Talk:P. B. S. Pinchback

Untitled

I have read three versions of this man's life. His early years seem to be confused; one article says he went to Terre Haute and became a barber. Another says he became a cabin boy in Cincinnati, and a third says he became a cabin boy on River boats, and later became a steward on a riverboat plying the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.

Two articles refer to his election to Congress ( this article does not do so) that would be a major piece of information, if true. One article says he served as both a Representative and as a U.S. Senator, but another says he was not allowed to take his seat as such. This article says he was a U.S. Marshall, a piece of history omitted by other biographies. This article says he was an attorney in Washington, D.C., but makes no mention of his political life there. All this tends to throw questions onto the authenticity of this man's history. It is factual that he became governor of Louisiana, following the impeachment of his predecessor, but for a short time. It is probable that he was instrumental in the founding of Southern University, one of the country's largest historically black universities in existence today. But it does him no justice to fabricate information about the man just to make him look more important than he really was.

Wrong Picture

The Picture shown is of Homer Plessy. Please change.

The picture is the same that the State of Louisiana has posted on its Governor's web site for Governor PBS Pinchback. It is also very similar to the brass bust that stands in the Louisiana State Capitol Building.

The state site page is

http://www.sos.louisiana.gov/tabid/383/Default.aspx

The bronze bust can be seen on my web pages at

http://www.la-cemeteries.com/Governors/Pinchback,%20Pickney%20Benton%20Stewart/

I see that Google has the same picture that the State of Louisiana uses for Pinchback posted as a picture of Homer Plessy.

I don't have resolution, just pointing out a few things. It wouldn't be the first time that the state archives was wrong.

Cems1gauthier (talk) 02:44, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

January 13, 1873

A quick google for pinchback 1872 1873 shows he served as governor until this date, not January 9, according to the wiki article previously.

http://www.hanford.gov/doe/black/Politics.cfm

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aaworld/reference/articles/p_b_s_pinchback.html

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/recon/chron.html

TransUtopian 21:35, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

WARMOTH Warmoth was impeached but not convicted. The impeachment charges against him were dropped after his term ended.

LOCATION of METAIRIE CEMETERY Metairie Cemetery is located on Metairie Ridge, a stones throw from Metairie proper, but notheless in the City of New Orleans.

Cems1gauthier (talk) 02:36, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

ancestry terminology

I am not entirely familiar with American English, and I understand this could be a bit neuralgic, but I am wondering if, given a link to African American and the definition found therein, there should also be a link to European American, since 3 out of 4 of the man's grandparents were apparently English. This is not to diminish the importance of the man, or of his grandparent of African descent, but as a non-American one wonders at this nomenclature. Even the Nuremberg Race Laws required 3 or 4 grandparents of a certain ethnic group before you were simply labelled as one.--Richardson mcphillips (talk) 14:44, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

You're pissing into the wind. White apologists who feel they need to feel sorry over things they never had anything to do with like to "celebrate" anyone with a drop of black blood in them as being black and nothing else. For instabnce, President Obama is half black, half white, however he's celebrated as the "first black President." Jersey John (talk) 04:03, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, in the case of P.B.S. Pinchback, it's pretty clear he was perceived and characterized by the people of his time and place (the Reconstruction and Post-Reconstruction U.S.) as "black", and was therefore seen as "that colored man who claims to be governor of Louisiana" (probably stated using much harsher language). It's not an issue of "biology" but of the social construct of race, and in the post-Civil War and Jim Crow Era American South the one-drop rule was widely adopted--not just one-fourth "African blood" but as little as one-sixteenth or one-thirty-second African ancestry (or indeed, any known African or non-European ancestry at all) was sufficient to deem a person to be legally speaking "colored" rather than "white". 139.76.64.67 (talk) 04:28, 9 December 2010 (UTC)