The Congressional Black Caucus at a glance. These infographics pull from the House Clerk’s roll-call archive, CBC Foundation enrollment data and the Joint Center’s staffing studies. Share them with attribution to Crew of 42.
Membership Over Time
When the Congressional Black Caucus was founded in 1971, it had 13 members. The 115th Congress (2017–2019) seated 49 voting members, the largest in caucus history at the time, drawing from every region except the upper Midwest and Mountain West.
- 92nd Congress (1971) — 13 members
- 103rd Congress (1993) — 39 members, first major jump after 1990 redistricting and the Voting Rights Act Section 2 rulings
- 113th Congress (2013) — 43 members
- 115th Congress (2017) — 49 voting members + 2 non-voting delegates
By Seniority
Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) held the Dean of the House title for the caucus from 2015 until his December 2017 resignation, having served continuously since 1965. See the full seniority list for the 115th Congress.
By Age
The caucus spans the post-World War II generation through millennials. Full breakdown lives on the By Age page — ages 36 to 88 at the start of the 115th Congress.
Committee Leadership
In the 115th, CBC members held five ranking-member slots on House full committees: Judiciary (Conyers, then Nadler), Homeland Security (Thompson), Oversight (Cummings), Foreign Affairs (Engel, with Bass on the Africa subcommittee) and Veterans’ Affairs (Walz). Thirteen subcommittees had CBC ranking members.
Racial Wealth Gap — Context for Caucus Policy
Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, 2016: median white household wealth was $171,000 while median Black household wealth was $17,600 — a ratio of nearly 10 to 1. This is the backdrop for every CBC budget markup, every housing hearing, every HBCU appropriation the caucus fights for.
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