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The establishment of the Congressional Black Caucus in the United States Congress, in 1971, inaugurated a new era in the history of black congressional representation. The Caucus represented a novel attempt at a form of collective national black political leadership, seeking to influence both the executive and legislature to secure symbolic and substantive policy advances for blacks beyond, as well as within, the districts of its members. This attempt foundered, however, upon the incentives to individualism inherent in the electoral and institutional environments of the contemporary Congress. The enduring political legitimacy of the CBC was sustained less by an ability to obtain tangible policy achievements than upon the continuing perceived need among blacks for a group within the Congress dedicated explicitly, and exclusively, to the articulation of black interests.
