List of African American United States Cabinet Secretaries

The United States Cabinet has had 21 African-American appointed officers. The US Census Bureau defines African Americans as citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa. The term is generally used for Americans with at least partial ancestry in any of the original peoples of sub-Saharan Africa. During the founding of the federal government, African Americans were consigned to a status of second-class citizenship or enslaved. No African American ever held a Cabinet position before the Civil Rights Movement or the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and labor unions.

Robert C. Weaver became the first African American to hold a Cabinet-level position when he was appointed Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in 1966 by President Lyndon B. Johnson.Patricia Roberts Harris became the first African-American female cabinet member when she was appointed Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in 1977. In 1979, Harris became the first African American to be head of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, which was split into the departments of Education and Health and Human Services in the same year. The appointments of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State made them the highest-ranking African Americans in the United States presidential line of succession.