[This weekend
marks the 150th anniversary of the landmark Civil
Rights Act of 1866, one of many such Reconstruction sesquicentennials
over the next decade. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy five Reconstruction
histories, leading up to a special weekend post on the Civil Rights Act.]
I’m quite sure
that every one of the more
than 1500 African Americans who held elected office during Reconstruction
has an amazing story we should better remember. (And that each of them would
fully counteract the awful stereotyping created by “historical” texts like Birth of a Nation.) Here are three
distinct but equally important and inspiring such individuals and stories:
1)
Benjamin Turner: Born
into slavery in 1825 North Carolina, sold down river to Alabama with his mother
when he was only five, and freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, Turner
became a self-made businessman and farmer in Selma while the war was still
raging. By 1865, he had enough local clout to found one of the areas first
freedmen’s schools; two years later he attended the state Republican
Convention, launching his political career with an appointment as the county’s
tax collector. In 1870 he ran successfully for the U.S. House of
Representatives; although he only served one term, it was a productive two
years, including authoring private pension bills for Civil War veterans and
opposing a cotton tax that he saw as disproportionately affecting African
Americans. After his 1872 defeat he mostly returned to farming, although he did
attend the 1880
Republican National Convention in Chicago—one more reflection of his
political and communal prominence.
2)
Hiram
Revels: Born in 1827 to free African Americans in Fayetteville, North Carolina,
educated for the ministry in Northern seminaries, an itinerant minister for the
African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church throughout the 1850s and the chaplain
for one of the first African American regiments in the Civil War, Revels’ story
differs from Turner’s in just about every way. Yet he too opened one of the
earliest freedmen’s schools (this one in St. Louis, where he had been a pastor
before the war) and he too became one of the first African Americans in
Congress when he was appointed to the Senate by the Mississippi state
legislature in January 1870. Like Turner, Revels served only one term (or in
his case, only part of one), as he declined a number of appointments after his
Senate term ended in March 1871; yet in that brief time, Revels managed both to
fight for the education and rights of freed people and to advocate for
universal amnesty for former Confederate soldiers. And in his post-Senate life
he continued along both paths, serving as president of Alcorn A&M College
(now Alcorn State University) and writing a famous 1875 letter to
President Grant denouncing “carpetbaggers”—a duality that illustrates the
breadth of perspectives found among these Reconstruction legislators.
3)
P.B.S.
Pinchback: Subject of some of the most interesting sections in Allyson Hobbs’
wonderful A Chosen Exile, Pinchback
was the mixed-race son of a freed slave and her former master (some of his
siblings were born while she was still a slave, but Pinchback was born in 1837,
a year after she was freed). Like Revels, he moved north to attend school and
stayed there until the outbreak of the war; during the war he moved to New
Orleans and worked to raise companies of African American soldiers for the
Union army, becoming a captain in one such company. After the war he became
active in the Georgia Republican Party, was elected to the State Senate in
1868, and succeeded Oscar Dunn (the
first elected African American Lieutenant Governor of any state) as the state’s
Lieutenant Governor upon Dunn’s death in 1871. A year later, Governor Henry
Clay Warmouth was tried for impeachment; state law required Warmouth to step
down while on trial, and for the final six weeks of his term Pinchback served
as Georgia’s governor, becoming the first African American governor in the process.
The moment reveals the chaotic histories unfolding in every Southern state
during Reconstruction—but Pinchback’s readiness and ability to step into the
governor’s role are one more reminder of how many impressive and inspiring African
American leaders made their mark throughout the period.
Next
Reconstruction remembrance tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other Reconstruction histories you’d highlight?
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