Only three Black people had ever been elected governor. In January, five will hold the office at once.

For the first time in American history, more than one Black governor will be in office at the same time. Tuesday’s elections made it five.

Before 2026, only three Black people had ever been elected governor: Doug Wilder in Virginia in 1989, Deval Patrick in Massachusetts in 2006 and Wes Moore in Maryland in 2022. No two of them ever served together. Moore won re-election Tuesday, and four more joined him in the count.

Keisha Lance Bottoms, a Democrat and the former Atlanta mayor, beat Republican billionaire Rick Jackson to become Georgia’s first woman governor and the first Black woman elected governor anywhere in the country. In Wisconsin, Democrat David Crowley defeated Republican Tom Tiffany to become the state’s first Black governor. He had briefly left the race before outgoing Gov. Tony Evers encouraged him to return. In Nevada, Attorney General Aaron Ford, a Democrat, unseated Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo and also became his state’s first Black governor.

The fifth is Byron Donalds, a Republican congressman endorsed by President Trump, who will succeed Ron DeSantis as Florida’s first Black governor. He was asked what it meant. “From a larger perspective, there’s so much that has been talked about in politics over the last couple decades around race,” he said. “I’m humbled to be in this position, but I think it says a lot more about the state than it does about me.”

Four of the five are Democrats, and the difference matters. Bottoms, Crowley, Ford and Moore will run states with a combined weight in Black communities from Atlanta to Milwaukee to Baltimore to Las Vegas. Their budgets decide what Medicaid covers, what schools get and whether a state prosecutor is held to account. Only 13% of Black voters in Florida chose Donalds, so his arrival is a milestone in who holds the office, not a sign of whom he answers to.

The milestone is also a late one, and it arrives in the same year Republicans redrew maps to shrink Black representation in Congress. Black candidates are winning the offices every voter decides statewide, while the lines lawmakers draw work against them.

Voters who sent these five to the statehouse are owed more than symbolism. The test for all five comes with the first budgets: whether they expand health coverage, fund schools in Black neighborhoods and appoint people who will police the police. Inaugurations begin in January.