page_title: Roland Burris
section_title: Senate term
hierarchical_section_title: Roland Burris / U.S. Senate / Senate term
caption_attribution_description: English: U.S. Senator Roland Burris (D-Illinois) meeting with Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor
context_page_description: Roland Wallace Burris is an American politician and attorney who is a former United States Senator from the state of Illinois and a member of the Democratic Party.
  In 1978, Burris was the first African-American elected to statewide office in Illinois, when he was elected Illinois Comptroller. He served in that office until his election as Illinois Attorney General in 1990. Since then, he has unsuccessfully run for office four more times.
  Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich appointed Burris to replace President-elect Barack Obama as the junior senator from Illinois. The appointment was controversial, as the governor was already under investigation and there were rumors of him being paid for the appointment. Burris succeeded Obama as the U.S. Senate's only African American member. He was briefly a candidate for election to a full term but withdrew before the Democratic primaries in the 2010 elections.
context_section_description: Just as Revels, Bruce, Brooke, Braun, and Obama had been the Senate's only African American member, Burris was the only black Senator during his term in office. Following his leaving office, it would be over two years until the next black Senator, Tim Scott, a Republican, and the first black senator elected in the south since Reconstruction, took office in January 2013.
caption: Senator Burris meeting with Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor in June 2009
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "Supreme Court Justice Nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor", "Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D2Xs", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Picasa 3.0", "Image DateTime": "2009:06:10 10:16:53", "Image Artist": "U.S. Senate Photographic Studio-John Klemmer", "Image ExifOffset": "310", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "974", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4832", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/125", "EXIF FNumber": "28/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "320", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2009:06:09 17:53:00", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2009:06:09 17:53:00", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "870723/125000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "2485427/500000", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Flash", "EXIF Flash": "Strobe return light not detected", "EXIF FocalLength": "38", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "31", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "31", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[2, 0, 2, 0, 0, 1, 1, 2]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "57", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "5361730c8b6fc13b9139142d9304b6bd"}