List of African-American speakers of U.S. state legislatures

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The following is a list of African-American speakers of U.S. state legislatures.

List[]

Portrait	Name	Party	State	Legislature	Term start	Term end	Notes
	John R. Lynch	Republican	Mississippi	Mississippi House of Representatives	January 1872	January 1873	First African-American Speaker of any state legislature
	Samuel J. Lee	Republican	South Carolina	South Carolina House of Representatives	1872	1874
	Robert B. Elliott	Republican	South Carolina	South Carolina House of Representatives	November 24, 1874	April 14, 1876
	Isaac Shadd	Republican	Mississippi	Mississippi House of Representatives	1874	1876
	S. Howard Woodson	Democratic	New Jersey	New Jersey General Assembly	1974	1976	First African-American speaker of any state legislature in the United States since Reconstruction
	K. Leroy Irvis	Democratic	Pennsylvania	Pennsylvania House of Representatives	May 23, 1977	November 30, 1978
					January 4, 1983	November 30, 1988
	Willie Brown	Democratic	California	California State Assembly	December 2, 1980	June 5, 1995
	Dan Blue	Democratic	North Carolina	North Carolina House of Representatives	1991	1995
	Peter Groff	Democratic	Colorado	Colorado Senate	January 2008	May 2009
	Karen Bass	Democratic	California	California State Assembly	May 13, 2008	March 1, 2010	First African American woman in U.S. history to serve as Speaker of any state legislature
	Terrance Carroll	Democratic	Colorado	Colorado House of Representatives	2009	2011
	Sheila Oliver	Democratic	New Jersey	New Jersey General Assembly	January 12, 2010	January 14, 2014
	T. W. Shannon	Republican	Oklahoma	Oklahoma House of Representatives	January 8, 2013	February 10, 2014
	Carl Heastie	Democratic	New York	New York State Assembly	February 3, 2015	incumbent
	Jason Frierson	Democratic	Nevada	Nevada Assembly	February 6, 2017	incumbent
	Aaron D. Ford	Democratic	Nevada	Nevada Senate	February 6, 2017	December 4, 2018
	Kelvin Atkinson	Democratic	Nevada	Nevada Senate	December 4, 2018	incumbent
	Adrienne A. Jones	Democratic	Maryland	Maryland House of Delegates	May 1, 2019	incumbent
	Emanuel "Chris" Welch	Democratic	Illinois	Illinois House of Representatives	January 13, 2021	incumbent

References[]