On Monday, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta shattered a 104-year-old racial barrier by naming Raphael W. Bostic as its new president.

Mr. Bostic, an economist and also a former housing policy official in the Obama administration. Mr. Bostic will become the first African-American to lead any of the Fed’s 12 regional reserve banks, and just the fourth to serve on its policy-making committee, which raises and lowers the interest rates.

The Fed has come under mounting pressure from the congressional Democrats and liberal groups to increase the diversity of its leadership, particularly at the regional banks.

He will serve as a chief executive of an institution with hundreds of employees, including the economic researchers, bank regulators and the people who work the plumbing of the financial system. Atlanta Fed handles the central bank’s processing of the electronic checks.

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Mr. Bostic, aged 50, is the director of Bedrosian Center on Governance at the University of Southern California’s Sol Price School of Public Policy. He is an expert on the housing policy, and he said that he intended to focus the Atlanta Fed on housing-related issues.

Mr. Bostic’s views on the monetary policy are unknown. He will take his first turn as a voting member of the Fed’s policy-making committee in the year 2018. Five of the 12 regional reserve presidents vote each year. Mr. Bostic will join the Fed on June 5th, replacing Dennis P. Lockhart, who joined the Fed in the year 2007 and stepped down in the February upon reaching mandatory retirement.

“I could not be more thrilled about today’s announcement,” said the Representative David Scott, a Georgia Democrat who co-signed the letter.

Mrudula Duddempudi.