First African American Governor

First African American Governor
By JASMIN K. WILLIAMS

Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback was the first African American to become governor of a U.S. state. What makes this fact all the more astounding is that the state was Louisiana, a Southern state.

Pinchback was born on May 10, 1837, the son of a slave and her master who lived as husband and wife with their five children. The family lived in Mississippi, where the elder Pinchback purchased a large plantation. The Pinchbacks lived well, a far cry from the conditions in which other blacks subsisted during that time.

The elder Pinchback died in 1848 and his family disinherited Mrs. Pinchback and her children. Fearing that the children would become slave property, as there was no emancipation yet, she fled to Cincinnati with her family.
Young Pinchback began working on the boats that stopped along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and became an experienced hustler, specializing in con games like three-card monte and chuck-a-luck.

In 1860, Pinchback married Nina Hawthorne. The following year, the Civil War broke out and Pinchback hoped to fight with the Union troops against the South. He went to Louisiana and formed several companies, which became part of the Louisiana National Guard. He was the only black person in the ranks, but he resigned after growing tired of the constant prejudice he encountered.

After the war ended, he and his wife moved to Alabama to test out their newly found freedom. But conditions had not changed with emancipation. He found that occupying Union forces were as prejudiced as their Southern counterparts, often dressing in Confederate uniforms at night to terrorize the newly freed slaves. Pinchback began organizing and speaking out at public meetings, urging blacks to organize and fight politically.

Pinchback returned to New Orleans as a committed Republican. He was elected as a delegate to the Republican State Convention, and he accepted the nomination for state senator during the 1867-68 Constitutional Convention. He campaigned vigorously for himself and his mentor and ally, Gov. Henry Clay Warmoth.

Pinchback lost by a narrow margin and cited voting fraud. The new legislature agreed, and allowed him to take his oath of office and join the Louisiana Senate, which had 42 African-American representatives. By 1871, however, the state legislature fell victim to the political corruption common during the Reconstruction era.

After the sudden death of the state's lieutenant governor, Pinchback was recommended by Warmoth as the replacement, becoming the first African-American lieutenant governor.

But Republicans were not happy with Gov. Warmoth and sought to impeach him. Pinchback became the acting governor, drawing hate mail from all over the country and death threats from his community. By 1873, Pinchback's historic gubernatorial run was over, and another Republican, William Kellogg, was elected governor.
In 1874, Pinchback ran for a US House seat and two years later for the Senate. He won both, making him his state's first African-American representative in Washington. But each victory was contested and he was removed, amid allegations of fraud, in favor of a white candidate. This was the beginning of a reversal of the many political gains blacks had made since the end of the Civil War.

At nearly 50 years of age, Pinchback began studying law and in the early 1890s, moved his family to New York City, where he served as a US Marshal. Later, they settled in Washington. Sadly, he watched as the achievements he had sought for African Americans were legally and illegally reversed. The number of registered black voters in Louisiana alone fell from 130,000 to 1,300 in eight years.
Pinchback continued the fight for equal rights for blacks. He was chairman of the Convention of Colored Newspaper Men, which led to the formation of the Associated Negro Press.

Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback died on Dec. 21, 1921, and was buried in New Orleans. He should always be remembered for his struggles and accomplishments during the Reconstruction era.

The poet Bruce Grit declared, "The civic and political experiences of Gov. Pinchback should serve as a guide to our young men in the future and help them to break down the barriers which were set up by designing white men of his own political faith."