The United States Senate has had ten African-American elected or appointed office holders. The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral United States Congress , which is the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States . The U.S. Census Bureau defines African Americans as citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa. The term is generally used for Americans with at least partial ancestry in any of the original peoples of sub-Saharan Africa . During the founding of the federal government , African Americans were consigned to a status of second-class citizenship or enslaved . No African American served in federal elective office before the ratification in 1870 of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution , although some (including Alexander Twilight , as state senator in Vermont ) served in state elective offices concurrently with slavery. The Fifteenth Amendment prohibits the federal and state governments from denying any citizen the right to vote because of that citizen's race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Of the ten senators, six were popularly elected (including one that previously had been appointed by his state's governor), two were elected by the state legislature prior to the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1913 (which provides for the direct election of U.S. senators by the people of each state), and two were appointed by a state Governor . The 113th United States Congress (2013–15) marked the first time that two African Americans served concurrently in the Senate.