P. B. S. Pinchback
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| P. B. S. Pinchback | |
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| In office December 9, 1872 – January 13, 1873 |
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| Lieutenant | none |
| Preceded by | Henry C. Warmoth |
| Succeeded by | John McEnery and William P. Kellogg (election contested) |
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| Born | May 10, 1837 Macon, Georgia |
| Died | December 21, 1921 (aged 84) Washington, D.C. |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse(s) | Nina Emily Hawthorne |
| Religion | African Methodist Episcopal |
Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (May 10, 1837 – December 21, 1921) was the first non-white and first person of African American descent to become governor of a U.S. state. A Republican, he served as the governor of Louisiana for 35 days, from December 9, 1872, to January 13, 1873.
Nicholas Lemann, in Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War, described Pinchback as "an outsized figure: newspaper publisher, gambler, orator, speculator, dandy, mountebank – served for a few months as the state's Governor and claimed seats in both houses of Congress following disputed elections but could not persuade the members of either to seat him."[1]
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[edit] Early life
Pinchback was born in May 1837 in Macon, Bibb County, Georgia, to Eliza Stewart, a biracial former slave, and William Pinchback, her former master, who were living together as wife and husband. The family was on its way to begin a new life in Mississippi, where the senior Pinchback had purchased a much larger plantation.
As a youngster, Pinchback lived in relatively affluent surroundings; his parents sent him north to Cincinnati, Ohio, to attend Gilmore High School. In 1848, his father died. The paternal relatives disinherited Pinchback's black mother and her children. To evade the possibility that the northern Pinchbacks would legally appropriate the children as slave property, Pinchback's mother fled with all five to Cincinnati.
In 1860, when Pinchback was 23, he married Nina Hawthorne, a 16-year-old from Memphis, Tennessee. When the Civil War began, in 1861, Pinchback hoped to fight on the side of the Union troops against the Confederacy.
In 1862 he furtively made his way into New Orleans, which was occupied by Union soldiers. There he raised several companies of the Corps d'Afrique, part of the Louisiana's Union Militia, and was one the military body's few officers of African ancestry.
In 1863, passed over twice for promotion and tired of the prejudice he encountered at every turn, Pinchback resigned from the unit. When the war ended and the enslaved Americans were emancipated, he and his wife moved to Alabama, eager to test their new freedom as full citizens. However, racial tensions in their new surroundings were reaching shocking levels of viciousness.[2] Pinchback eventually returned to New Orleans with his family.
[edit] Political career
In 1863, during the Civil War, Pinchback traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana, and recruited African-American volunteers for the Union Army. He became captain of Company A, 1st Louisiana Native Guards (later reformed as the 73rd U. S. Colored Infantry Regiment). He resigned his commission because of racial prejudice against black officers.
After the war, Pinchback returned to New Orleans and became active in the Republican Party, participating in Reconstruction state conventions. In 1868, he organized the Fourth Ward Republican Club in New Orleans. That same year, he was elected as a State Senator, where he became senate president pro tempore of a Legislature that included 42 representatives of African American descent (half of the chamber, and seven of 36 seats in the Senate). In 1871 he became acting lieutenant governor upon the death of Oscar Dunn, the first elected African-American lieutenant governor of a U.S. state.
In 1872, the incumbent Republican governor Henry Clay Warmoth, suffered impeachment charges near the end of his term. State law required that Warmoth step aside until convicted or cleared of the charges. Pinchback, as lieutenant governor, succeeded as governor on December 9 and served for 35 days until the end of Warmoth's term. Warmoth was not convicted and the charges were eventually dropped.
Pinchback became the recipient of vicious hate mail from across the country as well as more local threats on his own life.
Also in 1872, at a national convention of African-American politicians, Pinchback had a public disagreement with Jeremiah Haralson of Alabama. James T. Rapier (also of Alabama) submitted a motion that the convention condemn all Republicans who had opposed President Grant in that year's election.[3] Haralson supported the motion, but Pinchback opposed it because it would include Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, a lifelong anti-slavery fighter whom Pinchback believed African-Americans should laud.[citation needed]
[edit] Later life
After his brief governorship, Pinchback remained active in politics and public service. In the elections of 1874 and 1876, Pinchback was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and then the U.S. Senate respectively, another pioneering accomplishment as the state's first African American representative to Washington. Both elections were contested, and his Democratic opponents were seated instead. It was the beginning of a reversal of the political gains African Americans had achieved since the war's end.
Pinchback served on the Louisiana State Board of Education and was instrumental in establishing Southern University, a historically black college, in New Orleans in 1880. It relocated to Baton Rouge in 1914.[4] He was a member of Southern University's Board of Trustees (later redesignated the Board of Supervisors).
In 1882, Republican President Chester Arthur appointed Pinchback as Surveyor of Customs in New Orleans. In 1885, he studied law at Straight University, which later became Dillard University, in New Orleans. He was admitted to the Louisiana bar in 1886. He was part of the Comité des Citoyens (Citizens' Committee) which in 1892 staged the New Orleans civil-rights actions of Homer Plessy which led to the U.S. Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson (legalizing racial segregation). Later Pinchback moved to New York City and worked as a Marshal. Finally he moved to Washington, D.C., where he practiced law.
Pinchback died in Washington in 1921 and is interred in Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans. His service as governor helped him to be interred there although the cemetery was segregated and reserved for whites.
[edit] Legacy
Pinchback is the maternal grandfather of Harlem Renaissance author Jean Toomer.
It was not until 1990 that another African American became governor of any U.S. state. In 1990, Douglas Wilder of Virginia became the second African-American state governor (and the first to be elected to office). Deval Patrick of Massachusetts was elected governor and took office in January 2007. David Paterson of New York became the fourth African-American governor on March 17, 2008 when he succeeded to office following the resignation of Eliot Spitzer. Wilder, Patrick and Paterson are all Democrats.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ Lemann, Nicholas, Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: September 5, 2006) pp. 196-198.
- ^ Slavery by Another Name.
- ^ See United States presidential election, 1872 for more information about that election
- ^ Southern University at New Orleans, which is under the same Board of Supervisors as Southern University, was a later development.
[edit] References
- State of Louisiana - Biography
- African American Publications (password required)
- Bennett, Lerone, Before the Mayflower (1969)
- Bontemps, Arna W.,100 Years of Negro Freedom (1961)
- Grosz, Agnes Smith, "The Political Career of Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback," Louisiana Historical Quarterly, XXVII (1944)
- Haskins, James. Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback(New York: Macmillan, 1973)
- Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback Papers, Manuscript Department, Moorland-Spingarm Research Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C., 3 includes "Here under the protecting care" speech quoted by Nicholas Lemann in Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War
- Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising, by Rev. William J. Simmons, D. D., President of the State University, Louisville, Kentucky (1887)
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: P. B. S. Pinchback |
- Cemetery Memorial by La-Cemeteries
| Political offices | ||
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| Preceded by Henry Clay Warmoth (R) |
Governor of Louisiana
Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (R) |
Succeeded by John McEnery (D)/ William Pitt Kellogg (R) |
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