Black Elected Officials in Ohio

First edition, October 2026

Black Ohioans number about 1.8 million, 14.6 percent of Ohio's overall population. As of October 2026, they hold 534 elected offices in Ohio, in 37 of its 88 counties. This directory is the first verified statewide record of who they are, where they serve, and where no Black official serves at all. The Ohio Legislative Black Caucus Foundation publishes it because no institution in Ohio keeps this record.

Key Findings

• At the top of the ballot, representation matches population: Black Ohioans hold 22 of the 132 seats in the General Assembly, 16.7 percent, and 3 of Ohio's 15 seats in the U.S. House, 20 percent.
• In county government it nearly disappears: 7 of 704 countywide offices, 1 percent. No Black county auditor, county engineer, or county coroner serves anywhere in Ohio.
• No Black Ohioan holds statewide office, a U.S. Senate seat, or a seat on the Supreme Court of Ohio.
• Of Ohio's 709 judges, 58 are Black, 8.2 percent, and every one of them serves in just eight counties.
• Local office carries the record: 235 city and village council members and 154 school board members, 73 percent of the roll.
• 6 of Ohio's 3,924 township trustees are Black, while 254,000 Black Ohioans now live in townships.
• Three counties, Cuyahoga, Hamilton, and Franklin, hold 62 percent of Ohio's Black elected officials; 51 counties hold none.

What this record makes possible. For the first time, Black representation in Ohio can be measured against population, office by office and county by county, and tracked from one election to the next. This edition sets the baseline. Each January and July edition will record who was elected, who left office, and whether the gaps in county government, on the bench, and in the townships are closing. OLBCF holds the underlying data. Researchers, journalists, candidates, and the organizations that recruit and support them can write to office@olbcfoundation.org to discuss working with it.

The condition this directory documents is not the absence of Black officeholders. It is a ladder with a missing middle. Black Ohioans are represented at the top of the ballot in proportion to their numbers, and they are present on the councils and school boards closest to home. Between those two, in the county offices that decide who is charged, who is confined, how property is valued, and how elections are run, they are almost entirely absent.

At the top of the ballot the record is one of achievement. Black Ohioans number about 1.8 million, or 14.6 percent of the state. They hold 22 of the 132 seats in the Ohio General Assembly, which is 16.7 percent, and three of Ohio's fifteen seats in the United States House, which is 20 percent. Measured by seats alone, both chambers seat Black Ohioans at or above their share of the population.

A seat count is not a power count. In the 136th General Assembly a single party holds 65 of 99 House seats and 24 of 33 Senate seats. What any member can move through a chamber under that arrangement depends on the majority, on committee assignments, and on the coalitions that member builds, and none of it appears in a roster. This directory records who holds office. It does not measure influence and should not be read as measuring it.

County government is where the absence is greatest. This directory identifies eighteen Black officials across county commissions, councils, and the countywide offices, seated in ten of the eighty-eight counties. Seven of the eighteen hold one of the eight countywide offices: one sheriff in Huron County, one recorder in Lucas, one treasurer in Franklin, two prosecutors in Franklin and Stark, and two clerks of courts in Summit and Warren. This directory records no Black county auditor, no Black county engineer, and no Black county coroner anywhere in the state. These are not ceremonial offices. The prosecutor decides who is charged. The sheriff runs the jail. The auditor values every parcel of property that funds every school. The board of elections answers to the county. A county government with no Black officeholder still makes those decisions for the Black residents who live under it.

The bench, counted in full. Ohio elects 709 judges: seven justices of the Supreme Court, 68 on the courts of appeals, 376 on the common pleas bench, 203 in municipal courts, and 55 in the county courts. Fifty-eight of the 709, 8.2 percent, are Black: twenty-eight municipal court judges, twenty-three on common pleas benches counting the juvenile, probate, and domestic relations divisions, and seven on the courts of appeals. No Black judge sits on the Supreme Court of Ohio, and none holds one of the 55 county court seats. All fifty-eight serve in eight counties: Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton, Montgomery, Summit, Lucas, Lorain, and Mahoning. This directory records no Black judge in the other eighty.

The empty half of the map is mostly a map of where Black Ohioans do not live. Fifty-one counties record no Black elected official at any level. Those fifty-one counties together hold 4.1 percent of Ohio's Black population. The other 95.9 percent live in one of the thirty-seven counties that record at least one Black elected official. Concentration is not the same as exclusion, and the Foundation will not present it as such.

The question worth asking is not which counties are empty but which counties are thin. Measured against Black population, the rate of Black officeholding varies more than ninefold among the counties that have any at all. Trumbull County seats 5.9 Black officials for every ten thousand Black residents, Portage 5.0, Licking 4.8, Cuyahoga 4.5, Stark 3.7. Against those, Franklin County seats 2.0, Butler 0.9, Clark 0.7, and Fairfield 0.6.

That comparison has to be read carefully, because the rate is shaped as much by how a county is governed as by who lives there. Cuyahoga County is divided among more than fifty municipalities, each with its own council and most with a mayor, and a county cut into that many pieces produces more seats per resident than one where a single city holds most of the population. Franklin County's Black population is nearly as large as Cuyahoga's, but the greater part of it lives in Columbus, which elects a nine-member council. A low rate can mean under-representation, or it can mean there are simply fewer offices to hold. Distinguishing the two is the work this record now makes possible. It was not possible before.

Black Ohio is suburbanizing faster than Black representation is. About 254,000 Black Ohioans, one in seven, live in a township rather than a city or village. Forty-eight townships have a thousand or more Black residents. Colerain Township has 17,924. Springfield Township in Hamilton County is 46.7 percent Black. Harrison Township in Montgomery County is 57.8 percent Black. This directory records six Black township trustees in the entire state, half of them on one board in Jefferson Township in Montgomery County. Township government has no charter and no home rule, its trustees are elected at large rather than by ward, and at-large election is the hardest structure in Ohio for a minority of any kind to win a seat under. The places Black families are moving to are governed by the level of Ohio government where Black Ohioans hold the fewest seats.

School boards and city councils carry the record. Eighty-six percent of the officials recorded here serve a city, a village, a township, a school district, or a municipal court. Council seats and boards of education alone account for 73 percent: 235 council members and 154 school board members, the latter across 72 districts in 25 counties. These are the offices where Black political careers in Ohio begin, and they are also the offices the state has done the most to constrain. Ohio preempted local minimum wage ordinances in 2016, and a wholly Black council may still lack authority over the decisions its residents feel most directly.

Cleveland is the exception, and it is the only one. The board of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District is appointed by the mayor rather than elected. House Bill 269 put the district under mayoral control in September 1998, and Cleveland voters affirmed that arrangement in November 2002 by seventy percent. Nine members serve four year terms, chosen by the mayor from a slate produced by a community nominating panel. Every other school district in Ohio elects its board. The four Black members of the Cleveland board are recorded in these pages and are not counted as elected, because they did not stand for election. In one of the largest majority-Black school districts in the state, no voter casts a ballot for the board.

What this record cannot tell you. It cannot tell you who is Black and has not said so publicly, because race here is self-identified or confirmed against a public source, and where neither exists a person is not listed. It cannot tell you about the officials of jurisdictions the Foundation has not yet reached. It cannot tell you anything about appointed officials, department heads, or staff, who hold real authority and are outside the scope of an elected roll. Sixteen appointed officials are documented here and are deliberately excluded from every count, among them the four Black members of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District board, which the mayor of Cleveland appoints.

Some portion of what this record shows is demographic and will remain so. Some portion is not. Until now the two could not be told apart. With this record they can, and the Foundation intends to keep it current, in January and in July, for as long as it takes to make the second portion smaller.

The directory is produced by the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and sustained by its supporters. To fund the next edition or partner on the research, write to office@olbcfoundation.org.

Cite as: Ohio Legislative Black Caucus Foundation, The Official Directory of Black Elected Officials in Ohio, first edition, October 2026.

Population figures are American Community Survey five-year estimates for Black alone or in combination with another race, table B02009, aggregated by the Foundation for all 88 counties and for Ohio's cities, villages, and townships. Seat counts are Ohio's 15 U.S. House districts, the 99-member Ohio House, the 33-member Ohio Senate, three commissioners in each of the 86 non-charter counties, eight countywide offices in each of the 88, the 11-member councils of Cuyahoga and Summit, Ohio's two U.S. Senate seats and five statewide executive offices, the Supreme Court of Ohio's tally of judgeships (seven justices, 68 on the courts of appeals, 376 on the common pleas bench, 203 in municipal courts, and 55 in county courts), 253 cities and 673 villages each electing a mayor, and the three trustees governing each of Ohio's 1,308 townships. School board seats are approximate: boards of five, seven in some city districts, across Ohio's 615 districts. No state office tallies city and village council seats, so those rows carry no share. Party control reflects the 136th General Assembly seated after the 2024 election. Rates per ten thousand are officials on this roll divided by county Black population. The count of 534 is elected seats. A few people hold a seat in a district that spans two cities and so appear under both, which is why 534 seats are held by 532 people.