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The Reconstruction era was a period in United States history and Southern United States history that followed the American Civil War and was dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of the abolition of slavery and the reintegration of the eleven former Confederate States of America into the United States. During this period, three amendments were added to the United States Constitution to grant citizenship and equal civil rights to the newly freed slaves. To circumvent these legal achievements, the former Confederate states imposed poll taxes and literacy tests and engaged in terrorism to intimidate and control black people and to discourage or prevent them from voting.
Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback was an American publisher, politician, and Union Army officer who served as Governor of Louisiana from December 9, 1872 to January 13, 1873. Pinchback was the first African-American governor and the second lieutenant governor in the United States. A Republican, Pinchback served as acting governor of Louisiana for 35 days, during which ten acts of Legislature became law. He was one of the most prominent African-American officeholderss during and following the Reconstruction Era.
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was a U.S. government agency of early post American Civil War Reconstruction, assisting freedmen in the South. It was established on March 3, 1865, and operated briefly as a federal agency after the War, from 1865 to November 1872, to direct provisions, clothing, and fuel for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their wives and children.
The Georgia Republican Party (GAGOP) is the affiliate of the Republican Party in the U.S. state of Georgia and one of the two major political parties. It is currently the dominant party in the state and is chaired by Joshua McKoon.
More than 1,500 African American officeholders served during the Reconstruction era (1865–1877) and in the years after Reconstruction before white supremacy, disenfranchisement, and the Democratic Party fully reasserted control in Southern states. Historian Canter Brown Jr. noted that in some states, such as Florida, the highest number of African Americans were elected or appointed to offices after the end of Reconstruction in 1877. The following is a partial list of notable African American officeholders from the end of the Civil War until before 1900. Dates listed are the year that a term states or the range of years served if multiple terms.
Rev. Tunis Gulic Campbell Sr., called "the oldest and best known clergyman in the African Methodist Church", served as a voter registration organizer, Justice of the Peace, a delegate to the Georgia Constitutional Convention of 1867–1868, and as a Georgia state senator during the Reconstruction era. He also published an autobiography, Sufferings of the Reverend T.G. Campbell and His Family in Georgia (1877). An African American, he was a major figure in Reconstruction Georgia. He reportedly had a 400-person militia to protect him from the Ku Klux Klan. Like Governor Rufus Bullock, he eventually had to flee the state to save his life.
James M. Hinds was the first U.S. Congressman assassinated in office. He served as member of the United States House of Representatives for Arkansas from June 24, 1868 until his assassination by the Ku Klux Klan. Hinds, who was white, was an advocate of civil rights for black former slaves during the Reconstruction era following the American Civil War.
At the end of the American Civil War, the devastation and disruption in the state of Georgia were dramatic. Wartime damage, the inability to maintain a labor force without slavery, and miserable weather had a disastrous effect on agricultural production. The state's chief cash crop, cotton, fell from a high of more than 700,000 bales in 1860 to less than 50,000 in 1865, while harvests of corn and wheat were also meager. The state government subsidized construction of numerous new railroad lines. White farmers turned to cotton as a cash crop, often using commercial fertilizers to make up for the poor soils they owned. The coastal rice plantations never recovered from the war.
Alfred Eliab Buck was a U.S. Representative from Alabama.
John Curtiss Underwood was an attorney, abolitionist politician and a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Virginia and the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Charles H. Pearce (1817–1887) was a religious and political leader in Florida. An African Methodist Episcopal (AME) minister, he was dispatched to Florida in 1865, after the American Civil War. He had previously been a missionary in Canada after moving from Maryland to Connecticut. He helped bring the AME Church, the first independent black denomination in the United States, to Florida and worked to build its congregation during and after the Reconstruction era. In 1868 Pearce was elected as a delegate to the Florida Constitutional Convention of 1868. Later that year he was elected to the state legislature as a state senator from Leon County, Florida. He served numerous terms in the legislature, working to gain support for civil rights and public education for Floridians.
Reverend Romulus Moore was an American politician and leader of the early civil rights movement after the American Civil War during the Reconstruction Era in the U.S. state of Georgia. An African American, Moore was elected to the state legislature in 1868. Moore was expelled from the legislature in 1868 along with other African Americans and reinstated in the Georgia General Assembly in 1870 by an Act of Congress. Reverend Moore was active in advocating the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
George H. Clower was a state legislator and schoolteacher in Central Georgia during the Reconstruction era. He was one of two African-Americans elected from Central Georgia to Georgia's legislature during that period.
The "Original 33" were the first 33 African-American members of the Georgia General Assembly. They were elected to office in 1868, during the Reconstruction era. They were among the first African-American state legislators in the United States. Twenty-four of the members were ministers. Upon taking office, white Democrats, then a minority in the Assembly, conspired with enough white Republicans to expel the African-American legislators from the Assembly in September 1868. The next year, the Supreme Court of Georgia ruled that African Americans had the right to hold office in Georgia. The expelled legislators were reinstated and took office in January 1870.
William Beverly Nash was a barber, shoe shine, porter, waiter, and state senator in South Carolina. An African American, Nash was born enslaved in Virginia, Nash gained his freedom at the age of 43 with the passage of the 13th Amendment. After the American Civil War, he became a state legislator during the Reconstruction Era. He was instrumental in drafting South Carolina's Constitution of 1868, and held several committee positions in the state government over his career. He held his office for 21 years before resigning.
Henry L. Shrewsbury was an American teacher and Reconstruction era state legislator in South Carolina. He was described as a free mullato, and represented Chesterfield County in the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1868 until 1870.
Simeon W. Beard was an American minister, teacher, and politician who worked in Charleston, South Carolina and then in Augusta, Georgia. He served in the Union Army. He was a delegate to Georgia's constitutional convention in 1867 and 1868. African American legislators were expelled from office in Georgia.
Alfred Brown Osgood was an American legislator and Christian minister in Florida.
Urbain Ozanne was a French-born American political organizer, sheriff, and businessman. He was a Republican Party organizer and served as sheriff in Panola County, Mississippi during the Reconstruction era. He later became a businessman in Nevada operating a mail route and hotel.
Foster Blodgett Jr. was an American politician elected mayor of Augusta, Georgia, from 1859 to 1860, and returned to the mayoralty via military appointment between 1867 and 1868. Blodgett was elected to the United States Senate by the Georgia General Assembly in 1871, but not seated.
References
- ↑ "Constitution, Ordinances and Resolutions of the Georgia Convention: Assembled in Pursuance of the Reconstruction Acts of Congress, and Held, by Order of General Pope, in the City of Atlanta, in 1867 and 1868 ..." New Era Office. 18 March 1868 – via Google Books.
- ↑ Georgia. Supreme Court; White, R.W.; Clements, W.J.; Davis, E. (1869). Can a Negro Hold Office in Georgia?. Daily Intelligence Book and Job Office. p. 132. Retrieved 2018-03-18.
- ↑ Drago, Edmund L. (18 March 1982). Black Politicians and Reconstruction in Georgia: A Splendid Failure. University of Georgia Press. p. 68. ISBN 9780820314389 – via Google Books.
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