Blanche Bruce (L) and Hiram Revels (R) are the two previous black senators to have been chosen by Mississippi After winning a close race in Mississippi, Democrat Scott Colom will become the state's first black US senator for more than 150 years, and the third in history. It is a historic result in the deeply conservative southern state that last sent a Democrat to the US Senate in 1982, and had not seated a black senator since 1875.