<P> The right of blacks to vote and to serve in the United States Congress was established after the Civil War by amendments to the Constitution . The Thirteenth Amendment (ratified December 6, 1865), abolished slavery . The Fourteenth Amendment (ratified July 9, 1868) made all people born or naturalized in the United States citizens . The Fifteenth Amendment (ratified February 3, 1870) forbade the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, and gave Congress the power to enforce the law by appropriate legislation . </P> <P> In 1866, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act and the four Reconstruction Acts, which dissolved all governments in the former Confederate states with the exception of Tennessee . It divided the South into five military districts, where the military through the Freedmen's Bureau helped protect the rights and safety of newly freed blacks . The act required that the former Confederate states ratify their constitutions conferring citizenship rights on blacks or forfeit their representation in Congress . </P> <P> As a result of these measures, blacks acquired the right to vote across the Southern states . In several states (notably Mississippi and South Carolina), blacks were the majority of the population . By forming coalitions with pro-Union whites, Republicans took control of the state legislatures . At the time, state legislatures elected the members of the US Senate . During Reconstruction, only the state legislature of Mississippi elected any black senators . On February 25, 1870, Hiram Rhodes Revels was seated as the first black member of the Senate, while Blanche Bruce, also of Mississippi, seated in 1875, was the second . Revels was the first black member of the Congress overall . </P> <P> Blacks were a majority of the population in many congressional districts across the South . In 1870, Joseph Rainey of South Carolina was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming the first directly elected black member of Congress to be seated . Blacks were elected to national office also from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia . </P>

When was the first african american elected to congress