The Speaker's Chair: Hakeem Jeffries and the 152-Year Road from Reconstruction

Election-night draft. Fill the bracketed figures once the House is called: [FINAL SEAT COUNT] and [KEY FLIPPED DISTRICTS].

When Hakeem Jeffries takes the gavel, an African American will lead the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in its 237-year history. Democrats won [FINAL SEAT COUNT] seats on November 3, carried over the line by [KEY FLIPPED DISTRICTS]. The Speaker is second in line to the presidency, decides which bills reach the floor, and speaks for the House to the nation. For Black Americans, the moment closes a circle that opened in Reconstruction, was broken by Jim Crow, and was rebuilt one seat at a time.

Rainey's Afternoon in the Chair, 1874

Joseph Hayne Rainey of South Carolina, born enslaved in 1832, was sworn in on December 12, 1870, the first Black member of the House. In May 1874 he took the chair as Speaker pro tempore during debate on an Indian appropriations bill, the first African American ever to preside over the chamber. It was a brief moment, but it showed that Black lawmakers could run the House, not only sit in it.

Rainey was one of sixteen Black men who served in Congress during Reconstruction. After federal troops left the South in 1877, white-supremacist violence, poll taxes and new state constitutions drove Black voters from the rolls. George Henry White of North Carolina left the House in 1901, promising that the Negro would one day "rise up and come again." No Black member sat in Congress for the next 28 years.

Coming Back Through the North, 1929–1971

The road back ran through the Great Migration. Oscar De Priest of Chicago won a seat in 1928, and Harlem sent Adam Clayton Powell Jr. to Washington in 1944. As chairman of the Education and Labor Committee from 1961 to 1967, Powell moved the minimum-wage increase, federal school aid and the antipoverty laws of the Great Society through the House, showing what seniority could do in Black hands.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 reopened the South. Shirley Chisholm of Brooklyn, elected in 1968 as the first Black woman in Congress, ran for president in 1972 under the slogan "Unbought and Unbossed." Jeffries now represents part of the borough she served.

A Caucus Becomes a Power Base

In 1971, thirteen members founded the Congressional Black Caucus to act together on civil rights, jobs and South Africa. Its first staff director, Augustus "Gus" Adair, a political scientist, helped turn a loose group into an organization with research, an agenda and a voice.

The caucus grew with each redistricting fight, and its members climbed the seniority ladder. On June 14, 1989, William H. Gray III of Philadelphia was elected Majority Whip, the first African American in the third-ranking job in House leadership. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina followed as Majority Whip in 2007 and again in 2019, becoming the most powerful Black member of the House before Jeffries.

From Crown Heights to the Rostrum

Jeffries was born in Brooklyn on August 4, 1970, and grew up in Crown Heights, the son of a social worker and a substance-abuse counselor. He studied at SUNY Binghamton, Georgetown and New York University School of Law, practiced as a litigator, and won a seat in the New York State Assembly in 2006. In Albany he pushed to end the counting of prisoners in upstate districts and to curb the police stop-and-frisk database.

He entered Congress in 2013, became chair of the House Democratic Caucus in 2019, and on November 30, 2022, was chosen to succeed Nancy Pelosi as Democratic leader. He became the first Black person to lead either party in either chamber of Congress. In January 2023, as Republicans needed fifteen ballots to elect a Speaker, Jeffries held every Democrat together and finished each round with the most votes.

What the Gavel Can and Cannot Do

A Speaker controls the floor, but a narrow majority leaves little room. Jeffries will face a Senate and a White House that are pushing back on voting rights, diversity programs, civil-rights enforcement and federal aid. Black organizers will expect action on voting protections, police accountability and economic investment, while vulnerable members from swing districts will urge caution. His real test will be whether the House can hold hearings, pass bills and use its power over spending to defend the people who elected it.

Why It Matters

Rainey held the chair for an afternoon in 1874. A century and a half later, a Black member from Brooklyn holds it by right of a majority. Between those two moments lie disenfranchisement, the Great Migration, the civil rights movement, and the slow work of a caucus that refused to stay small. The Speaker's chair is not the end of that struggle, but it is a measure of how far it has come.