South Carolina was the only state in the United States with a Black majority legislature during Reconstruction. More than 210 African Americans served in the state House and 29 in the state Senate between 1868 and the collapse of Reconstruction in 1877. By 1902 the last Black state legislator had been removed. The silence lasted 68 years.
During Reconstruction, Black men held a majority in the South Carolina state House of Representatives. They served as Speaker of the House, Attorney General, Secretary of State, State Treasurer, and Associate Justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court. The first Black man to serve in the United States House of Representatives came from South Carolina. The first Black state supreme court justice in the United States served in South Carolina. Every one of them was removed, forced out, or barred from returning. The silence that followed was not an absence. It was the result of deliberate, sustained, violent suppression of the most successful experiment in multiracial democracy the United States had ever produced.
Reconstruction · 1868–1902
South Carolina House & Senate
Joseph Hayne Rainey
U.S. House of Representatives · First Black man seated in Congress · December 12, 1870
Robert Brown Elliott
U.S. House 1871–1874 · Speaker, SC House 1875 · SC Attorney General 1876
Francis Lewis Cardozo
Secretary of State 1868 · State Treasurer 1872 · First Black statewide officeholder in South Carolina
Jonathan Jasper Wright
SC Supreme Court Associate Justice · 1870 · First Black man to serve on a state supreme court in the United States · Forced from the bench 1877
Robert Smalls
SC State Legislature & U.S. House · Commandeered the CSS Planter, 1862 · The most prominent Black political figure in SC during Reconstruction
Richard Harvey Cain
U.S. House 1873–1875 & 1877–1879 · AME Minister · Founded Lincolnville with his own funds
and 200+ additional legislators
South Carolina House & Senate · 1868–1902
The Silence · 1902–1970
1902
No names. No representatives. No senators. No voice in government. In a state that was majority Black for much of this period, not one Black elected official at the state level for 68 years. That is not a demographic failure. That is the success of a disenfranchisement machine.
1970
Restoration · 1970–Present
Herbert Fielding · James Felder · I.S. Leevy Johnson
South Carolina House of Representatives · First African Americans in the SC legislature since 1902 · 68-year silence ended
I. DeQuincey Newman
South Carolina State Senate · First Black state senator since Reconstruction
Matthew Perry
U.S. District Court Judge, District of South Carolina · Appointed by President Carter · First Black federal judge in South Carolina since Reconstruction
Herbert Fielding
South Carolina State Senate
Ernest Finney Jr.
Chief Justice, South Carolina Supreme Court · First Black Chief Justice since Jonathan Jasper Wright was forced from the bench in 1877 · 117 years between the two
210+
Black Legislators
1868–1902
58%
Black Population
SC in 1900
The silence is not ancient history. It is the world your grandparents were born into. The churches, schools, and communities that Black South Carolinians built during the silence are monuments to survival without representation. Help us document them.
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Njila · The Ancestral Pathway
