In the first seconds of his first address to a joint session of Congress, President Biden acknowledged the historic nature of the people who sat behind him.

“Madam Speaker, Madam Vice President,” he began. “No president has ever said those words from this podium. No president has ever said those words. And it’s about time.”

He was referring, of course, to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — the only woman to have ever held that position — and Vice President Harris, the only woman and person of Black or Asian descent to ever have done so. It was a moment without equal in American history.

There have, in years past, been others who shared the dais besides the vice president and the speaker. There have been years in which there was no speech to Congress at all, as the American Presidency Project has documented. But for the most part, the president of the United States has been a White man, and the next two people in line for his position, sitting at his back, have been White men as well.

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That changed for the first time in 2007, after the 2006 midterm elections swept the Democrats into the House majority — and Pelosi to the speaker’s chair. It changed again when Barack Obama addressed Congress in 2009, with Pelosi sitting behind him — until 2011, when the Republicans had regained the majority. In 2017 and 2018, it was once again all White men.

In 2021, it is not.

There is one last bit of history to make, of course. At some point, one assumes, none of the three most senior American officials will be White men. On that occasion, which may be imminent or may be decades away, it will also be worth pausing at the outset and offering a pointed moment of recognition.

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