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Will Louisiana send its first Black U.S. Senator since Reconstruction to DC?
Jamie Davis is closing the gap as he bids to be Louisiana’s first Black U.S. Senator since Reconstruction, leaving Republicans without the sure victory had hoped for.
Republished from The Lens, all images used with permission.
In 1873, P.B.S. Pinchback, a Black man, was elected by a Republican Louisiana state legislature to serve in a vacant seat in the U.S. Senate, but the U.S. Senate refused to seat him, because a Democratic legislature in Louisiana had elected a different candidate.
Other Black senators have been elected into the U.S. Senate before and after Pinchback. But no one from Louisiana. Since then, no Black person from Louisiana has been elected into the nation’s Senate chamber.
In June, a Black farmer, Jamie Davis from Tensas Parish — population 4,400 — won the Democratic primary in a landslide, becoming the first Black Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate. He faces the race’s presumed front-runner, Republican Congresswoman Julia Letlow in the general…
