There were seventy-two Black elected officials in the South when the Voting Rights Act was signed. In 1966, only one year after the passage of the act, that number increased to 159. Almost a million Black men and women registered to vote in the first four years after the act’s passage. Twenty years after the passage of the act, the number of Black state legislators in the South grew from three to 176. There were more than 10,000 Black elected officials nationwide on the federal, state and local levels about forty-five years after the act’s passage. The Voting Rights Act also transformed Black representation in Congress. There were two Black members of the US Senate and twenty Black members of the US House of Representatives between 1870 and 1901. From 1901 until the passage of the act, however, there were only eight Black members of Congress. Twenty Black politicians served in Congress in the first ten years after the act’s passage, including Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005). Chisholm was the first Black woman elected to Congress.