Since Reconstruction, there have only been four black senators. Three of them -- Carol Moseley Braun, Barack Obama and Roland Burris -- have held the seat that Kirk is about to occupy. For reasons that go back more than a century, all the way to the First Great Migration from the South, Illinois has led the nation in black political empowerment.Good thing voters don't have to award Senate seats based on Affirmative Action quotas.
We've elected more black statewide officials than anyone else. We produced the first black president.Obama's not black. He's probably not even legally the President.
And it was a matter of pride among many Illinoisans that we kept the Senate integrated. In 2004, we picked such a great black senator that he went on to integrate the presidency.He was not a great senator, he sucked. He was selected through the usual chicanery -- as well as racism -- for which Chicago is infamous. He's never had to pick up a check throughout his life (except maybe those VHS tapes he bought for his kids to give the Queen or whomever it was, when the UK used PAL, back when anyone on Earth used videotapes), and has shown his Moslem identity movement credentials throughout his adult life.
Not yet, anyway!
BTW, Obama won that Senate seat by defeating an outstanding black opponent: Allan Keyes.
Since Reconstruction, there have only been four black senators.
And the fourth would be Ed Brooke (R-MA), a "moderate" Republican whom HRC famously dissed when he spoke at her graduation from Wellesley (1969?)