Читать книгу Colored girls and boys' inspiring United States history and a heart to heart talk about white folks - William Henry Harrison - Страница 18

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IT is a most remarkable fact that only seven years after the emancipation of his race, Hiram R. Revels, a Colored man, entered the United States Congress as a senator from Mississippi. But it becomes a two-fold remarkable and interesting fact when one learns that the Congressional seat taken by Revels was the chair made vacant by Jefferson Davis who left Congress and the Union side to join the Confederacy where he later became its president and leader to keep Negroes in slavery. That explains the question so many people have asked why Revels only served one year (1870-1871) in the Senate. He was elected to serve the last year that Jeff Davis had left unfinished in his term when he went over to the Rebel forces. B. K. Bruce, also from Mississippi, served a full term of six years in the Senate. So far those two have been the only Colored men to be seated and serve in the U. S. Senate. In 1872, P. B. S. Pinchback, a Colored man, was elected to the U. S. Senate, but the right of the Legislature to legally elect a senator was challenged. The contention was urged that the Legislature itself was not legally elected. The contest lasted four years and ended with seven Republican Senators voting with the Democrats to deny him the seat. He was later given four years salary as a senator. During the period of Reconstruction right after the Civil War this same Colored man was elected and served as Lieutenant-Governor of Louisiana and once while the Governor, W. P. Kellogg was absent from the State for a brief period, Lt. Gov. P. B. S. Pinchback acted as Governor of Louisiana.

J. R. Lynch was elected from Mississippi to the U. S. House of Representatives. Other Colored men who have been members in the House were as follows: Louisiana sent J. H. Menard and C. E. Nash; Georgia sent J. T. Long; Alabama sent B. S. Turner, J. T. Rapier, and J. Harlson; Virginia sent J. M. Langston; Florida sent J. T. Walls; South Carolina took the lead in numbers by sending R. B. Elliott, R. C. DeLarge, R. H. Cain, A. J. Ransier, Robert Small, T. E. Miller, G. W. Murray, and J. H. Rainey who by being elected five times exceeded any other Negro in length of service (ten years) in the House. But it was left for North Carolina to “Tar Heel” in the rear of that Congressional noble march by sending the latest Colored member to Congress in the person of the late George H. White, who as a Representative had been proceeded from that same state in the same branch of the U. S. Legislature by J. Hyman, J. E. O’Harra and H. P. Cheatham. (extracts from Work’s Negro Year Book, 1918-1919 edition, pg. 207.)