BATON ROUGE — State Sen. Cleo Fields gave a brief history lesson to the Baton Rouge Press Club on Monday, noting that only four Black people have represented Louisiana in the U.S. House since Reconstruction. Fields wants to return to the federal office.

Then-Rep. Charles Nash represented the state in the final throes of the Civil War period, then the state went more than a century before sending another Black representative to Washington.

"Since Reconstruction we've only had four blacks ever elected to the U.S. Congress," Fields said. "The first person elected to the U.S. Congress, because after Nash Louisiana went 114 years without a single African-American representing the state, but in 1990 William Jefferson was the first African-American elected to Congress.

"And then in 1992, the good Lord almighty blessed me and I was elected to Congress. Then after that, Cedric Richmond was elected from the Second Congressional District and then Troy Carter," he said.

Fields, a Baton Rouge Democrat, has announced plans to seek a seat currently held by Rep. Garret Graves, a Baton Rouge Republican. Legislators recently re-mapped Graves' seat into a minority-majority district after a federal judge said Louisiana's representation was out of balance.

Louisiana is about one-third Black, but its congressional delegation is one-sixth Black.

Fields said he wasn't a driving force behind targeting Graves' seat, though with the House speaker and House majority leader both being from Louisiana, lawmakers had few options to work with.

"The legislature had to decide whose district they were going to make the majority-black district. We only have six, and they chose Garret Graves'," Fields said. "I didn't choose it. The Senate and the House chose it, and at the end of the day that's the way it ended up."