To date, I’ve been able to find 8 major-party nominees of African descent for governor of a U.S. state, over the spread of 6 states:

• Douglas Wilder (Virginia Democratic nominee 1989, elected 1990-1994)
• Deval Patrick (Massachusetts Democratic nominee 2006, elected 2007-2015)
• Johnny DuPree (Mississippi Democratic nominee 2011, first AA nominee since Reconstruction)
• Robert Gray (Mississippi Democratic nominee 2015)
• Cleo Fields (Louisiana Democratic candidate 1995, Louisiana has no primary system)
• Bill Jefferson (Louisiana Democratic candidate 1999)
• Theo Mitchell (South Carolina Democratic candidate 1990)
• Anthony Brown (Maryland Democratic nominee 2014)

Compare this to:

• 36 elected governors of Irish descent
• 21 elected governors of Ashkenazi Jewish decent

Not bad for two other ethnicities who were once considered non-white by White America.

But it’s emblematic of how adrift Democrats are at the moment in the South, and just how much we have failed in representing and accommodating one of the most and longest-politically-disadvantaged ethnic groups in this country.