The first Black Senator to represent a southern state since Reconstruction, Tim Scott served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2011 until 2013, when he was selected to replace retiring Senator Jim DeMint. Scott subsequently won the election to finish DeMint’s term, and later won his own full term in 2016.

Scott has become one of the most famous Black politicians within the Republican Party and has attempted to move the GOP to address issues of racial justice, such as by sponsoring the Republican version of the Justice in Policing Act and working with Democrats Cory Booker and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to pass long-delayed federal anti-lynching legislation. Senator Scott was one of the standout figures of the 2020 Republican National Convention, giving an inspiring speech on the racial progress that his own family and the country had seen, noting that his family “went from cotton to Congress in one lifetime," as Blavity previously reported.

Black-Senator

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