page_title: List of African-American United States Cabinet Secretaries
section_title: Current departments
hierarchical_section_title: List of African-American United States Cabinet Secretaries / African-American Secretaries / Current departments
caption_attribution_description: Robert C. Weaver, United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 1966 to 1968
context_page_description: The Cabinet of the United States has had 22 African-American appointed officers. The U.S. 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.
context_section_description: 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
caption: Robert C. Weaver was the first African American to hold a Cabinet-level position.
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