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'Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback' (May 10, 1837 – December 21, 1921) was the first African American to become governor of a U.S. state. Pinchback, a Republican, served as the governor of Louisiana for thirty-five days, from December 9, 1872, to January 13, 1873.
According to Nicholas Lemann in ''Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War'', Pinchback was "an outsized figure: newspaper publisher, gambler, orator, speculator, dandy, muountebank- 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]

Contents

Early life

Political career

Later life

Legacy

See also

Notes

References

External links

Early life

Pinchback was born in Macon, Georgia (Bibb County), to a white planter (William Pinchback) and his former slave, Eliza Stewart. Known as "Pinckney Benton Stewart," he was educated at the Gilmore High School in Cincinnati. After his father died in 1848, he left Cincinnati because he feared that his paternal relatives would force him back into slavery. He worked as a hotel porter and barber in Terre Haute, Indiana.
In 1860, while in Indiana, Pinchback married the former Nina Emily. They had two daughters and four sons.

Political career

During the Civil War, Pinchback traveled to Louisiana and became the only African American captain in the Union-controlled 1st Louisiana Native Guards.
After the war, he became active in the Republican Party and participated in Reconstruction state conventions. In 1868, Pinchback organized the Fourth Ward Republican Club in New Orleans. That same year, he was elected as a Louisiana state senator, where he became the state Senate president pro tempore. 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.
Pinchback was elevated to the Louisiana governorship on December 9, 1872 after impeachment charges were brought against his predecessor, Republican governor Henry Clay Warmoth.
In an 1872 national convention of African American politicians Pinckbank disagreed with Jeremiah Haralson over a motion by James T. Rapier to condemn Republicans who had gone against Grant.^[2] Pinckback did not like the motion because it would condemn Charles Sumner, who Pinckback felt African Americans should laud.

Later life

After his brief governorship, Pinchback remained active in politics and public service. He was elected to both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, but both elections were contested, and his Democratic opponents were seated instead. Pinchback served on the Louisiana State Board of Education and was instrumental in establishing the predominantly black Southern University in Baton Rouge in 1879. He was a member of Southern's board of trustees.
In 1882, Republican President Chester Alan Arthur named Pinchback as surveyor of customs in New Orleans. In 1885, he studied law at Straight University, (which was closed in 1934) in New Orleans. He was admitted to the bar in 1886, and later moved to New York City where he was a federal marshal, and then to Washington, D.C. where he practiced law.
Pinchback died in Washington in 1921 and was interred in Metairie Cemetery near New Orleans even though the cemetery at the time was segregated and deemed to be exclusively for whites.

Legacy

It was not until 1990 when another African American became governor of any state in the United States. In 1990, L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia became the second African-American to serve as a state governor (and the first to be elected to the office). Deval Patrick of Massachusetts was sworn into office as the third in January 2007. Both Wilder and Patrick were elected as Democrats.
Pinchback was the maternal grandfather of Harlem Renaissance author Jean Toomer.

See also

★ African-American Officeholders During Reconstruction

Notes

1. Lemann, Nicholas, ''Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War'' (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: September 5, 2006) pp. 196-198.
2. See United States presidential election, 1872 for more information about that election

References

★ State 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)

External links

★ Cemetery Memorial by La-Cemeteries