List of African-American speakers of U.S. state legislatures
Appearance
The following is a list of African-American speakers of U.S. state legislatures.
List
Portrait | Name | Party | State | Legislature | Term start | Term end | Notes |
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John R. Lynch | Republican | Mississippi | Mississippi House of Representatives | January 1872 | January 1873 | First African-American Speaker of any state legislature |
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Samuel J. Lee | Republican | South Carolina | South Carolina House of Representatives | 1872 | 1874 | |
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Robert B. Elliott | Republican | South Carolina | South Carolina House of Representatives | November 24, 1874 | April 14, 1876 | |
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Isaac Shadd | Republican | Mississippi | Mississippi House of Representatives | 1874 | 1876 | |
S. Howard Woodson | Democratic | New Jersey | New Jersey General Assembly | 1974 | 1976 | First African-American speaker of any state legislature in the United States since Reconstruction | |
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K. Leroy Irvis | Democratic | Pennsylvania | Pennsylvania House of Representatives | May 23, 1977 | November 30, 1978 | |
January 4, 1983 | November 30, 1988 | ||||||
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Willie Brown | Democratic | California | California State Assembly | December 2, 1980 | June 5, 1995 | |
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Dan Blue | Democratic | North Carolina | North Carolina House of Representatives | 1991 | 1995 | |
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Peter Groff | Democratic | Colorado | Colorado Senate | January 2008 | May 2009 | |
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Karen Bass | Democratic | California | California State Assembly | May 13, 2008 | March 1, 2010 | First African American woman in U.S. history to serve as Speaker of any state legislature |
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Terrance Carroll | Democratic | Colorado | Colorado House of Representatives | 2009 | 2011 | |
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Sheila Oliver | Democratic | New Jersey | New Jersey General Assembly | January 12, 2010 | January 14, 2014 | |
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T. W. Shannon | Republican | Oklahoma | Oklahoma House of Representatives | January 8, 2013 | February 10, 2014 | |
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Carl Heastie | Democratic | New York | New York State Assembly | February 3, 2015 | incumbent | |
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Jason Frierson | Democratic | Nevada | Nevada Assembly | February 6, 2017 | incumbent | |
Aaron D. Ford | Democratic | Nevada | Nevada Senate | February 6, 2017 | December 4, 2018 | ||
Kelvin Atkinson | Democratic | Nevada | Nevada Senate | December 4, 2018 | incumbent | ||
Adrienne A. Jones | Democratic | Maryland | Maryland House of Delegates | May 1, 2019 | incumbent |