Republican senator Tim Scott is running for president
Mr Scott, 57, who has represented South Carolina in the chamber since 2013, promised to revive America's "culture of greatness".
With about $22m (£18m) in ca, he enters the fray with more campaign funds than any of his rivals.
Ex-President Donald Trump is the runaway front-runner among Republicans for the party's nomination.
At a launch event in his hometown of North Charleston on Monday, Mr Scott, who is black, touted his personal story - the grandson of a Deep South cotton field worker who rose to the US Senate - as an embodiment of the American dream.
He spoke of being raised by a single mother and how his family went "from cotton to Congress" in his grandfather's lifetime.
Mr Scott has previously spoken often of his experience as a black man in America, from being pulled over by police seven times in one year to being stopped inside the US Capitol building.
But in his campaign launch speech, he rejected the idea that the nation is defined by racial division.
"I am living proof that America is the land of opportunity, not a land of oppression," he said, railing against the political left. "The truth of my life disproves their lies."
He vowed to turn around "a nation in retreat".
"Joe Biden and the radical left are attacking every rung of the ladder that helped me climb," he said. "We are not in decline. We are in a Biden retreat. So all we need to do is turn around."
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