African American Legislative Politics in Virginia

Abstract

Since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the number of African Americans serving in state legislatures throughout the nation dramatically increased from a mere 64 to 406 in 1988 (Joint Center for Political Studies, 1988). The emergence of a Black presence in the state legislative process provides an opportunity for the systematic advancement of African American political and socioeconomic interests. The racially based caucus has been an important mechanism in the evolution of Black legislative participation both at the national and state levels (Barnett, 1975; Colston, 1972). State-level legislative Black caucuses were established as early as the mid-1960s. The formation of the Missouri Black Legislative Caucus in 1966 was followed by the establishment of the Maryland Black Caucus in 1969. The vast majority of the formal Black legislative subgroups were formed between the years 1975 and 1980 (Miller, 1990). Formally constituted in 1988, the Virginia Black Legislative Caucus (VBLC) lagged behind the nationwide development of racial legislative subgroups. Its creation signaled the genesis of institutionalized Black legislative participation in the commonwealth of Virginia. This analysis seeks to examine the origin, nature, and impact of Black legislative politics in Virginia from 1970 to 1988. We focus specifically on the following three salient dimensions of legislative behavior: (a) the social background and political attributes of Virginia's Black state legislators, (b) the institutionalization of the Black presence in the state's legislative process, and (c) the charac-