The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 - Various 12 стр.

Page 366Instead of N. B. Myers being the elector for the fifth district I think it was his brother, Senator William F. Myers.

As N. B. Myers went over to the Hampton House it is not probable that he would stultify himself by voting for Hayes and acknowledging Hampton as Governor.

Page 462Gen. Elliott did not become a department clerk in Washington. He moved to New Orleans where he practised law several years before his death.

All the Republican politicians who remained in South Carolina did not sink into actual obscurity or harmless inactivity after 1876.

Mr. Wilder was postmaster at Columbia until June 30, 1885.

Gen. Smalls represented the State in Congress for several terms after 1876, and was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1895. Was also Collector of Port of Beaufort.

Thomas E. Miller was also a delegate to the same convention and served a term in Congress, and was a member of the S. C. House of Representatives.

W. J. Whipper was a member of the legislature. Probate judge of the county for ten years and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1895.

John Lee was postmaster at Chester for several years.

Mr Rainey was a special agent of the Treasury Department with headquarters in South Carolina.

H. L. Shrewsbury and W. F. Myers were in the Revenue Service and active in politics as was A. W. Curtis.

There were others but I cannot recall their names.

Referring to the data mailed to you I desire to make the following corrections:

Page 2J. H. Rainey was not a member of the House of Representatives but Senator from Georgetown.

Page 6Relative to Judge Lee I desire to state that I am in error as to his case being the first where a colored man was elected to a municipal judgeship. Macon B. Allen was elected by the legislature as judge of the Inferior Court of Charlestown prior to Lee's election or appointment. Therefore Judge Allen should be given the honor.

Of course J. J. Wright who was elected an associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the State by the legislature was the first Negro in this country who ever occupied a judicial position.

Page 7Henry W. Purvis was elected Adjutant General for the four year term 1872-1876. Member of Legislature 1868-1870.

Page 10W. J. McKinlay was also a member of the House of Representatives for part of 1868-69 period but resigned his seat to accept the position of Register of Mesne Conveyanes for Charlestown, to which the legislature elected him.

Page 11W. H. Jones, should be W H. Jones, Jr.

John Williams was Sergeant-at-Arms from 1870 to close of period.

As there were no free public schools for colored youth in South Carolina it is an error to state that Thomas E. Miller was educated in that way. It was against the law for anyone to teach a Negro even to read or write.

I am also told that I am in error as to giving him credit for the establishment of the " State College" at Orangeburg. I will try to find out something about that matter.

Mr. Monroe N. Work,

Editor Negro Year Book,

Tuskegee Institute, Ala.

Dear Sir:

I presume you received my letter of February 18, also the one of January 19, relative to corrections in the data on Reconstruction.

I herewith send you a few more before you go to press on your book pertaining to the part the Negro played in the political history of the Southern States during the Reconstruction period:

I am in error as to James Martin, of Abbeville, who was assassinated, as being colored. I was informed that he was colored, but in reading the eulogies delivered by the different members of the House and Senate, I find that he was not even an American. He was a native of Ireland.

W. A. Bishop, who represented the Greenville district in the first legislature, was white, not colored. In the list of delegates to the Republican meeting at Charlestown, May 9, 1867, he is given as white in Reynolds' book. I met a friend from Greenville about ten days ago and in speaking to him about Bishop he said that he was white and that he knew of no colored Bishops in that district.

On page 9 of my data I state that Mr. Whipper was born in South Carolina. I met his son, who is living here, sometime ago and he informed me that his father was born in Pennsylvania.

With reference to Judge Whipper I would add that one of the first acts of the first legislature was to elect a commission of three members to revise and consolidate the Statute laws of the State and that he was the first member elected. Quite a tribute to his legal ability.

On page 12 add the following names as from the North.

Rev. B. F. RandolphSenatorOrangeburg district.

W. J. WhipperMemberBeaufort district.

Judge J. J. WrightBeaufort districtafterwards Associate Judge Supreme Court, and on page 8, under his name please stateborn in Pennsylvania.

On page 107 Reynolds' bookAbbeville Co.W. J. Lomax, should be Hutson J. Lomax, this is official. On page 59 and 77 he has it H. J. which is correct.

Same pageFairfieldHenry Jacob, should be JacobsHe was also a delegate to the Constitutional ConventionSee page 77.

Copy.

The late Honorable Francis L. Cardoza at one time Secretary of State for South Carolina, several years before his death stated to the undersigned the following in substance:

That a number of colored men met and appointed a committee which was sent to Washington to get the advice of Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens concerning the formation of the political organization for the newly enfranchised Negro citizen shortly after the adoption of the 14th Amendment.

Pains were taken to keep the plans from both the native whites and the so-called carpet baggers from the North. That both Mr. Sumner and Mr. Stevens advised the committee to tender the leadership to native whites of the former master class of conservative views: but this plan was frustrated because they were not able to secure the consent of desired representatives of the former master class to assume the proffered leadership.

Subscribed to and sworn before me, Samuel E. Lacy a Notary Public in and for the District of Columbia, this Fourteenth (14th) Day of December 1917.

J. H. Stewart who now lives in Austin.

Edward Patton, San Jacinto County, now living in Washington is in Government service.

Nathan H. Haller, Brazoria County. House, 1892-94. Reelected and counted out. Contested his seat and won.

R. L. Smith, Colorado County, 1895-99, now living in Waco. Is president of the Farmers Bank and head of the Farmers Improvement Association. For sketch of, see Negro Year Book, p. 322. For his work in the Legislature, see attached letter.

Elias May, Brazos County, in the early days of Reconstruction.

Elias May, Brazos County, in the early days of Reconstruction.

R. J. Moore, Washington County, representative.

Gaines, senator, Lee County.

Copy.

Prof. Monroe N. Work, Tuskegee Inst. Ala.

Dear Mr. Work:

I was elected in Nov. 1894 as representative for Colorado county and was re-elected in 1896.

My majority in 1894 was 168 and in 1896 at the next election it was 450 as I recollect it.

I was appointed on the committee on education and on privilege and election and on agriculture.

I introduced a bill restoring colored trustees which finally passed.

I fought a bill establishing separate waiting rooms for the races at R. R. Station and killed it for four years.

I introduced a resolution inviting manufacturing cotton plants to come to Texas. I introduced a resolution granting the use of the Hall of the House of Representatives to the colored citizens of Austin to hold their memorial services for Fred Douglas. When one understands the race feeling in the South this was indeed a triumph. I introduced a bill establishing a college course as a part of our curriculum at Prairie View Normal which passed carrying with it a grant of fifty thousand acres of land.

I worked hard to help carry a bill through making any peace officer automatically lose his office whenever a lynching took place in his county. This bill passed but was declared unconstitutional by the supreme court. I was appointed by the speaker as a member of the visiting board for Prairie View State Normal. As a member of the committee on privileges and Election I single handed fought for a colored man elected from Brazoria county, N. H. Haller by name who had the nerve to contest the seat of a white man to whom the certificate of election had been awarded. After a long and bitter fight in which three times I carried in and presented a minority report we won and Haller was seated. This isn't the only case of its kind that I know of in this state.

Haller of course had able legal talent to take care of his case.

I voted for the purchase of the battle field of San Jacinto which is in Harris country about twenty miles below Houston. It was on this battlefield that Texas won her independence from Mexico in 1836. It is now a beautiful state park. For this action I was publicly thanked by the Daughters of the Republic.

The legislatures which I served in were the 23d and 24th.

Charles A. Culberson, now U. S. senator was governor and our relations were very cordial.

In 1902 I was tendered and accepted a position in the U. S. Marshal's office for the Eastern Dist. of Texas by Pres. Roosevelt. Held same until 1909. This was the most honorable and best paid federal position ever held by a Negro in Texas except that held by Hon. N. W. Cuney who was collector of the Post of Galveston. In 1915 I took charge of the Extension Service work for Negroes in Texas which I now hold.

30 Contested, not seated.

Davidson county, Tennessee, sent two colored men to the Legislature. The first colored member of the Legislature was Sampson W. Keeble from 71-73. From 77-79 the colored member was Thomas A. Sykes. Both of these were representatives. Tennessee never had any colored senators. Sampson W. Keeble was a native of Tennessee. Thomas A. Sykes was a native of North Carolina and had been a member of the North Carolina legislature.176

Captain James H. Sumner, of Davidson County, was elected a door-keeper of the House of Representatives for 1867-69. He was afterwards appointed captain of a Militia Company which rendered the State valuable service in putting down the Ku-Klux. Later by act of the Legislature a committee was authorized for Nashville consisting of three persons to audit claims against the State for destruction of property by soldiers of the Confederates and Federal armies during the war. Governor Brownlow appointed on this commission James H. Sumner, a white man named Lassiter, and J.C. Napier. They examined claims amounting to millions of dollars, some of which were afterwards paid and others rejected. There were other colored men on such commissions in other parts of the state whose names I do not now recall.

Haywood county first sent Samuel A. McElwee. He served from 79-83. The same county afterwards sent Rev. D.F. Rivers who is now pastor of the Berean Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. Rev. Rivers defeated the father of a very popular white girl and she met him in the street and spat in his face. McElwee made a very active member and was highly respected by all. He was a graduate of Fisk University and the law department of Walden University.

Weakley County sent John W. Boyd who served two or three terms in the legislature. He ran for the senate but was defeated.

Perhaps there was one from Hamilton county or Knox county.

Shelby county sent quite a delegation of colored men from time to time. Among them were T.F. Cassells and I.F. Norris, who is still living in North Dakota. Cassells was a lawyer, educated at Oberlin.

Mr. Norris was a successful business man of Memphis, Mr. Keeble was a barber in Nashville.

Mr. Sykes was Internal Revenue Collector in Nashville and came there with high revenue officials from North Carolina. He entered politics and was quite influential and finally died at Nashville.

Keeble was of a family highly respected and of very high standing in Nashville. The men from Memphis and Haywood counties were more highly educated than the others. They were free men of high class and up to the standard of the whites who were sent to the legislature in those days.

At one time the county government of Davidson County was run by three Commissioners; one of these commissioners was a colored man, named Randall Brown of limited education, but large experience and a large amount of good common sense. He was very influential and highly thought of by white and colored people.

Nashville city government during the days of reconstruction had among its membership, perhaps, one-third colored members. These men were not of the same calibre as the colored members of the legislature. They were picked up in the different wards by their friends. They were chosen for their popularity rather than for fitness for the work before them.

Immediately following the reconstruction days, Josiah T. Settle was elected Assistant Attorney General for Shelby county under General Patterson who afterwards served as Governor of the State of Tennessee. Mr. Settle had previously been a member of the Mississippi Legislature.

In Knoxville men have served in the legislature of the city government.

When they changed the form of government in Nashville, there was a colored man a member of the Board of Aldermen. Two colored men were elected to the council. As a result, two fire companies were given to colored men. Mr. Charles Gowdey and Mr. J.C. Napier were the colored members of the council. The first two brick school houses were erected for colored children during their term. They were the Pearl High School and the Meigs School. At that time the people of Nashville, the Democrats especially, showed a very liberal spirit to the colored people and divided the positions with them. Shorty after this with a more liberal spirit, they erected the third brick school house in the city of Nashville, The Napier School.