Mississippi went more than 140 years without sending a Black person to the U.S. Senate. On Wednesday, Democrat Scott Colom ended that wait by defeating Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, and in January the Senate will seat a record seven Black members.
The previous record was five. Colom, a district attorney from northern Mississippi, is the second addition: Juliana Stratton, Illinois’s lieutenant governor, won the seat Dick Durbin is leaving. They join Cory Booker, Raphael Warnock, Angela Alsobrooks, Lisa Blunt Rochester and Tim Scott. With Stratton, Alsobrooks and Blunt Rochester, three Black women will serve in the chamber together for the first time.
The win is bigger than the number. Mississippi’s last Black senator, Blanche K. Bruce, left office in 1881, and the state has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1982. Trump carried it by more than 22 points in 2024. Black voters are roughly 35% of Mississippi’s electorate, and Colom built his campaign on turning them out while also courting white working-class voters. The race stayed too close to call for more than a week as officials counted mail-in and provisional ballots.
Seven is still seven out of 100. Black Americans are about 14% of the country, and the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies puts the new Senate at 6 to 7% Black. Its analysis also found the House moving the other way: Black voting members fall from 61 to 58, because all four Black House Republicans are leaving and Black Democrats picked up only five new seats. Five Black governors were elected on the same night, taking the number serving in January from three to seven, the most the country has had.
The gains came after Republicans redrew maps to dilute Black districts. Black voters answered with turnout. A statewide race is the one place a gerrymander cannot reach, which is why Mississippi’s result matters beyond Mississippi.
One of the seven, Scott, is a Republican, so the new count does not translate into seven votes for the agenda Black voters turned out for. Colom has said he supports raising the minimum wage and protecting rural hospitals. Democrats now hold both chambers, and those promises are the test. Colom is sworn in in January.
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