sentences:  Barack Obama previously held Burris's seat but resigned from his position on November 16, 2008, after winning the Presidential election of 2008 and becoming the first African American to be elected President of the United States.Until the emancipation of enslaved African Americans after the Civil War and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, blacks were generally barred from voting outside of the Northeast.As a result of these new laws, Joseph Rainey and Jefferson F. Long won election to Congress in majority-black districts and Hiram Rhodes Revels was appointed as senator from Mississippi (then a majority-black state) in 1870.