Sen. Ninian Edwards
Former Senator for Illinois
![Photo of Sen. Ninian Edwards [R-IL, 1818-1824]](/static/legislator-photos/403770-200px.jpeg)
Legislators who enslaved Black people
Edwards was among more than 1,800 legislators who enslaved Black people.
The Washington Post compiled the
first database of slaveholding members of Congress
by examining thousands of pages of census records and historical documents.
Edwards was one of them.
Primary Sources
The information on this page is originally sourced from a variety of materials, including:
- unitedstates/congress-legislators, a community project gathering congressional information
- United States Congressional Roll Call Voting Records, 1789-1990 by Howard L. Rosenthal and Keith T. Poole.
- Martis’s “The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress”, via Keith Poole’s roll call votes data set, for political party affiliation for Members of Congress from 1789 through about year 2000
- Biographical Directory of the United States Congress for the photo
