Reconstruction: 1863 – 1877 African American Political Leaders
“Everything among us indicates a change in our condition, and [we must] prepare to act in a different sphere from that in which we have heretofore acted… Our relationship to this government is changing daily… Old things are passing away, and eventually old prejudices must follow. The revolution has begun, and time alone must decide where it is to end.” “Everything among us indicates a change in our condition, and [we must] prepare to act in a different sphere from that in which we have heretofore acted… Our relationship to this government is changing daily… Old things are passing away, and eventually old prejudices must follow. The revolution has begun, and time alone must decide where it is to end.”
Francis L. Cardozo Secretary of State, South Carolina Treasurer, South Carolina
Hiram Revel Hiram Revel First Black Senator 1870, Mississippi First Black Senator 1870, Mississippi Secretary of State , Mississippi Secretary of State , Mississippi
James Lynch Secretary of State, Mississippi
Blanche K. Bruce U.S. Senator , Mississippi
Abolitionists in support of African American suffrage Abolitionists in support of African American suffrage
Charles Sumner Abolitionist U.S. Senator, U.S. Senator, Massachusetts
Thaddeus Stevens Abolitionist Congressman, Congressman, Pennsylvania and
African American Activists
Fredrick Douglass Abolitionist, orator and writer
Booker T. Washington Activist and Educator
Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois Sociologist, Activist, and Co-Founder NAACP The function of the university is not simply to teach breadwinning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization.
Ida B. Wells Journalist, advocate of civil rights, women's rights, economic rights, and an anti-lynching crusader.
Twentieth Century African American Major Political Leaders
Senators
Edward Brooke Senator 1966
Carol Moseley-Braun Senator Ambassador to New Zealand 1999
Barack Obama Senator, Illinois 2004
Governors
Pinckney Benton Stewart Governor, Louisiana 1872 Congressman 1873
L. Douglas Wilder Governor, Virginia
Charles W. Turnbull Governor, US Virgin Islands
Black Activists
A. Philip Randolph
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Until Justice Rolls Down Like Waters And Righteousness Like A Mighty Stream.
Rev. Jesse Jackson Activist, Founder Operation PUSH
Rev. Al Sharpton
Dr. Cornell West
Michael Owens Political Activist and Historian