The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) was created in 1971 to allow the few Black
members of Congress to wield greater influence (Clay 1992). The thirteen Black
representatives in the House of Representatives sought to leverage their collective
power given their paltry numbers in the 435-member body. The CBC began as a nearly
all-boys club in 1971 with Shirley Chisholm as the only Black woman among the 13
founders. From the beginning, there were internal differences and ideological
divergence among the Caucus. Yet, they were united in their desire to descriptively
represent all Black Americans in addition to their individual districts (Barnett 1975; Clay
1992). As the number of Black Congressmembers increased, so did the diversity among
them with numerous implications for legislative behavior. Black women now account for
nearly half of the CBC’s membership, including 31 Black women serving in the 119th
Congress. What does this diversification within the CBC mean for the representation of
Black interests? How do Black lawmakers, who are in the ethno-racial minority of
Congress, balance the competing pressures of collectively representing a universal
Black constituency under the procedural and personal constraints of a raced and
gendered institution?
We have developed the most comprehensive dataset of Black members in U.S.
Congress over 150 years collecting occupational, educational, district, and personal
data enabling the most specific examination of this critically important U.S. constituency
to date. In this book manuscript, we examined bill sponsorship, bill success, and
political rhetoric (floor speeches, constituent newsletters, and Tweets) to determine how
demographic diversity among Black legislators impacts legislative behavior. In so doing,
we break down the homogeneity of the longest lasting identity caucus in the U.S.
demonstrating the importance of intersectional analysis for properly assessing the
quality of representation.
