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The South Carolina House of Representatives is the lower house of the South Carolina General Assembly. It consists of 124 representatives elected to two year terms at the same time as U.S. congressional elections.
Scholars have identified more than 1,500 African American officeholders who served during the Reconstruction Era (1865–1877) after passage of the Reconstruction Acts in 1867 and 1868 as well as in the years after Reconstruction before white supremacy, disenfranchisement, and the Democrat 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 1877 and the end of Reconstruction. The following is a partial list some of the most notable of the officeholders pre-1900.
Joseph Crews was an American state legislator and Reconstructionist militia leader from Laurens County, South Carolina, during the Reconstruction era. He was the state's highest-ranking military official in the 1870s, and was put in charge of the state militia whose main purpose was to protect African-American voters. African-Americans were 58.9% of the population of South Carolina in 1870. He was reportedly murdered by Democrats in the run-up to the 1876 South Carolina gubernatorial election.
Simeon Farr was an American politician who was elected as a state representative in 1868 in South Carolina during the Reconstruction era. He represented Union County, South Carolina. His photograph was used in a composite of Radical Republican officials from South Carolina. His name is spelled Simon Farr in an 1868 House document.
Powell Smythe was a member of the South Carolina General Assembly during the Reconstruction era. He represented Clarendon County, South Carolina.
Sancho Saunders was a member of South Carolina's House of Representatives during the Reconstruction era. He represented Chester County, South Carolina. He was documented as a literate Baptist minister who was a slave before the American Civil War. He was African American. His photograph was included in a montage of Radical Republican South Carolina legislators.
James L. Jamison was an American politician in South Carolina.
Benjamin Franklin Jackson represented Charleston County, South Carolina in the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1868 until 1870.
William R. Hoyt was a state senator in South Carolina during the Reconstruction era from 1868 until 1870. He represented Colleton County. He was from Massachusetts.
William J. Brodie was a legislator in South Carolina during the Reconstruction era. He was identified as a mullato bricklayer who was literate. Another document lists him as a carpenter. He served in the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1876 until 1880.
Henry W. Webb was a political leader in Reconstruction era South Carolina. He was a delegate to the South Carolina Constitutional Convention of 1868 and elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives the same year.
John Hannibal White was a delegate to South Carolina's 1868 Constitutional Convention, a two-term member of the South Carolina House of Representatives, and a state senator in South Carolina. He worked as a blacksmith.
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.
Franklin F. Miller was a politician in South Carolina. He represented Georgetown, South Carolina, at the Constitutional Convention of 1868 and served in the state legislature. His photograph was included in a montage with other Radical Republican legislators. He was identified as "colored" and had not been recorded on tax roles. A document related to the 1868 Convention identifies him as white.
William M. Thomas was a Republican, African American politician during the Reconstruction era. He was a minister affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He represented Colleton County in the 1868 South Carolina Constitutional Convention and in the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1868 until 1876. He was also an officer in the state militia and was a delegate to the 1876 Republican National Convention. He was categorized as "colored". He and Joseph D. Boston were the only African Americans to serve all four terms during the Reconstruction era in the South Carolina House.
F. H. Fyall was a state Representative in the U.S. state of Georgia during the Reconstruction era. He was one of the Original 33 African Americans elected as legislators in Georgia.
George Maxwell Mears was a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1884 and 1885, as well as 1886 and 1887. He was born in Charleston.
Henry Riley was a state legislator in South Carolina during the Reconstruction era. He represented Orangeburg County. He was one of several African American legislators expelled from the legislature toward the end of the Reconstruction period.
John H. Carr was a farmer and member of the Arkansas Legislature in 1891. He represented Phillips County, Arkansas. He served in the Arkansas House of Representatives in 1891.
Styles Linton Hutchins was an American attorney, politician, and activist who was active in South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee between 1877, the end of Reconstruction, and 1906, at the height of Jim Crow. Hutchins was among the last African Americans to graduate from the University of South Carolina School of Law in the brief window during Reconstruction when the school was open to Black students, and then the first Black attorney admitted to practice in Georgia. He practiced law and participated in local politics in Georgia and Tennessee, served a single term (1887-1888) in the Tennessee General Assembly as one of its last Black members before an era of entrenched white supremacy that lasted until 1965, and advocated for the interests of African Americans as he understood them, including calls for reparations and attempts to identify or create a separate homeland for Blacks. He is best remembered today for his role as a member of the defense team in the 1906 appeal on civil rights grounds by Ed Johnson of a conviction of rape, a case which reached the Supreme Court before it was halted by Johnson's murder by lynching in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
References
- ↑ Representatives, South Carolina General Assembly House of (December 15, 1875). "Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of South-Carolina". State Printers – via Google Books.
- ↑ Holt, Thomas Cleveland (December 15, 1977). "Black Over White: Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina During Reconstruction". University of Illinois Press – via Google Books.
- ↑ "South Carolina Legislature Online - Search". www.scstatehouse.gov.
- ↑ Bryant, Lawrence Chesterfield (1967). "Negro Legislators in South Carolina 1868-1902".
- ↑ Representatives, South Carolina General Assembly House of (December 15, 1875). "Journal ..." Republican Printing Company – via Google Books.
- ↑ "United States Congressional Serial Set". 1877.