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Under
God
Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Bethany House
Released: October 2004
ISBN 0764200098
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'UNDER GOD'
First African Americans in Congress
By tobyMac and Michael Tait
CBN.com –
With the end of the Civil War and the enacting of the Thirteenth,
Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments came the guarantee of civil
rights and voting privileges for all former slaves. The sudden
addition of millions of black voters resulted in a number of African
Americans being voted into Congress.
The first African American elected to the U.S. Senate was Hiram
Rhodes Revels, who in 1869 filled the seat vacated by Confederate
President Jefferson Davis.
Also in 1869, fellow Republican Joseph H. Rainey became the first
black member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Others soon followed, but they were not without opposition. For
example, Robert Brown Elliott, elected to the U.S. House in 1871,
faced off in a debate over a civil rights bill. After giving a
most eloquent and effective speech, his opponents, as reported
in the American Methodist Episcopal Church Review, "denied
his authorship . . . upon the general principle that the Negro,
of himself, could accomplish nothing of literary excellence."
Others among the first African Americans elected to Congress
included Benjamin S. Turner, Josiah T. Walls, Robert C. DeLarge,
and Jefferson H. Long.
Blacks achieved numerous political firsts, and so great were
their gains that in 1866 the Ku Klux Klan was formed. Among the
KKK's declared purposes was the regaining of white Democratic
control in elections.
In the history of Congress, 105 black Americans have been elected — 101
to the House and four to the Senate.
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Excerpted from:
Under God by tobyMac and Michael
Tait (with WallBuilders)
Copyright © 2004; ISBN 0764200098
Published by Bethany
House Publishers
Used by permission. Unauthorized duplication prohibited.
For more information on this book, visit the Under
God Web site.
More from the Black
History Section on CBN.com
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