African-American Black Reconstruction Congress 1884 ORIG Hand Color Print RARE

RARE Original African American Engraved Print. First African American members of US Congress. For offer, a rare piece of history! Fresh from a prominent estate in Upstate NY. Never offered on the market until now.

Vintage, Old, Original, Antique, NOT a Reproduction - Guaranteed!! Came from the Rochester / Canandaigua area. Hand colored - extremely rare. The one offered here is very similar.

Portraits of five important African-American legislators from the Reconstruction era. Rainey of South Carolina was the first African-American representative in Congress, and James T. Rapier was one of the first from Alabama.

The other three were Mississippians: Hiram R. Revels was the state's first African-American senator; Blanche K.

Bruce was their first to serve a full term; and John R. Lynch was their first United States Representative. First appears in the New York directories in 1879, though the family had been engravers there for many years previous, and we would guess this print was probably produced before the death of Revels in 1883. Measures 9 1/4 x 6 inches.

If you collect 19th century Americana history, American photography, African American culture, post Civil War, etc. This is a treasure you will not see again! Add this to your image or paper / ephemera collection. Joseph Hayne Rainey (June 21, 1832 - August 1, 1887) was an American politician. He was the first black person to serve in the United States House of Representatives and the second black person (after Hiram Revels) to serve in the United States Congress. His service included time as presiding officer of the House of Representatives.

Born into a family of farmers and planters, Rainey was a member of the Republican Party. Joseph Hayne Rainey was born in 1832 in Georgetown, South Carolina. [1] His mother Grace was of Indigenous and French descent. He paid a portion of his income to his master as required by law.

[2] With opportunities for education severely limited for black people, Rainey followed his father into the barber's profession as an adult. It was an independent and well-respected trade that enabled him to build a wide social network in his community. In 1859, Rainey traveled to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he met and married Susan, a free woman of color from the West Indies, who was also of African-French descent. Tucker House on Water Street and Barber's Alley, St.

Confederate blockade runners are visible. The Hamilton Hotel, in Hamilton, Bermuda, in 1875.

In 1861, with the outbreak of the American Civil War, Rainey was among the free black people who were conscripted by the Confederates to work on fortifications in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1862, Rainey and his family escaped to the British Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda, 640 miles off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. They settled in the town of St. George's, Bermuda (from which Charleston and South Carolina had been founded in 1669 under Governor William Sayle).

There, Rainey worked as a barber. His shop was accessed from Barber's Alley and was located in the cellar of the "Tucker House", the building on the corner of Water Street and Barber's Alley that had previously been the home of Council President and sometimes acting Governor Henry Tucker of Bermuda. [3] His wife, on the other hand, became a successful dressmaker with her own shop. In 1865, the couple moved to the town of Hamilton, Bermuda, when an outbreak of yellow fever threatened St.

Rainey worked at the Hamilton Hotel as a barber and a bartender, where his customers were mostly white. He became a respected member of the community and he and his wife earned a prosperous living in Bermuda. Not all Bermudians supported the Confederates, however. Black Bermudian stevedores brawled with Confederate sailors, [4] and cargoes of Confederate cotton were burnt by arsonists on the docks of St.

[5] Many black and white Bermudians fought for the Union, mostly in the U. Those who served in the U. Army included First Sergeant Robert John Simmons, who served in the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment and died in August 1863 as a result of wounds received in an attack on Fort Wagner, near Charleston, South Carolina, Robert Tappin who had previously served in the U. Navy from 1863 to 1864, John Wilson and Joseph Thomas of the 31st Colored Infantry Regiment, John Thompson of the 26th Colored Infantry, Wate O.

Harris, of the 6th Coloured Infantry, and George Smith. 2004 portrait of Joseph Rainey by Simmie Knox, from the Collection of U. In 1866, following the end of the U. In 1870, 43 percent of the city's population was African American, including many people of color who, like Rainey, had been free and held skilled jobs before the war.

His experience and wealth helped establish him as a leader and he quickly became involved in politics, joining the executive committee of the state Republican Party. In 1868, he was a delegate to the state constitutional convention.

In 1870, Rainey was elected to the South Carolina Senate and became chair of the Finance Committee. He served only a short time as that year he won a special election as a Republican to fill a vacancy in the 41st United States Congress. This vacancy had been created when the House refused to seat Benjamin F. He had been censured by the House for corruption but re-elected.

Rainey was seated December 12, 1870 and was re-elected to Congress, serving a total of four terms. Serving until March 3, 1879, he established a record of length of service for a black Congressman that was not surpassed until that of William L. Dawson of Chicago in the 1950s. He supported legislation that became known as the Enforcement Acts, to suppress the violent activities of the Ku Klux Klan. This helped for a time, before white insurgents developed other paramilitary groups in the South, such as the White League and the Red Shirts.

Rainey made three speeches on the floor of Congress in support of what was finally passed as the Civil Rights Act of 1875. In 1873, he said he was not seeking'social equality' and was content to choose his own circle. He went on to say. But we do want a law enacted that we may be recognized like other men in the country. Why is it that colored members of Congress cannot enjoy the same immunities that are accorded to white members?

Why cannot we stop at hotels here without meeting objection? Why cannot we go into restaurants without being insulted? We are here enacting laws for the country and casting votes upon important questions; we have been sent here by the suffrages of the people, and why cannot we enjoy the same benefits that are accorded to our white colleagues on this floor? Representative from South Carolina, Rainey could not use Windsor as his primary residence, but he moved his family there for their safety.

While visiting, he became an active member of the First Church of Windsor. 1830 Greek Revival, is located at 299 Palisado Avenue (it is used as a private residence). It was designated as one of 130 stops on the Connecticut Freedom Trail, established in 1996 to highlight the achievements of African Americans in gaining freedom and civil rights. He also worked to promote the Southern economy. In May 1874, Rainey became the first African American to preside over the House of Representatives as Speaker pro tempore.

In the closing hours of Congress in 1878, Rainey was one of the few sober members present. Beginning in 1874, paramilitary terrorist groups such as the Red Shirts in North and South Carolina and Louisiana had acted openly as the military arm of the Democratic Party to suppress black voting. In July 1876, six black people were murdered in the Hamburg Massacre and, in October, between 25 and 100 were killed by white paramilitary groups in several days of violence in Ellenton, both in contested Aiken County, South Carolina. In 1876, Rainey won re-election from the Charleston district against Democratic candidate John Smythe Richardson. Richardson challenged the result as invalid on the grounds of intimidation of Democrats by federal soldiers and black militias guarding the polls, but Rainey retained his seat.

The 1876 election was marked by widespread fraud in the state. For instance, votes counted in the upland Edgefield County for the Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wade Hampton III exceeded by 2,000 the total number of registered voters in the county; similar results were counted in Laurens County. [13] That year Democrats ultimately took control of the state government, and the next year the federal government withdrew its troops from the South as part of a national compromise; Reconstruction was ended. In mid-1878, Rainey warned President Hayes of increasing violence and rhetoric meant to limit the African-American vote in South Carolina.

In 1878, Rainey was defeated in a second contest with Richardson, although black men continued to be elected for numerous local offices through much of the 19th century. White Democrats used their dominance of the state legislature to pass laws for segregation, Jim Crow and making voter registration more difficult, effectively disenfranchising black people. In 1895, they passed a new state constitution, that completed the disenfranchisement of most black people, stripping them of political power and excluding them from the political process for the next several decades into the 1960s.

Congress, Rainey was appointed as a federal agent of the US Treasury Department for internal revenue in South Carolina. He held this position for two years, after which he began a career in private commerce.

He worked in brokerage and banking in Washington, DC for five years. At the age of 55, he contracted malaria and died less than a year later, in August 1887[15] in Georgetown, the city of his birth. In 2018, the Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy, a post-partisan, 501(c)3 think-tank was founded by Sarah E.

Hunt and Bishop Garrison with the goal of empowering the voices of women, minorities and mavericks in public policy. James Thomas Rapier (November 13, 1837 - May 31, 1883) was an American politician from Alabama during the Reconstruction Era. He served as a United States representative from Alabama, for one term from 1873 until 1875. Born free in Alabama, he went to school in Canada and earned a law degree in Scotland before being admitted to the bar in Tennessee. Rapier was a nationally prominent figure in the Republican Party as one of seven blacks serving in the 43rd Congress.

He worked in 1874 for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which guaranteed equal access to public accommodations until the U. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1883. It was the last federal civil rights law enacted until the passage of Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Parts of the law were re-adopted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Civil Rights Act of 1968. Rapier was born free in 1837 in Florence, Alabama, to John H. Rapier, a prosperous local barber, and his wife. They were established free people of color. He had three older brothers.

His father had been emancipated in 1829; his mother was born into a free black family of Baltimore, Maryland. She died in 1841 when Rapier was four years old. In 1842 James and his brother John Jr. Went to Nashville, Tennessee, to live with their paternal grandmother Sally Thomas. [2][3] There they attended a school for African-American children, and learned to read and write.

In 1856 Rapier traveled to Canada with his uncle Henry Thomas, his father's half-brother, who settled in Buxton, Ontario, an all-black community made up chiefly of African Americans. It was developed with the aid of Rev. William King, a Scots-American Presbyterian missionary. King had bought land (with Canadian government approval) for resettlement of black American refugees who had escaped to Canada during the slavery years via the Underground Railroad.

The African Americans were building a thriving community, and Rapier's uncle had property there. Rapier attended the Buxton Mission School, which was highly respected and had a classical education. He pursued higher education in three stages, first earning a teaching degree in 1856 at a normal school in Toronto. He traveled to Scotland to study at the University of Glasgow. Returning to Canada, he completed his law degree at Montreal College and was admitted to the bar. After teaching for a time at the Buxton Mission School, Rapier moved in 1864 to Nashville, Tennessee. He attended Franklin College, a historically black college, to gain a teaching certificate. Working as a reporter for a northern newspaper, Rapier bought 200 acres in Maury County, Tennessee, and became a cotton planter.

He made a keynote speech at the Tennessee Suffrage Convention. He continued as an advocate for black voting rights but was disappointed in the return of Confederates to state office. There he bought 550 acres and again cultivated cotton. He became active in the Republican Party, serving as a delegate to the 1867 state constitutional convention. In 1870, Rapier ran for Alabama Secretary of State and lost.

In 1872, he was elected to the Forty-third United States Congress from Alabama's 2nd congressional district, one of three African-American congressmen elected from the state during Reconstruction. While in Congress, he had national scope. Rapier proposed authorizing a land bureau to allocate Western lands to freedmen. He was one of seven black Congressmen at the time; in 1874, they each testified for the Civil Rights Act, which was signed in 1875. Rapier recalled being denied service at every inn at stopping points between Montgomery, Alabama, and Washington, D.

Despite being a US Congressman. He noted how the race issue in the United States society related to what were often class and religious inequalities in other lands, and said that he was "half slave and half free", having political rights but no civil rights. He said that in Europe, "they have princes, dukes, and lords; in India, "brahmans or priests, who rank above the sudras or laborers;" in America, "our distinction is color.

After losing his re-election campaign in 1874, Rapier was appointed by the Republican presidential administration as a collector for the Internal Revenue Service in Alabama, serving in this role until his death. He campaigned against the conservative Democratic Party's Redeemer government in Alabama, but Democrats regained control of the state legislature in 1874.

Under subjective white administration, these barriers essentially disenfranchised most blacks and many poor whites in Alabama, excluding them from the political system for decades into the late 20th century. Rapier died in Montgomery, Alabama, on May 31, 1883, of pulmonary tuberculosis. He was buried in Calvary Cemetery in St. The Rapier Family Papers are held by Howard University. In 1979, historian John Hope Franklin gave a presidential address [1] to the American Historical Association.

He discussed how Walter L. Fleming of Vanderbilt University, one of the most prominent of the influential historians of the 20th-century Dunning School, had written about Rapier. Franklin observed that Fleming's viewpoint, which had been hostile to civil and voting rights for African Americans, may have led him to make errors. Writing in 1905 Walter L. Fleming referred to James T.

Rapier, a black member of the Alabama constitutional convention of 1867, as Rapier of Canada. " He then quoted Rapier as saying that the manner in which "colored gentlemen and ladies were treated in America was beyond his comprehension. " [Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama] In a footnote to his address, Franklin added: "Fleming knew better, for in another place-deep in a footnote p. 519-he asserted that Rapier was from Lauderdale, "educated in Canada". Born in Alabama in 1837, Rapier, like many of his white contemporaries, went North for an education. The difference was that instead of stopping in the northern part of the United States, as, for example, (the pro-slavery advocate) William L. Yancey did, Rapier went on to Canada. Rapier's contemporaries did not regard him as a Canadian; and, if some were not precisely clear about where he was born (as was the Alabama State Journal, which referred to his birthplace as Montgomery rather than Florence), they did not misplace him altogether. Rapier and Reconstruction (Chicago, 1978), xvii, 15.

Franklin said: In 1905 Fleming made Rapier a Canadian because it suited his purposes to have a bold, aggressive,'impertinent' in Alabama Reconstruction come from some non-Southern, contaminating environment like Canada. But it did not suit his purposes to call Yancey, who was a graduate of Williams College, a'Massachusetts Man. Fleming described Yancey (a white Confederate) as, simply, the'leader of the States Rights men. Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama, p.

For a detailed account and comparison of Yancey and other white Southerners who went North to secure an education, see Franklin's book, A Southern Odyssey: Travelers in the Antebellum North (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976), pp. Franklin is critical of Fleming for falsely stating that Rapier, and others, were carpetbaggers.

Some of the people that Fleming called carpetbaggers had lived in Alabama for years and were, therefore, entitled to at least as much presumption of assimilation in moving from some other state to Alabama decades before the war as the Irish were in moving from their native land to some community in the United States. Whether they had lived in Alabama for decades before the Civil War or had settled there after the war, these "carpetbaggers" were apparently not to be regarded as models for Northern investors or settlers in the early years of the twentieth century. Twentieth-century investors from the North were welcome provided they accepted the established arrangements in race relations and the like. Fleming served his Alabama friends well by ridiculing carpetbaggers, even if in the process he had to distort and misrepresent. Hiram Rhodes Revels (September 27, 1827[note 1] - January 16, 1901) was an American Republican politician, minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and a college administrator. Born free in North Carolina, he later lived and worked in Ohio, where he voted before the Civil War. Elected by the Mississippi legislature to the United States Senate as a Republican to represent Mississippi in 1870 and 1871 during the Reconstruction era, he was the first African American to serve in either house of the U. During the American Civil War, Revels had helped organize two regiments of the United States Colored Troops and served as a chaplain. After serving in the Senate, Revels was appointed as the first president of Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Alcorn State University), a historically black college. He served from 1871 to 1873.

Later in his life, he served again as a minister. Revels was born free in 1827 in Fayetteville, North Carolina, to free people of color, with ancestors who had been free since before the American Revolution. [1] His parents were of African American, European, and Native American ancestry. [2] His mother was also specifically known to be of Scots descent.

His father was a Baptist preacher. Revels was a second cousin to Lewis Sheridan Leary, one of the men who were killed taking part in John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859, and to North Carolina lawyer and politician John S. During his childhood, Revels was taught by a local black woman for his early education. In 1838, at the age of 11, he went to live with his older brother, Elias B.

Revels, in Lincolnton, North Carolina. He was apprenticed as a barber in his brother's shop. Barbering was considered a respectable, steady trade for black Americans in this period. As men of all races used barbers, the trade provided black Americans an opportunity to establish networks with the white community. After Elias Revels died in 1841, his widow Mary transferred the shop to Hiram Revels before she remarried.

Revels attended the Beech Grove Quaker Seminary, a school in Union County, Indiana, founded by Quakers, and the Union Literary Institute, also known as the Darke County Seminary despite being in Randolph County, Indiana. In 1845, Revels was ordained as a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME); he served as a preacher and religious teacher throughout the Midwest: in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee, Missouri, and Kansas. [6] "At times, I met with a great deal of opposition, " he later recalled. I was imprisoned in Missouri in 1854 for preaching the gospel to blacks, though I was never subjected to violence. [7] During these years, he voted in Ohio. He studied religion from 1855 to 1857 at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. He became a minister in a Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore, Maryland, where he also served as a principal of a black high school. During the American Civil War, Revels served as a chaplain in the United States Army. After the Union authorized establishment of the United States Colored Troops, he helped recruit and organize two black Union regiments in Maryland and Missouri.

He took part at the Battle of Vicksburg in Vicksburg, Mississippi. In 1865, Revels left the AME Church, the first independent black denomination in the US, and joined the Methodist Episcopal Church. He was assigned briefly to churches in Leavenworth, Kansas, and New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1866, he was called as a permanent pastor at a church in Natchez, Mississippi, where he settled with his wife and five daughters.

He became an elder in the Mississippi District of the Methodist Church, [8] continued his ministerial work, and founded schools for black children. During Reconstruction, Revels was elected alderman in Natchez in 1868. [10] In 1869 he was elected to represent Adams County in the Mississippi State Senate. Lynch later wrote of him in his book on Reconstruction.

Revels was comparatively a new man in the community. He had recently been stationed at Natchez as pastor in charge of the A. Church, and so far as known he had never voted, had never attended a political meeting, and of course, had never made a political speech.

But he was a colored man, and presumed to be a Republican, and believed to be a man of ability and considerably above the average in point of intelligence; just the man, it was thought, the Rev. Noah Buchanan would be willing to vote for.

In January 1870, Revels presented the opening prayer in the state legislature. Lynch wrote of that occasion.

That prayer-one of the most impressive and eloquent prayers that had ever been delivered in the [Mississippi] Senate Chamber-made Revels a United States Senator. He made a profound impression upon all who heard him. It impressed those who heard it that Revels was not only a man of great natural ability but that he was also a man of superior attainments. Letter dated January 25, 1870, from the Governor of the State of Mississippi and the Secretary of State of Mississippi that certified the election of Hiram Revels to the United States Senate. At the time, as in every state, the Mississippi legislature elected U.

Senators; they were not elected by popular vote until after ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913. In 1870, Revels was elected by a vote of 81 to 15 in the Mississippi legislature to finish the term of one of the state's two seats in the U.

Senate, which had been left vacant since the Civil War. Previously, it had been held by Albert G. Brown, who withdrew from the U. Senate in 1861 when Mississippi seceded. When Revels arrived in Washington, D. Southern Democrats in office opposed seating him in the Senate. For the two days of debate, the Senate galleries were packed with spectators at this historic event. [13] The Democrats based their opposition on the 1857 Dred Scott Decision by the U. Supreme Court, which ruled that people of African ancestry were not and could not be citizens. They argued that no black man was a citizen before the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, and thus Revels could not satisfy the requirement of the Senate for nine years' prior citizenship. Supporters of Revels made arguments ranging from relatively narrow and technical issues, to fundamental arguments about the meaning of the Civil War.

Among the narrower arguments was that Revels was of primarily European ancestry (an "octoroon") and that the Dred Scott decision should be interpreted as applying only to those blacks who were of totally African ancestry. Supporters said that Revels had long been a citizen (as shown by his voting in Ohio) and that he had met the nine-year requirement before the Dred Scott decision changed the rules and held that blacks could not be citizens. The more fundamental argument by Revels's supporters was that the Civil War, and the Reconstruction amendments, had overturned Dred Scott. Because of the war and the Amendments, they argued, the subordination of the black race was no longer part of the American constitutional regime and, therefore, it would be unconstitutional to bar Revels on the basis of the pre-Civil War Constitution's citizenship rules.

[15] One Republican Senator supporting Revels mocked opponents as still fighting the "last battle-field" of that war. Senator Charles Sumner (R-Massachusetts) said, The time has passed for argument. Nothing more need be said. For a long time it has been clear that colored persons must be senators. [14] Sumner, a Republican, later said. All men are created equal, says the great Declaration, and now a great act attests this verity. Today we make the Declaration a reality.

The Declaration was only half established by Independence. The greatest duty remained behind.

In assuring the equal rights of all we complete the work. On February 25, 1870, Revels, on a party-line vote of 48 to 8, with Republicans voting in favor and Democrats voting against, became the first African American to be seated in the United States Senate. [14] Everyone in the galleries stood to see him sworn in. Sumner's Massachusetts colleague, Henry Wilson, defended Revels's election, [17] and presented as evidence of its validity signatures from the clerks of the Mississippi House of Representatives and Mississippi State Senate, as well as that of Adelbert Ames, the military Governor of Mississippi. [18] Wilson argued that Revels's skin color was not a bar to Senate service, and connected the role of the Senate to Christianity's Golden Rule of doing to others as one would have done to oneself. Revels was both the first black American and the first person of avowed Native American ancestry to serve in the United States Senate.

Revels advocated compromise and moderation. He vigorously supported racial equality and worked to reassure his fellow senators about the capability of African Americans. In his maiden speech to the Senate on March 16, 1870, he argued for the reinstatement of the black legislators of the Georgia General Assembly, who had been illegally ousted by white Democratic Party representatives. He said, I maintain that the past record of my race is a true index of the feelings which today animate them.

They aim not to elevate themselves by sacrificing one single interest of their white fellow citizens. He served on both the Committee of Education and Labor and the Committee on the District of Columbia.

At the time, the Congress administered the District. Much of the Senate's attention focused on Reconstruction issues.

While Radical Republicans called for continued punishment of ex-Confederates, Revels argued for amnesty and a restoration of full citizenship, provided they swore an oath of loyalty to the United States. Political cartoon: Revels (seated) replaces Jefferson Davis (left; dressed as Iago from William Shakespeare's Othello) in US Senate. Harper's Weekly February 19, 1870. Davis had been a senator from Mississippi until 1861.

Revels's Senate term lasted a little over one year, from February 25, 1870, to March 3, 1871. He quietly and persistently, although for the most part unsuccessfully, worked for equality.

He spoke against an amendment proposed by Senator Allen G. Thurman (D-Ohio) to keep the schools of Washington, D. Segregated and argued for their integration. [8] He nominated a young black man to the United States Military Academy; the youth was subsequently denied admission. Revels successfully championed the cause of black workers who had been barred by their color from working at the Washington Navy Yard.

The Northern press praised Revels for his oratorical abilities. His conduct in the Senate, along with that of the other black Americans who had been seated in the House of Representatives, prompted a white Congressman, James G.

Blaine (R-Maine), to write in his memoir, The colored men who took their seats in both Senate and House were as a rule studious, earnest, ambitious men, whose public conduct would be honorable to any race. [20] Revels supported bills to invest in developing infrastructure in Mississippi: to grant lands and right of way to aid the construction of the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad 41st Congress 2nd Session S.

712, and levees on the Mississippi River 41st Congress 3rd Session S. Revels accepted in 1871, after his term as U. Senator expired, appointment as the first president of Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Alcorn State University), a historically black college located in Claiborne County, Mississippi. He taught philosophy as well. In 1873, Revels took a leave of absence from Alcorn to serve as Mississippi's secretary of state ad interim. He was dismissed from Alcorn in 1874 when he campaigned against the reelection of Governor of Mississippi Adelbert Ames. He was reappointed in 1876 by the new Democratic administration and served until his retirement in 1882.

On November 6, 1875, Revels wrote a letter to fellow Republican and President Ulysses S. Grant that was widely reprinted. Revels denounced Ames and the carpetbaggers for manipulating the black vote for personal benefit, and for keeping alive wartime hatreds:[21].

Since reconstruction, the masses of my people have been, as it were, enslaved in mind by unprincipled adventurers, who, caring nothing for country, were willing to stoop to anything no matter how infamous, to secure power to themselves, and perpetuate it. My people have been told by these schemers, when men have been placed on the ticket who were notoriously corrupt and dishonest, that they must vote for them; that the salvation of the party depended upon it; that the man who scratched a ticket was not a Republican. This is only one of the many means these unprincipled demagogues have devised to perpetuate the intellectual bondage of my people. The bitterness and hate created by the late civil strife has, in my opinion, been obliterated in this state, except perhaps in some localities, and would have long since been entirely obliterated, were it not for some unprincipled men who would keep alive the bitterness of the past, and inculcate a hatred between the races, in order that they may aggrandize themselves by office, and its emoluments, to control my people, the effect of which is to degrade them.

Revels remained active as a Methodist Episcopal minister in Holly Springs, Mississippi and became an elder in the Upper Mississippi District. [8] For a time, he served as editor of the Southwestern Christian Advocate, the newspaper of the Methodist Church. He taught theology at Shaw College (now Rust College), a historically black college founded in 1866 in Holly Springs. Hiram Revels died on January 16, 1901, while attending a church conference in Aberdeen, Mississippi.

He was buried at the Hillcrest Cemetery in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Grave of Hiram Revels in Holly Springs.

Revels's daughter, Susie Revels Cayton, edited The Seattle Republican in Seattle, Washington. Among his grandsons were Horace R. Co-author of Black Metropolis, and Revels Cayton, a labor leader. [22] In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Hiram Rhodes Revels as one of the 100 Greatest African Americans.

Blanche Kelso Bruce (March 1, 1841 - March 17, 1898) was an American politician who represented Mississippi as a Republican in the United States Senate from 1875 to 1881. Born into slavery in Prince Edward County, Virginia, he went on to become the first elected African-American senator to serve a full term Hiram R. Revels, also of Mississippi, was the first African American to serve in the U. Senate but did not complete a full term.

His home, the Blanche K. Bruce House, is a National Historic Landmark. Bruce's house at 909 M Street NW in Washington, D. Was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1975. Bruce was born into slavery in 1841 in Prince Edward County, Virginia, near Farmville to Polly Bruce, an African-American woman who served as a domestic slave.

His father was his master, Pettis Perkinson, a white Virginia planter. Bruce was treated comparatively well by his father, who educated him together with a legitimate half-brother.

When Bruce was young, he played with his half-brother. One source claims that his father legally freed Blanche and arranged for an apprenticeship so he could learn a trade. In an 1886 newspaper interview, however, Bruce says that he gained his freedom by moving to Kansas as soon as hostilities broke out in the Civil War. Bruce taught school and attended for two years Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. He next worked as a steamboat porter on the Mississippi River.

In 1864, he moved to Hannibal, Missouri, where he established a school for black children. [4] He became a wealthy landowner of several thousand acres in the Mississippi Delta.

He became sergeant-at-arms for the Mississippi State Senate in 1870. In February 1874, Bruce was elected to the U. Senate, the second African American to serve in the upper house of Congress.

On February 14, 1879, Bruce presided over the U. Senate, becoming the first African American (and the only former slave) to have done so. [2] In 1880, James Z. George, a Confederate Army veteran and member of the Democratic Party, was elected to succeed Bruce. After his Senate term expired, Bruce remained in Washington, D.

Secured a succession of Republican patronage jobs and stumped for Republican candidates across the country. He acquired a large townhouse and summer home, and presided over black high society. At the 1880 Republican National Convention in Chicago, Bruce became the first African American to win any votes for national office at a major party's nominating convention, with eight votes for vice president.

The presidential nominee that year was Ohio's James A. Garfield, who narrowly won election over the Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock.

In early 1889, politically-connected blacks lobbied for Bruce to receive a Cabinet appointment in the Harrison Administration. Said one newspaper: Bruce is a man of respectable ability, and has, perhaps, more than any other man of his race who has sat in Congress, the respect of those with whom he served. Bruce served by appointment as the District of Columbia recorder of deeds from 1890 to 1893. He also served on the District of Columbia Board of Trustees of Public Schools from 1892 to 1895.

[10] He was a participant in the March 5, 1897 meeting to celebrate the memory of Frederick Douglass and the American Academy led by Alexander Crummell. [11] He was appointed as Register of the Treasury a second time in 1897 by President William McKinley and served until his death from diabetes complications in 1898. [13] Their only child, Roscoe Conkling Bruce, was born in 1879. He was named for U.

Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York, Bruce's mentor in the Senate. One newspaper wrote that Bruce did not approve of the designation colored men. In July 1898, the District of Columbia public school trustees ordered that a then-new public school building on Marshall Street in Park View be named the Bruce School in his honor.

In 1975, the Washington, D. Residence of Bruce, was declared a National Historic Landmark and formally named The Blanche K.

In October of 1999, the U. Senate commissioned a portrait of Bruce. Artist Simmie Knox was selected in 2000 to paint the portrait, which was unveiled in the Capitol in 2001. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Blanche Bruce on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans. A historical highway marker marking Bruce's birthplace at the intersection of highway 360 and 623 near Green Bay, Prince Edward County, Virginia, was unveiled by the African American Heritage Preservation Foundation on March 1, 2006.

In June 2006, a historical book about Bruce was authored by Lawrence Otis Graham, titled The True Story of America's First Black Dynasty: The Senator and the Socialite. John Roy Lynch (September 10, 1847 - November 2, 1939) was an American writer, attorney, military officer, author, and Republican politician who served as Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives and represented Mississippi in the United States House of Representatives. Lynch was born into slavery in Louisiana and became free in 1863 under the Emancipation Proclamation.

During Reconstruction, Lynch became a prominent political leader in Mississippi. In 1873, Lynch was elected as the first African-American Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives; he is considered the first Black man to hold this position in any state. He was among the first generation of African Americans from the South elected to the U. House of Representatives and served in the 44th, 45th, and 47th Congresses. In 1884, he was elected temporary chair of the Republican National Convention and delivered the convention's keynote address.

After Democrats regained power in the Mississippi legislature, they disenfranchised much of the majority-black electorate by raising barriers to voter registration. Lynch then studied law and was admitted to the Mississippi bar in 1896. He served in the United States Army during the Spanish-American War and for a decade into the early 1900s, achieving the rank of major. After retiring, Lynch moved to Chicago, where he lived for more than two decades and was active in law and real estate. Beginning with the end of federal Reconstruction in 1877, Lynch wrote and published four books analyzing the political situation in the South.

The best known of these is The Facts of Reconstruction (1913), which argued against the prevailing view of the Dunning School, conservative white historians who downplayed African-American contributions and the achievements of the Reconstruction era. Lynch was born into slavery in 1847 on Tacony Plantation near Vidalia, Concordia Parish, Louisiana. He was the third son of his mother Catherine White, who was enslaved. She had four boys in total. Born in Virginia, she was of mixed race, as were both of her parents, Robert and Elizabeth White. Under slavery law, the children of slave mothers were slaves, regardless of paternity. John's father Patrick Lynch was the overseer on the plantation; he had a common-law marriage with Catherine White. A young immigrant, Patrick Lynch had come to the United States with his family from Dublin, Ireland. They settled in Zanesville, Ohio. As young men, Patrick and his older brother Edward Lynch moved South; Patrick became an overseer at the Tacony Plantation. There he fell in love with Catherine and they became a couple, [1] living together as man and wife. They were prohibited from marrying by state law. The state legislature was trying to reduce the number of free people of color, and it severely restricted the number of manumissions, ending approval altogether in 1852. [2] In addition, he would have to submit a request for these manumissions to an Emancipation Court. He thought the city would be a good place to live, as he had learned that it had a large population of free people of color. Many had achieved some education and economic status. Lynch died in 1849 of illness before carrying out his plan. Before his death, Patrick Lynch arranged for his friend, William G. Deal, to take title of Catherine, William and John, with the understanding that this was a legality to protect the family, who continued to work at Tacony plantation. [1] When she met Davis, Catherine was shocked to learn of the sale. She told him her family's story. Davis offered to keep her and her two sons with her (one had died by this time), and to have her work in his household. He mostly kept his word, but Catherine and her two sons did not gain freedom until 1863, under the Emancipation Proclamation. Because of an argument with Mrs. Davis, the boy John Lynch had been sent to field labor on the plantation. He was 16 when he and his family gained freedom. Lynch worked with elements of the Union Army in the Natchez area. After the Civil War ended in 1865, a friend of his father's arranged for him to work for a photographer. At the photographer's studio he met Robert H. Wood;[3] Lynch and Wood would have a lifelong friendship, and Wood also went on to serve political office.

[4] Lynch took on increased responsibilities until he managed the entire operation and its finances. He built a successful business in Natchez. Wanting to continue his education, Lynch attended a night school taught by Northerners.

By the end of 1866, many such teachers were driven out of the state by whites' violent opposition to the education of freedmen. As Lynch's business was near a white school, the young man often eavesdropped on lessons through the open windows. Lynch's leadership abilities were quickly recognized in Natchez, and he gained post-war political opportunities. He became active in the Republican Party by the age of 20. Although too young to participate as a delegate, he attended the state's constitutional convention of 1867, studying its developments closely. The first proposed constitution was defeated, largely because it required the temporary disenfranchisement of former Confederates, an unpopular proposal.

In April 1869 at the age of 22, Lynch was appointed by the military governor, Adelbert Ames, as a Justice of the Peace in Natchez. Later that year Lynch was elected as a Republican to the Mississippi State House. He was re-elected, serving until 1873. In his last term, January 1872 he was elected as Speaker of the Mississippi House, the first African American to achieve that position.

At the age of 26 in 1872, Lynch was elected as the youngest member of the US Congress from Mississippi's 6th congressional district, as part of the first generation of African-American Congressmen. This district was created by the state legislature in 1870. He was the only African American elected from Mississippi for a century. In 1874 Lynch was the only Republican in the Mississippi House delegation to be elected in the face of a Democratic campaign against Republicans and blacks.

[7] Elections in the state were increasingly accompanied by violence and fraud as Democrats worked to regain political power. In 1874, the White League, a white paramilitary group active on behalf of the Democratic Party, had worked openly to intimidate and suppress black voting, assassinating blacks and running Republican officers out of town. In 1875 Democrats dominated the House of Representatives for the first time since the Civil War. Lynch introduced many bills and argued on their behalf.

Perhaps his greatest effort was in the long debate supporting the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to ban discrimination in public accommodations. He was one of seven African-American Congressmen present, who all testified in 1874 as to personal and known experience of the effects of discrimination in this area. Maintaining that the legislation would not force blacks and whites to mix socially, as southern Democrats feared, Lynch said, It is not social rights that we desire. We have enough of that already. What we ask for is protection in the enjoyment of public rights-rights that are or should be accorded to every citizen alike.

Another speech included the following. They were faithful and true to you then; they are no less so today. And yet they ask no special favors as a class; they ask no special protection as a race.

They ask no favors, they desire; and must have; an equal chance in the race of life. In 1876 Lynch spoke out against the White League and racial divisions in his state. The Democratic Party dominated the state legislature, redrawing his district and guaranteeing white majorities in the other five. Lynch contested the victory of Democrat James R. Chalmers from the 6th district, but, with Congress dominated by Democrats, the Elections Committee refused to hear the case.

As a result of a national Democratic Party compromise, in 1877 the federal government withdrew its troops from the South, and Reconstruction was considered ended. The Democrats kept control of the state legislature.

In 1880 Lynch re-entered politics. He ran against Democrat James R. Chalmers from the 6th district and contested his claim of victory in the majority-black 6th district. When his case came before the Committee on Elections on April 27, 1882, Lynch argued that in five counties, more than 5,000 of his votes had been counted for Chalmers. Lynch's strongest arguments were based on Chalmers's remarks that Lynch's votes had been thrown out and that he (Chalmers) was'in favor of using every means short of violence to preserve [for] intelligent white people of Mississippi supreme control of political affairs.

The committee ruled in Lynch's favor, and on April 29, 1882, the House voted 125 to 83 to seat him; 62 Members abstained. Lynch was awarded the seat by Congress in 1882. He had little time to campaign and lost re-election in 1882 by 600 votes, ending his career in Congress.

He continued to have influence in Mississippi and in the Republican Party. In 1884, Lynch became the first African American to chair a political party's National Convention. Future president Theodore Roosevelt made a moving speech nominating Lynch as Temporary Chairman of the 1884 Republican National Convention in Chicago, Illinois. Lynch served as a member of the Republican National Committee for Mississippi from 1884 to 1889.

In 1884, at the age of 37, Lynch married Ella Sommerville; they had a daughter before divorcing. Years later, in 1911, after Lynch retired from the Army, he married again, to Cora Williams. They left Mississippi the following year, part of the Great Migration to Northern industrial cities, and settled in Chicago.

They lived there until Lynch's death in 1939. Later political and military career. Lynch, photo from his 1913 book. [9] He wanted to live where he could participate politically. During the Spanish-American War, Lynch was commissioned in 1898 as a major and appointed as paymaster in the Army by President William McKinley.

In 1901, Lynch entered the Regular Army as a captain. He was promoted to major and served tours of duty in the United States, Cuba, and the Philippines. After Lynch retired from the Army in 1911, he married again and moved to Chicago in 1912. There he set up his law practice.

He also became involved in real estate, as the city became a destination of tens of thousands of rural blacks in the Great Migration, including many from Mississippi. It was also attracting European immigrants and rapidly expanding based on its industrial jobs. After his death in Chicago in 1939 at the age of 92, Lynch was buried with military honors in Arlington National Cemetery, due to his service as a Congressman and military officer. At the turn of the 20th century, the struggle for memory and meaning of the Civil War and Reconstruction continued. Lynch wrote a book, The Facts of Reconstruction (1913), and several articles criticizing the then-dominant Dunning School of historiography.

Dunning and followers, many of whom were prominent in major Southern universities, evaluated Reconstruction largely from the viewpoint of white former slave owners and ex-Confederates; they expressed the discriminatory views of their societies. They routinely downplayed any positive contributions of African Americans during Reconstruction, said they were dominated by white carpetbaggers, and could not manage political power.

This was in keeping with the disfranchisement of blacks throughout the former Confederacy from 1890 to 1910, and the imposition by state legislatures of racial segregation and Jim Crow law to restore white supremacy. Lynch argued that blacks had made substantial contributions during the period. He also published articles on this topic in 1917 and 1918 in the Journal of History.

[11] His views were later supported by historians such as W. Since the late 20th century, new histories and research have changed the perception of the achievements during Reconstruction. The Facts of Reconstruction is freely available online, [12] courtesy of the Gutenberg Project. Since Lynch participated directly in Reconstruction-era governments, historians consider his book to be a primary source in study of the period.

Lynch's memoir, Reminiscences of an Active Life: The Autobiography of John Roy Lynch, which he worked on near the end of his life, was not published until 1970. A number of chapters dealing with Reconstruction are close to material published first in his 1913 The Facts of Reconstruction.

A new edition of his memoir was issued by the University of Mississippi Press in 2008. Much is available for preview online at Google books.

Lynch's Appeal To Them. The Facts of Reconstruction (New York, 1913). Some Historical Errors of James Ford Rhodes.

Boston: The Cornhill Publishing Co. 1922 (reprint of articles first published in the Journal of History in 1917 and 1918). Reminiscences of an Active Life: The Autobiography of John Roy Lynch ed. John Hope Franklin (Chicago, 1970). The Reconstruction era was a period in United States history following the American Civil War, dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of abolishing slavery and reintegrating the former Confederate States of America into the United States. During this period, three amendments were added to the United States Constitution to grant equal civil rights to the newly freed slaves. Starting with the outbreak of war, the Union was confronted with how to administer captured territories and handle the steady stream of slaves escaping to Union lines.

In many cases, the United States Army played vital role in establishing a free labor economy in the South, protecting freedmen's legal rights, and creating educational and religious institutions. Despite reluctance to interfere with the institution of slavery, Congress passed the Confiscation Acts to seize Confederates' slaves, providing the legal basis for President Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. Congress later established a Freedmen's Bureau to provide much-needed food and shelter to the newly freed slaves.

As it became clear that the war would end in a Union victory, Congress debated the process for the readmission of seceded states. Radical and moderate Republicans disagreed over the nature of secession, the conditions for readmission, and the desirability of social reforms as a consequence of the Confederate defeat. Lincoln favored the "ten percent plan" and vetoed the radical Wade-Davis Bill, which proposed harsh conditions for readmission. Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, just as fighting was drawing to a close.

He was replaced by President Andrew Johnson. Johnson vetoed numerous radical bills, pardoned thousands of Confederate leaders, and allowed Southern states to pass draconian Black Codes that greatly restricted the rights of freedmen. This outraged many Northerners and stoked fears that the South elite would regain its political power.

Radical Republican candidates swept the 1866 midterm elections and achieved large majorities in both houses of Congress. The radical Republicans then took the initiative by passing the Reconstruction Acts in 1867 over Johnson's vetoes, setting out the terms by which they could be readmitted to the Union. Constitutional conventions held throughout the South gave Black men the right to vote. New state governments were established by a coalition of freedmen, supportive white Southerners, and Northern transplants. They were opposed by "Redeemers, " who sought to reestablish white supremacy and Democratic Party control in Southern government and society.

Violent groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the White League, and Red Shirts, engaged in paramilitary insurgency and terrorism to disrupt the Reconstruction governments and terrorize Republicans. [3] Congressional anger at President Johnson's repeated attempts to veto radical legislation led to his impeachment, although he was not removed from office.

Under Johnson's successor, President Ulysses S. Grant, radicals passed additional legislation to enforce civil rights, such as the Ku Klux Klan Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1875. However, continued resistance from Southern Whites and the cost of Reconstruction rapidly lost support in the North during the Grant administration.

The 1876 presidential election was marked by widespread Black voter suppression in the South, and the result was close and contested. An Electoral Commission resulted in the Compromise of 1877, which awarded the election to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes on the understanding that Federal troops would be withdrawn from the South, effectively bringing Reconstruction to an end.

Post-Civil War efforts to enforce federal civil rights protections in the South ended in 1890 with the failure of the Lodge Bill. Historians continue to debate the legacy of Reconstruction. Criticism focuses on the early failure to prevent violence and problems of corruption, starvation, and disease.

Union policy is criticized as too brutal toward freed slaves and too lenient toward former slaveholders. [4] However, Reconstruction is credited with restoring the federal Union, limiting reprisals against the South, and establishing a legal framework for racial equality via the constitutional rights to national birthright citizenship, due process, equal protection of the laws, and male suffrage regardless of race.

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