America Has Had Only Five Black Governors. Why?

Black political representation has grown dramatically since the Voting Rights Act. But only five Black Americans have ever served as governor — and just three were elected to the job. The reasons tell a much bigger story about political power in America.

Five.

That’s the number.

In the entire history of the United States, only five Black Americans have ever served as governor of a state.

Not five Black governors serving today.

Five. Ever.

And even that number needs an asterisk.

Only three of them were actually elected governor by voters.

That stopped me.

Because we have had Black mayors in some of the largest cities in America. Black members of Congress. Black senators. Black cabinet secretaries. A Black vice president. A Black president.

But governor?

Five.

So the obvious question is: Why?

The answer is not one thing. It is history. It is geography. It is the way statewide elections work. It is political pipelines and coalition building. And yes, race is part of it too.

You have to go all the way back to Reconstruction to understand how strange the number really is.

The First Was in 1872

P.B.S. Pinchback became governor of Louisiana in December 1872.

He was the first Black person to serve as governor of any U.S. state.

He served for 36 days.

Then America went 117 years before another Black person became governor.

FACT: America went roughly 117 years between P.B.S. Pinchback serving as governor of Louisiana and L. Douglas Wilder taking office as governor of Virginia.

L. Douglas Wilder took office as governor of Virginia in January 1990 after winning the 1989 election.

He became the first Black American ever elected governor.

Think about the distance between those two moments.

Pinchback served during Reconstruction, a brief period after the Civil War when Black Americans gained political power in parts of the South.

Then much of that power was systematically dismantled.

Southern states used poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation, violence and discriminatory laws to keep Black Americans away from the ballot box and out of political office.

By the beginning of the 20th century, much of the political progress Black Americans had made during Reconstruction had been stripped away.

That did more than suppress Black voters.

It disrupted generations of Black political leadership.

You cannot easily produce governors when people are being prevented from voting, holding office or building political careers in the first place.

Five Governors. Only Three Elected.

The five Black Americans who have served as governor are P.B.S. Pinchback in Louisiana, L. Douglas Wilder in Virginia, Deval Patrick in Massachusetts, David Paterson in New York and Wes Moore in Maryland.

But only Wilder, Patrick and Moore won gubernatorial elections.

Pinchback became governor during Reconstruction after Louisiana Gov. Henry Warmoth was removed during impeachment proceedings.

Paterson became governor of New York in 2008 after Eliot Spitzer resigned.

ONLY THREE BLACK AMERICANS HAVE EVER BEEN ELECTED GOVERNOR BY VOTERS: L. DOUGLAS WILDER, DEVAL PATRICK AND WES MOORE.

Three.

That is where this story gets even more interesting.

Winning a State Is Different

There is a big difference between winning a congressional district, a city council district or even a mayoral election and winning an entire state.

A Black candidate running for Congress may represent a district with a large Black population. A mayoral candidate can build a coalition within a city.

A governor has to win statewide.

That changes the math.

A Black candidate in most states cannot rely on Black voters alone. They have to build a much broader coalition across race, geography, ideology and communities that may have very little in common politically.

Political scientists have been documenting that challenge for decades.

Black candidates running statewide generally have to attract significant support outside of the Black electorate.

Which sounds obvious until you understand what it means in practice.

They have to win voters who may have never voted for a Black candidate before.

And race does not suddenly disappear because the election is statewide.

Yes, Race Matters

There is always a temptation to make discussions like this too simple.

Was it racism?

Well, race absolutely matters.

Research on Black statewide candidates has identified racial attitudes, institutional racism and cultural racism as factors that can affect electoral outcomes.

That does not mean every Black candidate who lost did so because of racism.

Candidates lose for all kinds of reasons.

Bad campaigns.

Bad timing.

Strong opponents.

Party identification.

Money.

Incumbency.

National political moods.

But it would be just as dishonest to pretend race plays no role at all.

Black statewide candidates historically have needed significant crossover support from white voters because Black voters rarely make up a majority of a state’s electorate.

FACT: Unlike candidates running in Black-majority districts, Black gubernatorial candidates generally must build multiracial coalitions across an entire state.

That presents a challenge that becomes especially important when running for governor.

The Political Pipeline Matters Too

There is another part of this that gets less attention.

Who gets positioned to run?

Governors do not usually come from nowhere.

They tend to move through political pipelines: state legislatures, attorney general offices, lieutenant governor offices, Congress, statewide elected positions, large mayoral offices, party leadership and political fundraising networks.

Those pipelines have historically been less accessible to candidates of color.

Research examining state executive leadership across all 50 states from 2001 through 2017 found that racial and ethnic minorities were more likely to reach state executive leadership through appointment than election.

That matters.

If fewer Black candidates are positioned in statewide offices to begin with, fewer of them naturally become gubernatorial candidates later.

The barriers build on each other.

It Is Not Because Black People Don’t Vote

This part matters too.

The scarcity of Black governors cannot simply be explained by saying Black people do not vote.

That argument does not hold up.

Black voter turnout came within one percentage point of white turnout during the 2008 presidential election and exceeded white turnout in 2012.

Black voters have also shown significant participation in statewide elections involving Black candidates, including the gubernatorial campaigns of Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Andrew Gillum in Florida.

BLACK VOTER TURNOUT EXCEEDED WHITE VOTER TURNOUT IN THE 2012 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. THE SCARCITY OF BLACK GOVERNORS CANNOT BE EXPLAINED SIMPLY BY SAYING BLACK PEOPLE DON’T VOTE.

A Black candidate can turn out an enormous percentage of Black voters and still lose a statewide election if that candidate cannot assemble enough support from the rest of the electorate.

Again, the math changes when the district becomes the entire state.

And Then There Was Wes Moore

Wes Moore was elected governor of Maryland in 2022 and took office in 2023.

He became Maryland’s first Black governor.

He was only the third Black American in U.S. history elected governor by voters.

Third.

By 2023.

That sentence should feel strange.

Because by then America had already elected a Black president twice. Black political leadership was well established across cities, Congress, state legislatures and presidential administrations.

Yet the governorship remained remarkably rare.

2026 Could Change the Number

That is what makes this election cycle worth watching.

Eight Black major-party gubernatorial nominees are running in 2026, including incumbent Wes Moore.

Put that against the historical record: only three Black Americans have ever been elected governor.

Georgia Democratic nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms could also make history as the first Black woman elected governor of any state.

That has never happened.

NO BLACK WOMAN HAS EVER SERVED AS GOVERNOR OF A U.S. STATE.

We often talk about political representation by looking at where we are.

Sometimes it makes more sense to look at how long it took us to get here.

Pinchback became governor in 1872. Wilder was elected in 1989. Patrick was elected in 2006. Paterson succeeded to office in 2008. Moore was elected in 2022.

Five people across more than 150 years.

That is not a statistic you can explain with one election, one candidate or one political party.

It is what happens when history, access, race, geography and political power collide.

And maybe that is the more important question underneath all of this.

Not simply why have there only been five Black governors?

But what does it tell us about America that becoming governor has remained one of the highest political barriers for Black candidates to cross?

That answer is still being written.