This is a list of African Americans who have served in the United States Senate. The Senate has had eleven African-American elected or appointed officeholders. Two each served during both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Of the eight African Americans ever to sit in the U.S. Senate since the African American Civil Rights Movement, three held Illinois's Class 3 seat, including Barack Obama, who went on to become the president of the United States. This makes Illinois the state with the most African-American U.S. senators to date.