5 Black Presidential Candidates Who Paved the Way for Kamala Harris

In 1848, Frederick Douglass was the very first Black candidate to receive a nominating bid for the American presidency. He received one vote. Over the next 100 years, Black presidential hopefuls — particularly those with connections to the two major parties — would eke out symbolic victories and break barriers. Their efforts paved the way for a series of candidates in the late 20th and early 21st centuries and ultimately helped create a path for Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Barack Obama's history defining presidential candidacies and roles. Here's a list of some of the ancestors upon whose shoulders they stand:

Frederick Douglass

The famed abolitionist, women's suffrage supporter, author, newspaper publisher, statesman and orator was, according to historians , also the first Black person nominated for president and vice president. In 1848, the same year he gave his famous women's suffrage speech at the Seneca Falls Convention, his name was put forth with a single vote for presidential nomination at the National Liberty Party Convention. In fact, Douglass was nominated for president twice — once in 1888, to head the Republican ticket, when it was the anti-slavery party). His path to presidential nominee began humbly: enslavement in Maryland's Eastern Shore, a harrowing escape to freedom by foot then secreting on a train and boats. He was also nominated to serve as the vice presidential running mate of Victoria Woodhull during the 1872 Equal Rights Party Convention (In 1880, Reconstruction-era Sen. Blanche Bruce became the first Black person to receive major party nominating votes for vice president at the Republican National Convention. He received eight.). In the 1888 election, he also received a single vote — this one from the Kentucky delegation at the Republican Convention.

George Edwin Taylor

This OG community activist turned presidential candidate during alternate points in his life was a Republican, Democrat and an independent. The labor and civil rights activist and journalist was born free in Arkansas, but the state's Free Negro Expulsion Bill forced him and his mother to flee to Illinois to escape becoming enslaved. She died of tuberculosis, and he ultimately made his way to La Crosse, Wisconsin, where he was raised by foster parents who encouraged his education. He went on to write and edit for multiple news outlets including serving as city editor of the La Crosse Democrat — a publication owned by an anti-Civil War Democrat. In 1904, he was the presidential nominee for the National Negro Liberty Party – a party focused on the rights of formerly enslaved people.

Channing E. Phillips

It would be another 60 years before major party tickets saw Black presidential candidates for office. Phillips, a Brooklyn, New York-born Baptist preacher and civil rights leader who advocated for the rights of Black people and equitable housing, was active in Democratic Party politics. In 1968, he helped helm Robert F. Kennedy's presidential bid in Washington, D.C., and led that city's delegation to the Democratic National Convention. When RFK was assassinated, Phillips received 68 votes — making him the first Black person to receive such support at a major party's nominating convention .

Shirley Chisholm

As the political mother of a generation of Black female candidates for office, Chisholm's career as an activist and politician is the stuff of documentaries and biopics. The child of immigrants, the Guyanese and Barbadian American lawmaker was born in Brooklyn, excelled in school, and rose through the political ranks as first a New York Assembly woman and, later, was elected to Congress. In 1972, she became the first Black person to launch a national bid for president and won 152 delegates at the Democratic National Convention. In announcing her candidacy she famously said: "I am not the candidate of Black America, although I am Black and proud. I am not the candidate of the women's movement of this country, although I am a woman and equally proud of that. I am the candidate of the people and my presence before you symbolizes a new era in American political history."

Jesse Jackson

The civil rights leader and politician was the second Black person to run nationally, and the first to run and win in the statewide primaries and caucuses. Jackson, who was born in Greenville, South Carolina, was a student athlete and student government association president at North Carolina A&T. He dropped out of a graduate theological program to work with Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders during the movement. He later channeled efforts into broader social justice efforts through Operation PUSH and The Rainbow Coalition. During his 1984 presidential bid, he ran under the slogan " Run Jesse Run ," and he won five primaries, netting roughly 20% of the party's popular vote. In 1988, he ran again, won 13 primaries and caucuses, netted nearly 7 million votes and came out ahead of future Vice President Al Gore and future President Joe Biden in the contests before ultimately losing to Michael Dukakis. His success on the national stage is considered the precursor to President Barack Obama's ultimate history-making campaign.