Congressional Black Caucus

Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), caucus in the Congress of the United States consisting of several dozen African American members of the House of Representatives and the Senate. It was established in 1971 amid a surge in Black congressional representation that followed the adoption of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The group describes its objective as “using the full Constitutional power, statutory authority, and financial resources of the federal government to ensure that African Americans and other marginalized communities in the United States have the opportunity to achieve the American Dream.” Its priorities include reforming the criminal justice system, safeguarding voting rights, improving the education and health care systems, promoting the rights of workers, assisting minority-owned businesses, and advocating for human rights in African countries.

When the 91st Congress was convened in January 1969, there were 10 Black members (an 11th Black representative joined in November 1970), the most there had been at any point since Reconstruction. Rep. Charles C. Diggs, Jr., a former funeral director from Detroit, who had served in Congress since 1955, proposed that these members organize a body in which they could share information and ideas among themselves. “The sooner we get organized for group action, the more effective we can become,” he said. In its first iteration, the group was known as the Democracy Select Committee (DSC).

The members testified against the confirmation of Clement F. Haynsworth, Jr., Pres. Richard Nixon’s nominee for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1969, arguing that Haynsworth’s record on civil rights was poor. The Senate ultimately rejected the nomination. Later that year, the DSC also convened hearings on the murders of Illinois Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark by Chicago police officers.

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The 92nd Congress convened in 1971, with 14 Black members. The DSC decided to establish more formal rules and regulations for itself—thinking that a “more structured organization based on solidarity of purpose and program” would be able to wield more influence, as Rep. William L. Clay of Missouri later recalled. It rebranded itself the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) in 1971, with Diggs serving as the first chair.

The members generally saw themselves as a body representing all Black Americans, not only those who had voted them into office. They made this explicit in a 1971 statement outlining their mission, which Diggs read aloud during a meeting with Nixon:

Our concerns and obligations as members of Congress do not stop at the boundaries of our districts…We are petitioned daily by citizens living hundreds of miles from our districts who look on us as congressmen-at-large for black people and poor people in the United States.

The CBC worked out matters related to its basic identity throughout 1970s—beginning with its political goals. Early on, it found itself at odds with many white liberals who seemed upset that Black representatives had “assumed the role of deciding how far and how fast black people would demand progress in the struggle for their rights,” as Clay later wrote. But after the National Black Political Convention of 1972, the CBC also distanced itself from the more radical Black leaders of the post-civil rights era, issuing a Black Declaration of Independence and a Black Bill of Rights that demarcated its positions from those taken by delegates at the convention.

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Another question that arose was whether white legislators would be allowed to join. In 1975, after much deliberation, the CBC rejected the application of a white representative, Fortney Hillman (“Pete”) Stark, Jr., of California, whose district had a large Black population. Restricting membership to African Americans has been the prevailing policy ever since, although the CBC briefly allowed white legislators to join as nonvoting members in the late 1980s and early ’90s.

In the following decades, the group’s influence grew, as the number of Black legislators increased and CBC members gained more seniority and were appointed to lead powerful committees. “These days, you don’t have to hold up signs to demand to get into meetings,” Rep. William Gray of Pennsylvania told The Washington Post in 1985. “We convene the meetings.” The CBC also launched a political action committee in 1990 to raise money for Black candidates’ campaigns and to attract more African Americans to the polls.

The vast majority of the CBC’s members have been Democrats, and the group’s relationship with the Republican Party has also modulated over time. Among the 12 Black Republicans elected between the CBC’s founding in 1971 and 2020, only a handful have joined the CBC. In 2021 the group reportedly denied entry to Rep. Byron Daniels, a Republican from Florida, who had voted against certifying Joe Biden’s election victory in the 2020 presidential election.

In recent years, the CBC has apparently experienced more dissension than usual within its ranks, as younger members with more radical leanings have joined. The New York Times reported in 2021 that the CBC was the largest it had ever been (with 57 members) and that it was also more politically diverse, reflecting the growing ideological diversity among Black voters in general (though all of its members at that time were Democrats). Some of its insurgent members, including Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri, were calling for “a more combative activist streak,” in defiance of the mainstream Democratic Party, The New York Times reported—setting them at odds with many moderate members in swing districts.