Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Something That Has Been Bothering Me

By

My question is: Why is Reconstruction used as the beginning of time in this scenario? I’ve done some admittedly quick research and I can’t find a satisfactory answer. It doesn’t seem likely to me that there was a black governor before Reconstruction. I couldn’t find any evidence of one either. So why don’t we use the genesis of the U.S. as our starting point? Isn’t he the 2nd black governor in the history of the U.S., or was there some cool black quasi-state before the Civil War that I am unaware of?

Inquiring minds want to know…Any thoughts or information?

Please share widely!
fb-share-icon
Tweet
0

Comments

  1. Black Officeholders

    Republicans took control of all Southern state governorships and state legislatures, leading to the election of numerous African-Americans to state and national office, as well as to the installation of African-Americans into other positions of power. About 137 black officeholders lived outside the South before the Civil War.

    <

    p>
    Nothing specific there, but this site indicates:

    <

    p>

    1872: First African American governor.
    P. B. S. Pinchback, acting governor of Louisiana from December 9, 1872 to January 13, 1873. Pinchback, a black politician, was the first black to serve as a state governor, although due to white resistance, his tenure is extremely short.

  2. Federal occupation temporarily extended democracy in the South, assuring former slaves the vote and thereby enabling them to elect black leaders to political office. In states with the largest black populations, African Americans and their white Republican allies established and improved public education for white and black students, ended property qualifications for voting, abolished imprisonment for debt, and integrated public facilities.

    In 1868 John W. Menard became the first African American elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Louisiana, where nearly 50 percent of the population was black. Congress refused to seat Menard, but others followed. In 1870 Hiram Revels of Mississippi became the first black person to sit in the U.S. Senate. In all, 20 blacks from Southern states served in the U.S. House of Representatives and 2 in the U.S. Senate during Reconstruction.

    In addition, hundreds of African Americans were elected to state and local offices in the South. In South Carolina, African Americans were almost 60 percent of the population, and at times they held the offices of lieutenant governor, secretary of state, treasurer, and speaker of the house. Although no state elected a black governor, Louisiana’s lieutenant governor, P.B.S. Pinchback, who had once been denied a seat in the U.S. Senate, served as acting governor after the white governor was removed from office on charges of corruption.

    <

    p>
    Link

  3. Reconstruction is the last time we had a black governor in the US (and Senators etc), because 90% plus of Southern whites weren’t allowed to vote. That’s how we got the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments through.

    • I think the relevant point is that post-reconstruction, after southern whites had reasserted control (kkk, political intimidation and violence, lynching, etc.), the political gains of Blacks were lost, and so there is a long time in the wilderness after Reconstruction, and that is why we say so-and-so is that first Black elected/appointed official SINCE Reconstruction.  The point is how long a time it was (about 100 years) between the post-Civil War Reconstruction (1860s-70s) and what some call the Second Reconstruction of the 1960s, when the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power and Affirmative Action brought new political gains for African Americans.  It’s that 100 year stretch in the desert that people are referring to when they say the first since Reconstruction.

  4. Thank you for the information, obviously my wiki-fu is suffering from my lack of sleep and time.

Archives