Minorites In Congress

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             While the Congress of today is not proportionally representative of its people, it has vastly improved over the history of the United States. Each minority group seeking equal representation has had a history of struggle. While some minorities such as Black Americans and women have had notable records in Congress, Hispanics and even more so Asian Pacific Americans, Gays and Lesbians, and American Indians are still more the exception than the rule on the hill. .
             Blacks in Congress .
             During the Reconstruction period, blacks wielded political power in the South for the first time. Their leaders were largely clergymen, lawyers, and teachers who had been educated in the North and abroad. Among the ablest were Robert B. Elliott of South Carolina and John R. Lynch of Mississippi. Both were speakers of their state House of Representatives and were members of the United States Congress. Between 1869 and 1901, 20 black representatives and 2 black senators, Hiram R. Revels and Blanche K. Bruce of Mississippi, sat in the United States Congress. .
             However, black political power was short-lived. Northern politicians grew increasingly conciliatory to the white South, so that by 1872 virtually all leaders of the Confederacy had been pardoned and were able to vote and hold office. Blacks were disenfranchised by the provisions of new state constitutions (such as those adopted by Mississippi in 1890 and by South Carolina and Louisiana in 1895). Only a few Southern black elected officials lingered on. No black was to serve in the United States Congress for three decades after the departure of George H. White of North Carolina in 1901. In 1928, Black Americans would see a "second wave- of African-Americans enter the picture. Oscar DePriest, a Republican was elected from an inner city Chicago district. In 1934 he was defeated by Arthur Mitchell who was then the first black Democrat elected to Congress. A decade later, Adam Clayton Powell Jr.