African-American candidates for President of the United States

African American candidates for president of the United States from major parties include U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), elected president of the United States in 2008. He was the first African American to win a presidential election and the first African American to serve as president of the United States. He was re-elected in 2012. There had been several candidates in the years before.

19th century

Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass was invited to speak at the 1888 Republican National Convention. Afterward, during the roll call vote, he received one vote and was thus nominally considered a candidate for the presidency. In those years, candidates for the position and vice presidency were chosen by state representatives voting at the nominating convention. Many decisions were made through negotiations between state and party leaders "behind closed doors." Douglass was "never a contender" for the presidency in 1888 and had previously received a roll call vote in 1848 for a minor political party's presidential nomination.

20th century George Edwin Taylor In 1904, George Edwin Taylor was president of the National Negro Democratic League.Mouser, For Labor, Race, and Liberty, pp. 102-106. Since 1890, White Southern Democrats had been enacting state laws or constitutional changes that effectively disfranchised most Black voters and were imposing segregation through “Jim Crow” laws. Northern Democrats seemed unwilling and unable to control the excesses of their Southern parties. The National Negro Democratic League was fractured by debates over whether to link the nation's currency to silver as well as gold. By 1904, Taylor was positioned to abandon the party and bureau that he had led as president for two terms. This was close to the nadir of race relations, when the number of lynchings of Blacks in the South was high. In addition, scientific racism was gaining acceptance within the nation's intellectual and scientific community.

In 1904 the executive committee of the newly formed National Negro Liberty Party asked "Judge" Taylor to be their candidate for the office of president of the United States.Ottumwa (Iowa) Daily Courier, 22 July 1904, p.4. That party started in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1897 when it was known as the Ex-Slave Petitioners’ Assembly. It was one of several leagues or assemblies that had formed at the end of the century to support bills working their way through the United States Congress to grant pensions to former slaves.James Davidson, “Encountering the Ex-Slave Reparation Movement from the Grave: The National Industrial Council and National Liberty Party, 1901-1907,” The Journal of African American History 97 (2012), 13-38. These leagues claimed that membership in an association was required to qualify for a pension, if and when Congress passed such a bill. In 1900, that Assembly was reorganized as the National Industrial Council. In 1903 it added opposition to lynching, Jim Crow laws, disfranchisement, anti-imperialism, and scientific racism to its agenda, broadening its appeal to Black voters in Northern and Midwestern states. In 1904 the Council moved its headquarters from Arkansas to Chicago, Illinois, and reorganized as the National Negro Civil Liberty Party. It was following a growing wave of black migrants from the South to northern cities.Atlanta (Georgia) Constitution, 27 July 1903, p.9.

The first national convention of that new party convened in St. Louis, Missouri, in July 1904. It intended to field candidates in states that had sizeable Black populations. Its platform included planks that dealt with disfranchisement, insufficient career opportunities for Blacks in the United States military, imperialism, public ownership of railroads, “self-government” for the District of Columbia (Washington, D.C.), lynching and pensions for ex-slaves. The convention selected “Col.” William Thomas Scott of East St. Louis, Illinois, as its 1904 candidate for the office of president and William C. Payne, a little-known teacher from Warrenton, Virginia, as his vice-presidential running mate. The 37-year-old Payne, who later founded an industrial school in Puerto Rico, had served as a Cabin Steward on the USS Dixie during the Spanish–American War."Others: Third Parties During The Populist Period, by Darcy Richardson, p 381.For accounts of the convention, see St. Louis (Missouri) Palladium, 16 July 1904, p.1; Washington Bee, 3 September 1904, p.1. After convention delegates had left St. Louis, Scott was arrested and jailed for having failed to pay a fine imposed in 1901. The party's executive committee turned to Taylor (who had just resigned as president of the National Negro Democratic League) to lead the party's ticket.Daily Illinois State Register, 14 July 1904; St. Louis (Missouri) Republic, 24 July 1904.

Taylor's campaign in 1904 was unsuccessful. The party was unable to gather 300 speakers to support his candidacy nor to field 6,000 candidates for local offices. No newspaper endorsed this party. State laws kept the party from listing candidates officially on election ballots. The party was unable to get Taylor's name added to any state ballot. The votes he received were not recorded in state records. William Scott later estimated that the party had received 65,000 votes nationwide, a number that could not be verified.The Marshfield (Wisconsin) Times, 19 February 1905, p.3; Daily Illinois State Journal, 29 January 1905, p.1.

Channing E. Phillips At the 1968 Democratic National Convention, held in Chicago, Channing E. Phillips, a minister and civil rights leader, was placed in nomination for President of the United States. He received 67.5 votes.

At the same convention, Julian Bond was nominated for vice president, the first African American to be nominated for that office by a major party. Bond, ineligible on account of being under the required age (35), withdrew.

Shirley Chisholm In 1972, Shirley Chisholm, U.S. Congresswoman from New York, Barbadian-American (not African American) became the first black candidate for the Democratic Party and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. She participated in the Democratic primaries in numerous states. She campaigned in 12 states and won 28 delegates.House Resolution 97, Recognizing Contributions, Achievements, and Dedicated Work of Shirley Anita Chisholm, [Congressional Record: June 12, 2001 (House)] [Page H3019-H3025] From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:cr12jn01-85]. In the balloting at the 1972 Democratic National Convention, she gained additional votes from disaffected Democrats and ended with a total of 152 delegates.

Jesse Jackson

In the 1984 presidential election and 1988 presidential election, Jesse Jackson was the first major-party black candidate to run nationwide primary campaigns and to win individual states' primaries or caucuses. He competed as a Democrat. In 1984, he garnered around 3 million votes in the primaries and 1988, about 7 million.

Alan Keyes In 1992, Alan Keyes received a vote for the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention. He did not campaign for President (he was the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Maryland that year). He became the first African-American candidate to run in the Republican presidential primaries in 1996, but he did not win any state's primary or caucus.

21st century

Barack Obama

Barack Obama was born to an American mother of European descent (except for at least one African ancestor in the colonial period - Punch) and an African father. His mother, Ann Dunham (1942–1995), was born in Wichita, Kansas; she was mostly of English descent,Obama (1995, 2004), p. 12. with some German, Irish, Scottish, Swiss, and Welsh ancestry.

His father, Barack Obama Sr. (1936–1982), was a Luo Kenyan from Nyang'oma Kogelo. His parents had met and married in Hawai'i. They separated and divorced when he was a child.

Obama was identified as a potential candidate for president of the U.S. after his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.Zweigenhaft, R.L. and Domhoff, G.W. (2006) Diversity in the Power Elite: How it Happened, why it Matters. Rowman & Littlefield. p 140. A Democrat, Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. The distinct possibility of an African American becoming elected was realized as the Democratic primary elections got underway in early 2008. Obama emerged as a serious contender for the nominationParker, J. (June 3, 2008) "Obama Becomes First Black Democratic Presidential Nominee: The Third African American Senator Since Reconstruction Makes History." ABC News. Retrieved 1/19/09. and was the first African American to win the designation of a major party in a United States presidential election. As the Democratic Party's nominee, he won the general election on November 4, 2008. On January 20, 2009, he was sworn in as the first African-American president of the United States. He was re-elected to a second term as president on November 6, 2012.

Kamala Harris

Other candidates

Alan Keyes ran for president again in 2000 and in 2008.

In 2004, Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton were unsuccessful candidates in the Democratic primaries.

"Tea Party" Republican Herman Cain staged a run for the presidency in 2012. He received a brief surge of attention and popularity but withdrew before any primaries were held.

Neurosurgeon Ben Carson ran for the Republican nomination in the 2016 election. He polled well for a time in late 2015, but withdrew after the first Super Tuesday. Carson received 857,039 votes during the Republican primaries; this total represented 2.75% of the votes cast. He was supported by seven delegates at the Republican National Convention.

In early 2019, U.S. senators Kamala HarrisKamala Harris is an American of Jamaican and Tamil Indian descent. Her mother was a Tamil Indian breast-cancer scientist who immigrated to the United States from Madras, India, in 1960. Her father is a black Jamaican who emigrated from Jamaica to the U.S. in 1961. and Cory Booker declared their presidential campaigns for the 2020 Democratic nomination within weeks of each other. Both withdrew from the race before any nominating contests were held. On December 3, 2019, Harris ended her presidential campaign, and Booker followed on January 13, 2020. Meanwhile, former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick was a late entrant into the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

On May 22, 2023, U.S. Senator Tim Scott announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election. He withdrew from the race before any nominating contests were held.

Impact