Black History Month in US Government
Dateline: 2/6/2000
"Heritage and Horizons: The African American Legacy and the Challenges of the 21st Century" is the theme for Black History Month 2000, an observance created by black historian Carter G. Woodson in 1926 to honor not the struggle for freedom by African Americans, but their increasing role in all aspects of American culture. [Read President Clinton's Black History Month 2000 Proclamation.]
According to Census Bureau records, William Tucker, the first African American child born in the American colonies, was baptized on January 3, 1624, in Jamestown, Virginia. By 1800, the census counted just over 900-thousand African Americans in the U.S. Today, the black population is nearly 35-million, or about 13 percent of the U.S. total population.
While the right to vote regardless of race was granted by the 15th Amendment in 1870, wide-spread discrimination in the voter registration process continued until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Poll taxes (having to pay to vote) in federal elections were eliminated the same year by the 24th Amendment. In spite of this history of exclusion from the governmental process, 64 percent of African Americans registered to vote in the 1996 presidential election and almost 51 percent went to the polls.
Today, from city councils to the US Congress, African Americans are not only participating in government, but increasingly winning elected positions. In 1970, only about 1500 African Americans held elected office. This number has now grown to over 9,000 with the biggest increase at the city and county level. During the 1990s Douglas Wilder of Virginia was the first elected governor, Edward Brooke of Massachusetts the first senator, and Shirley Chisholm the first African American woman elected to Congress. In the Congress seated last year, there were 39-African American members of the U.S. House of Representatives.
 |
The first African American to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall, was born on July 2, 1908, in Baltimore, Maryland. As an attorney, Marshall held the distinction of arguing 32 cases before the Supreme Court and the even greater distinction of winning 29 of them. Marshall's greatest victory came in the 1954 landmark case of Brown vs. Board of Education which ended the "separate but equal" system of school segregation used in 21 states. Justice Marshall was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Lyndon Johnson in October of 1967 and served for 24 years before retiring in 1991. Thurgood Marshall died in 1993 having encouraged African Americans and people of other races to participate in the judicial system. Today, there are over 25,000 African American attorneys and 2,200 judges.
Next page Black
History Observance Links >Page 1, 2
Current
Forum Discussions
Just click on a topic to read or take part in the discussion.
Election
2000
Links to election resources on US
Government Info/Resources and other About.com
Guide Sites.
