Researching the Topic of African Americans in Congress
The literature on African-American history, which has grown into one of the most dynamic fields in the profession, has been created largely since the 1960s. John Hope Franklin, the post−World War II dean of Black history, wrote the textbook From Slavery to Freedom (first published in 1947; later editions were written with Alfred A. Moss Jr.); with eight editions in half a century, this textbook remains an excellent starting point for those who wish to appreciate the breadth of the African-American historical experience. Professor Moss read a draft of the 2008 edition of this book.
The ample literature on African-American history is wide-ranging. As often as possible we have pointed readers, in the endnotes of the essays and profiles of this volume, toward standard works on various aspects of African-American history and congressional history. As the field has grown, a number of political biographies have been published on nineteenth-century Black Members of Congress, including Robert Brown Elliott, George Washington Murray, Robert Smalls, George Henry White, and Blanche K. Bruce. In 2020, the Office of the House Historian published “We Are in Earnest for Our Rights”: Representative Joseph H. Rainey and the Struggle for Reconstruction, a 35-page booklet (PDF) on the congressional career of the first Black Member of the U.S. House of Representatives. The lives of major twentieth-century Black Members of Congress, including William L. Dawson, Arthur Mitchell, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Charles C. Diggs Jr., Andrew Young, and Mickey Leland, have also been chronicled in recent biographies.11
View LargerMuch of this book is based on primary source material, particularly published official congressional records and scholarly compilations of congressional statistics. The Office of the House Historian consulted a wide range of sources for information related to congressional elections, committee assignments, legislation, votes, floor debates, news accounts, and images.
Congressional election results for the biennial elections from 1920 forward are compiled by the Office of the Clerk, published by GPO, and available online. Michael J. Dubin’s United States Congressional Elections, 1788–1997, contains results for both general and special elections. For information on district boundaries and reapportionment, the editors relied on Kenneth C. Martis’s The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress, 1789–1989.12
Committee assignments and information about jurisdiction may be found in three indispensable scholarly compilations: David T. Canon, Garrison Nelson, and Charles Stewart III, Committees in the U.S. Congress, 1789–1946, 4 vols.; Garrison Nelson, Committees in the U.S. Congress, 1947–1992, 2 vols.; and Garrison Nelson and Charles Stewart III, Committees in the U.S. Congress: 1993–2010. In addition, the editors of this volume consulted several primary sources to identify Members who chaired committees and subcommittees. The Congressional Directory, a GPO publication, dates to the nineteenth century and is available online from the 105th Congress (1997–1999) forward at https://www.govinfo.gov/app/collection/CDIR/. Committee and subcommittee rosters are also available in the independently published United States Code: Congressional Service and United States Code: Congressional and Administrative News. Another valuable source was the Congressional Staff Directory, which was published by Charles Bruce Brownson and Anna L. Brownson for more than 35 years starting in 1959. Additional editions were published by Congressional Quarterly from 1996 to 2012. The official lists of committee and subcommittee assignments compiled by the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Secretary of the U.S. Senate were also consulted. The House Clerk’s committee rosters are available from the 101st Congress forward at https://history.house.gov/Congressional-Overview/Profiles/101st/, and the Senate Secretary’s committee rosters are available from the 109th Congress (2005–2007) forward at https://www.senate.gov/committees/committee_assignments.htm. The availability of compiled subcommittee rosters before 1959 is incomplete. For this period, the editors also consulted committee reports and hearing transcripts for subcommittee membership information.13
Legislation, floor debates, roll call votes, bills, resolutions, and public laws back to the 1970s may be searched at https://congress.gov. A useful print resource that discusses major acts of Congress is Stephen W. Stathis’s Landmark Legislation, 1774–2012: Major U.S. Acts and Treaties, 2nd ed. Floor debates about legislation can be found in the Congressional Globe (1833–1873), available in the Library of Congress’s online digital collection Century of Lawmaking, at https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/, and the Congressional Record (1873–present), which is available at congress.gov from 1899 to the present. An index of the Congressional Record from 1983 to the present is available at https://www.govinfo.gov/app/collection/CRI/. The editors also consulted the official proceedings in the House Journal and the Senate Journal. For House roll call votes back to the second session of the 101st Congress, visit the House Clerk’s website at https://clerk.house.gov/Votes. For print copies of the Congressional Directory, the Congressional Globe, the Congressional Record, the House Journal, the Senate Journal, and committee publications, consult a federal depository library. A GPO locator for federal depository libraries is available at https://ask.gpo.gov/s/FDLD.14
We used online databases to review key newspapers from the major historical eras covered in this book, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, and the Atlanta Constitution. We also consulted African-American newspapers, including the Chicago Defender, the Atlanta Daily World, the Pittsburgh Courier, the Afro-American (Baltimore, Maryland), and the New York Amsterdam News. News accounts and feature stories often helped fill in gaps in the historical record with stunning detail. These newspaper citations appear in the notes.
View LargerAbout this object Ralph H. Metcalfe of Illinois (seated) broke down barriers as an athlete, winning a gold medal in the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany. As a Member of Congress, he advocated for disadvantaged people in his district.
Significant photo research was carried out for the 2008 edition of Black Americans in Congress, and many of the images in that print publication are replicated here. Each image is accompanied by information on the repository from which it was sourced, including, but not limited to, the Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress (Washington, DC), the Still Pictures Branch of the National Archives and Records Administration (College Park, Maryland), and the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University (Washington, DC). Images from more than a half-dozen Members’ manuscript collections, state legislatures, libraries, and archives are also included in the publication.
Most of the profile images were provided by the House Clerk’s Office of Art and Archives and are part of the Collection of the U.S. House of Representatives. The Senate Historical Office provided photographs of Senators. Images of current Members were provided by their offices. Current Member offices should serve as the point of contact for persons seeking an official image.
The editors thank the Office of the Clerk for its support and assistance in producing this edition of Black Americans in Congress. In particular, the Office of Art and Archives provided assistance with image credits and captions, and the Office of Communications copyedited and designed the final publication.
Footnotes
11Peggy Lamson, The Glorious Failure: Black Representative Robert Brown Elliott and the Reconstruction in South Carolina (New York: Norton, 1973); Benjamin R. Justesen, George Henry White: An Even Chance in the Race of Life (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001); John F. Marszalek, A Black Congressman in the Age of Jim Crow: South Carolina’s George Washington Murray (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006); Okun Edet Uya, From Slavery to Political Service: Robert Smalls, 1839–1915 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971); Andrew Billingsley, Yearning to Breathe Free: Robert Smalls of South Carolina and His Families (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007); Edward A. Miller Jr., Gullah Statesman: Robert Smalls from Slavery to Congress, 1839–1915 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995); Lawrence Otis Graham, The Senator and the Socialite: The True Story of America’s First Black Dynasty (New York: HarperCollins, 2006); Christopher Manning, William L. Dawson and the Limits of Black Electoral Leadership (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2009); Dennis S. Nordin, The New Deal’s Black Congressman: A Life of Arthur Wergs Mitchell (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997); Charles V. Hamilton, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.: The Political Biography of an American Dilemma (New York: Atheneum, 1991); Wil Haygood, King of the Cats: The Life and Times of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. (New York: Amistad, 2006); Carolyn P. DuBose, The Untold Story of Charles Diggs: The Public Figure, the Private Man (Arlington, VA: Barton Publishing, Inc., 1998); Andrew J. DeRoche, Andrew Young: Civil Rights Ambassador (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2003); Benjamin Talton, In This Land of Plenty: Mickey Leland and Africa in American Politics (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019).
12Michael J. Dubin, United States Congressional Elections, 1788–1997 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company Publishing, Inc., 1998); Kenneth C. Martis, The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress, 1789–1989 (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1989).
13David T. Canon, Garrison Nelson, and Charles Stewart III, Committees in the U.S. Congress, 1789–1946, 4 vols. (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2002); Garrison Nelson, Committees in the U.S. Congress, 1947–1992, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1994); Garrison Nelson and Charles Stewart III, Committees in the U.S. Congress: 1993–2010 (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2011); United States Code: Congressional Service (St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Co., 1942–1951); United States Code: Congressional and Administrative News (Eagan, MN: Thomson West, 1996–present); Charles B. Brownson, ed., Congressional Staff Directory (Indianapolis: Bobbs–Merrill Co., 1959–1960); Charles B. Brownson, ed., Congressional Staff Directory (Washington, DC: Congressional Staff Directory, 1961–1972); Charles B. Brownson, ed., Congressional Staff Directory (Alexandria, VA: Congressional Staff Directory, 1973–1975); Charles B. Brownson, ed. Congressional Staff Directory (Mount Vernon, VA: Congressional Staff Directory, 1976–1979); Charles B. Brownson, ed., Congressional Staff Directory (Mount Vernon, VA: Congressional Staff Directory, Ltd., 1980–1988); Ann L. Brownson, ed., Congressional Staff Directory (Mount Vernon, VA: Staff Directories, Ltd., 1989–1996); Congressional Staff Directory (Alexandria, VA: CQ Staff Directories, Inc., 1996–1998); Congressional Staff Directory (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1999–2012).
14Stephen W. Stathis, Landmark Legislation, 1774–2012: Major U.S. Acts and Treaties, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2014).