North Carolina Legislative Black Caucus
The North Carolina Legislative Black Caucus (NCLBC) has a long and illustrious history, one that can be tied to the first African Americans to serve in the North Carolina General Assembly (NCGA) in 1868. Bolstered by the passage and Reconstruction-era enforcement of the 15th Amendment, their ranks grew to thirty-three members by 1883 nearly the size of today’s NCLBC. By 1900, African Americans were forced through violence, intimidation, and disenfranchisement out of their rightful positions in the houses of power. Jim Crow laws, literacy tests, and other barriers to the ballot kept African Americans out of the legislature until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the subsequent election of the Henry E. Frye to the House of Representatives in 1968. He was joined by Joy Joseph Johnson in 1971 and H. M. “Mickey” Michaux in 1973.