Source: Alex Wong / Getty
As President-elect Donald Trump selects his nominees to serve in his presidential cabinet, there has thus far been a glaring void when it comes to racial diversity in a trend that all but mirrors the history of the group of the president’s closest and most trusted advisers.
To give a little more perspective to that unfortunate fact, even though there are 26 traditional cabinet positions, there have only been 25 Black people to serve in presidents’ cabinets in the 235 years since 1789 George Washington first chose his presidential advisers. There have also been an additional 10 Black people who served in cabinet-adjacent positions, though they are not officially recognized as being in a presidential cabinet.
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It would take 177 more years before America got its first presidential cabinet member who is Black.
Keep reading to find a full and comprehensive list of every Black person who ever served in a presidential cabinet.
If this trend keeps up, that number of Black cabinet members is likely to hold steady by the time Trump is inaugurated next month.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden’s cabinet is widely regarded as the most racially diverse group of executive branch leaders and presidential advisers in American history, including the first Black vice president of the United States as well as the first Black secretary of the U.S. Department of Defense. The 46th president pledged to have a cabinet that “looks like America” and has largely made good on that promise.
Conversely, Trump’s first presidential cabinet had all of one Black person serving in the one cabinet position — the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — that is seemingly earmarked for Black people. In that case, it was Dr. Ben Carson, the renowned neurosurgeon who critics decried as being woefully unqualified for the job.
In fact, Trump had no senior White House officials who were Black during his first presidency after Omarosa Manigault Newman, a celebrity who earned her star status from participating in a reality TV contest show alongside Trump, was fired and reportedly “escorted out of the building and off of the campus” of the White House.
Presidential cabinet positions carry great responsibilities as well as implications that put them in a line of succession for the presidency. That’s the primary reason why Vice President Kamala Harris replaced Biden in the 2024 election after the incumbent candidate dropped out of the race. While there was a small movement to seek other candidates to replace Biden, American political tradition dictated that Harris be rightfully selected and not get leap-frogged by anyone outside of that aforementioned line of succession.
It is in that context that NewsOne shares a full and comprehensive list of Black people who have been nominated and confirmed to serve in presidential cabinets throughout U.S. history in chronological order.
