The Congressional Black Caucus is still getting up and running for the 114th Congress — it announced its staff Monday — but its new chairman sees an urgency for an organization that has long been known to represent the interests of minorities and the poor.

“We have a traditional role and that is to be the conscience of the Congress,” Rep. G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., told CQ Roll Call on Feb. 20. “We’ve been using ‘conscience of the Congress’ as our brand, if you will, since our founding. But we’ve got to do more than that because black America is in a state of emergency right now.”

Butterfield noted that 1 in 4 black families — and 1 in 3 black children — live in poverty, while the unemployment rate for African-Americans is roughly double that for whites.

“We cannot continue down this path,” the North Carolina Democrat said. “We have to be assertive. We have to be more aggressive.”