Jefferson Franklin Long
Georgia's first
African American congressman and the first African American to speak on the
floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, Jefferson Franklin Long was born
into slavery on March 3, 1836, in Alabama to a slave mother and
a white father. By the 1840 U.S. census he was listed as a slave in the
household of James C. Loyd, a tailor with modest land holdings in Knoxville, in Crawford
County, Georgia. During the 1850s the Loyd family moved from Knoxville to Macon,
taking Long with them. Not long after their arrival they sold Long to Edwin
Saulsbury, a prominent businessman.
Long had taken well to the tailor trade
and was soon set up in a shop by his new owner. The slave trade was alive and
well in Macon, and Long had a front-row seat—his shop was across the street
from the slave auction block. Fortunately for him, the shop was also next door
to the local newspaper. When Long was not employed mending or sewing, he
was beseeching the typesetters at the newspaper to set copy, an activity he
observed closely as he taught himself to read and write. By 1860 Long had
married Lucinda Carhart and had started a family.
By the end of the Civil War (1861-65),
Long was a flourishing member of society. He was established in his own shop
and was an active member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) of
Macon, headed by Henry McNeal Turner. Under Turner's influence Long made
his first political appearance at a meeting of the Georgia Educational
Association in 1867. Long may also have had a hand in the establishment of
Georgia's Freedman's Savings Bank, a project led by Turner and established
through the AME Church.
Long became a prominent member of the
Republican Party in 1867 and was appointed as one of the party's key speakers
and political organizers. He traveled throughout Georgia and much of the South,
praising the passage of the Congressional Reconstruction Act of 1867 and urging
former slaves to register to vote. Partially as a result of his efforts,
thirty-seven African Americans were elected to the Georgia constitutional
convention of 1867 and thirty-two to the state legislature, among
them Turner.
In December 1870 Long became Georgia's
first African American congressman when he was elected to fill a vacancy in the
41st Congress. He served from December 22, 1870, until the end of the session
on March 3, 1871. The vacancy resulted when Congress refused to seat the
Georgia representatives who were elected in 1869. They were rejected because
they were eligible to serve in the 40th Congress but not in the 41st (elections
were held to fill seats for both), and the situation left Georgia without
representation in Congress from March 1869 until December 1870. Long spent much
of his free time working to better the living conditions of his fellow man by
organizing conventions that advocated public education, higher wages, and
better terms for tenant farmers, or sharecroppers. He helped organize the
Union Brotherhood Lodge, a black mutual aid society, in Macon. His advocacy as
well as his public-speaking ability had made him a natural congressional
candidate in the eyes of his party.
During his term in Congress Long made
history yet again when, on February 1, 1871, he became the first African
American to speak on the floor of the House of Representatives. An amnesty bill
that would modify the oath required of former Confederates who sought public
office had passed the Senate and was to be voted on by the House. Opposed to
the measure, Long asked the assembly, "Do we, then, really propose here
to-day, when the country is not ready for it, . . . when loyal men dare not
carry the 'stars and stripes' through our streets, for if they do they will be
turned out of employment, to relieve from political disability the very men who
have committed these Ku Klux outrages?" Nonetheless, the bill passed later
that day by a vote of 118 to 90.
As Reconstruction ended and
the freedoms he had fought so hard for began to dwindle, Long became
disenchanted with the political system. He never again held public office. He
remained loyal to the radical wing of the Republican Party and served as a
delegate to the national conventions through 1880, but the party was divided.
The Bourbon Democrats had reclaimed the South, and Long began to realize that
the only way to regain any of the ground blacks had lost was to organize an
independent African American voting block. In 1880 Long put his theory into
practice and supported Governor Alfred H. Colquitt, a member of the Bourbon
Triumvirate, in his reelection campaign. With the support of the black
Republican vote, Colquitt defeated his Democratic opponent, Thomas Norwood.
White Democrats were split between Colquitt and Norwood, and white Republicans
supported Norwood. (The Republican Party had failed to offer its own
candidate.) Thus, Long successfully demonstrated that the black vote could be
significant when whites were divided.
By 1884, however, African Americans had
lost nearly all their power in the Republican Party and were no longer
influential in state politics. Disillusioned, Long retreated from politics. He
lived out the rest of his life as a private citizen, operating several
businesses, including the first dry-cleaning establishment in Macon. He was not
a rich man, but he owned property and managed to educate all six of his
children. What free time he had was spent in his library, book in hand. Long
died from influenza on February 4, 1901, and was buried in Macon's Linwood
Cemetery.
No comments:
Post a Comment