More Than Half of U.S. States Have Never Elected an African-American to Congress

[jaxx]

More Than Half of U.S. States Have Never Elected an African-American to Congress
Tuesday, January 18, 2011

African-Americans have yet to serve in the U.S. House on behalf of 26 states, and the situation is even worse in the U.S. Senate. In the more than 220 years of Congress, only three states have ever elected a black senator.

Those three states are Mississippi (in the 1870s), Illinois (Carol Moseley-Braun in 1992, Barack Obama in 2004), and Massachusetts (Edward Brooke in 1966).

Twenty-four states have elected a total of 120 African-Americans to the House. But the majority of these politicians came from just six states: Illinois (14), California (12), South Carolina (10), New York (9), Georgia (8) and North Carolina (8).

The 26 states that have yet to elect a black U.S. representative are: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming.

http://www.allgov.com/Controversies/View...ess_110118

[JTFrog]

What a depressing fact.

[jaxx]

It seems some of the states have a very low percentage of African Americans, like Iowa with barely over 2%. Seems odd to me since I live in IL and we have 15%.