List of African-American United States Cabinet Secretaries
Current departments
Numerical order represents the seniority of the Secretaries in the United States presidential line of succession. denotes the first African-American secretary of that particular department

List of African-American United States Cabinet Secretaries

Section Title: Current departments
Table Section Text: Numerical order represents the seniority of the Secretaries in the United States presidential line of succession. denotes the first African-American secretary of that particular department

#	Secretary	Position	Year appointed	Party	Administration	Ref.

1	Colin Powell*	Secretary of State	2001	Republican	George W. Bush

1	Condoleezza Rice	Secretary of State	2005	Republican	George W. Bush

2	—	Secretary of the Treasury	—	—	—	—

3	—	Secretary of Defense	—	—	—	—

4	Eric Holder*	Attorney General	2009	Democratic	Barack Obama

4	Loretta Lynch	Attorney General	2015	Democratic	Barack Obama

5	—	Secretary of the Interior	—	—	—	—

6	Mike Espy*	Secretary of Agriculture	1993	Democratic	Bill Clinton

7	Ron Brown*	Secretary of Commerce	1993	Democratic	Bill Clinton

8	Alexis Herman*	Secretary of Labor	1997	Democratic	Bill Clinton

9	Patricia Roberts Harris*	Secretary of Health and Human Services	1979	Democratic	Jimmy Carter

9	Louis Wade Sullivan	Secretary of Health and Human Services	1989	Republican	George H. W. Bush

10	Robert C. Weaver*	Secretary of Housing and Urban Development	1966	Democratic	Lyndon B. Johnson

10	Patricia Roberts Harris	Secretary of Housing and Urban Development	1977	Democratic	Jimmy Carter

10	Samuel Pierce	Secretary of Housing and Urban Development	1981	Republican	Ronald Reagan

10	Alphonso Jackson	Secretary of Housing and Urban Development	2004	Republican	George W. Bush

10	Ben Carson	Secretary of Housing and Urban Development	2017	Republican	Donald Trump

11	William Thaddeus Coleman Jr.*	Secretary of Transportation	1975	Republican	Gerald Ford

11	Rodney E. Slater	Secretary of Transportation	1997	Democratic	Bill Clinton

11	Anthony Foxx	Secretary of Transportation	2013	Democratic	Barack Obama

12	Hazel R. O'Leary*	Secretary of Energy	1993	Democratic	Bill Clinton

13	Rod Paige*	Secretary of Education	2001	Republican	George W. Bush

13	John King Jr.	Secretary of Education	2016	Democratic	Barack Obama

14	Jesse Brown*	Secretary of Veterans Affairs	1993	Democratic	Bill Clinton

14	Togo D. West Jr.	Secretary of Veterans Affairs	1998	Democratic	Bill Clinton

15	Jeh Johnson*	Secretary of Homeland Security	2013	Democratic	Barack Obama

Sentence(s)

Patricia Roberts Harris was the first African American to serve in the United States Cabinet, and the first to enter the line of succession to the Presidency.
Patricia Roberts Harris was the first African American to serve in the United States Cabinet, and the first to enter the line of succession to the Presidency.

final_sentence: Patricia Roberts Harris was the first African American to serve in the United States Cabinet, and the first to enter the line of succession to the Presidency.
final_sentence: Patricia Roberts Harris was the first African American to serve in the United States Cabinet, and the first to enter the line of succession to the Presidency.