, the last Black member of Congress from the Reconstruction era, left office in 1901. No Black member from the South served again until Barbara Jordan and Andrew Young were elected in 1972.