19 th Century African American Legislators of Tennessee

1. 19th CenturyAfrican AmericanLegislators of Tennessee Produced at the Tennessee State Library and Archives 403 7th Avenue N., Nashville, TN 37243 2012 edition

2. African American Legislators in Tennessee in the 19th Century and Their Elected Terms • SAMPSON W. KEEBLE . . . . . . Davidson County . . . . . . . 1873-1874 • JOHN W. BOYD . . . . . . . . . . . . .Tipton County . . . . . . . . . . 1881-1884 (2 terms) • THOMAS F. CASSELS . . . . . . . Shelby County . . . . . . . . . .1881-1882 • ISAAC F. NORRIS . . . . . . . . . . .Shelby County . . . . . . . . . 1881-1882 • THOMAS A. SYKES . . . . . . . . . Davidson County . . . . . . .1881-1882 • LEON HOWARD . . . . . . . . . . . . Shelby County . . . . . . . . . 1883-1884 • SAMUEL A. McELWEE . . . . . . Haywood County . . . . . . .1883-1888 * (3 terms) • DAVID F. RIVERS . . . . . . . . . . Fayette County . . . . . . . . . . 1883-1884 * • GREENE E. EVANS . . . . . . . . . Shelby County . . . . . . . . . 1885-1886 • WILLIAM FEILDS . . . . . . . . . . . .Shelby County . . . . . . . . .1885-1886 • WILLIAM C. HODGE . . . . . . . . Hamilton County . . . . . . .1885-1886 • MONROE W. GOODEN . . . . . . Fayette County . . . . . . . . .1887-1888 • STYLES L. HUTCHINS . . . . . . .Hamilton County . . . . . . . .1887-1888 • JESSE M. H. GRAHAM . . . . . . .Montgomery County . . . .1897 (unseated) *Both Rivers and McElwee were prevented by white supremacists from serving a later term to which they had been elected. No other African Americans served in the TN General Assembly until1965

3. Sampson W. Keeble SAMPSON W. KEEBLE May 18,1833 – June 19, 1887  A Republican barber, he represented Davidson County in the 38th Tennessee General Assembly, 1873-1874 He was the first African American elected to the Tennessee legislature. Bust of Sampson Keeble in Tennessee State Capitol by sculptor Roy W. Butler, 2010.

4. Sampson W. Keeble, p. 2 Sampson W. Keeble was a Nashville businessman, the owner of the Rock City Barber Shop, when he was elected to the 34th General Assembly. Born in 1833 in Rutherford County TN, he was the son of Sampson and Nancy Keeble. He was listed among the slaves of H. P. Keeble, an influential Murfreesboro attorney.  Keeble worked as a pressman for various newspapers in Murfrees-boro before the Civil War, then reportedly fought in the Confederate Army during the conflict. After the war he established a home in Nashville and served on the boards of the Freedmen’s Bank and several other African American organizations.

5. Sampson W. Keeble, p. 3 In November 1872, riding the coattails of Ulysses S. Grant’s Republican Presidential victory, Keeble was narrowly elected by Davidson County voters to serve in the Tennessee General Assembly. During his single term in the legislature, Sampson Keeble introduced bills protecting the rights of wage earners, amending Nashville’s city charter to permit African Americans to own & operate businesses downtown, and appropriating funds for the Tennessee Manual Labor University. Not one of his bills received sufficient votes to pass into law. Keeble was elected to serve as a Davidson County magistrate from 1877 to 1882. He died in 1887 and is buried with his daughter and son-in-law in Nashville’s Greenwood Cemetery.

6. Sampson W. Keeble’s monument in Greenwood Cemetery, Nashville. Tennessee Historical Commission marker on Lower Broadway, Nashville.

7. 42nd General Assembly, 1881-82 The four African American legislators are at the far left.

8. John W. Boyd JOHN W. BOYD ca. 1852 – March 10, 1932  A Republican attorney, he was elected to represent Tipton County in the 42nd Tennessee General Assembly, 1881-1882, and re-elected to the 43rd Tennessee General Assembly, 1883-1884.

9. John W. Boyd, p. 2 John W. Boyd’s parents, Philip and Sophia Fields Boyd, were both born in Virginia and moved to Tennessee with their slave- owners, the Feild-Sanfords. John married Martha Doggett of Mason TN in 1879. His brother Armistead Boyd served with Co. C, 88th US Colored Infantry. Boyd, an attorney, was a census taker for Civil District 10, and a magistrate in District 9 of Tipton County as late as 1900. Elected to the Tennessee legislature in 1880, he served two terms in the House but lost an 1884 election for the Senate when a key ward’s ballot box mysteriously disappeared. His challenge of the results failed.

10. John W. Boyd, p. 3 In the General Assembly John Boyd worked diligently with other legislators to overturn Chapter 130 of the Acts of 1875, the first of Tennessee’s “Jim Crow” laws, which sanctioned racial discrimi-nation in public facilities. Boyd also attempted to repeal the restrictive contract labor law, which had the effect of keeping working blacks in bondage.

11. Chapter 130, Acts of Tennessee, 1875 Black legislators worked harder to overturn this 1875 law than almost any other. An amended version of Boyd’s bill to repeal it was passed in 1883, but it did not effectively deal with the larger issue of racial discrimination. Excerpt: “Hereafter no keeper of any Hotel or public House, or carrier of passengers for hire, or conductor, driver, or employee of such carrier or keeper of any place of amusement or employee of such keeper shall be bound, or under any obligation, to entertain, carry, or admit any person whom he shall for any reason whatever choose not to entertain, carry, or admit to his house, Hotel, carriage, or means of Transportation or place of amusement, nor shall any right exist in favor of any such person so refused admission; but the right of such keepers...and their employees to control the access & admittance or exclusion of persons...shall be as complete as that of any private person over his private house, carriage, or private theatre or places of amusement for his family.”

12. Here are the cover and first page of John W. Boyd’s 1883 bill, HB 663, to prevent racial discrimination by railroad companies. The bill was amended to order separate accommodations for black and white passengers. Although Boyd objected to, and even voted against the amended bill, it passed into law by a vote of 56-19.

13. Thomas F. Cassels THOMAS F. CASSELS ca. 1845 – April 2, 1903  The first African American to serve as assistant district attorney of Memphis, Cassels was elected as a Republican to represent Shelby County in the 42nd Tennessee General Assembly, 1881-1882

14. Thomas F. Cassels, p. 2 Thomas F. Cassels was born to free parents in Ohio around1845. He & his wife Emma, a teacher, moved to Memphis about 1875. Quite possibly the first African American to practice law in Memphis, he was the first to plead a case before the West Tennessee Supreme Court. He served as the Assistant Attorney General of Memphis in 1878 and as U.S. Surveyor of Customs during the mid-1880s. The year after his term in the General Assembly ended, Cassels represented activist Ida B. Wells in her discrimination lawsuit against the railroads. In 1888 he served as a Republican Presidential elector. Thomas F. Cassels continued to work as an attorney and a mentor to young lawyers until his untimely death in 1906 from tuberculosis.

15. Isham (Isaac) F. Norris ISHAM (Isaac) F. NORRIS October 15, 1851 – September 23, 1928 A grocer and businessman (coal & wood), he was elected as a Republican to represent Shelby County in the 42nd Tennessee General Assembly, 1881-1882. Convinced to run the following year on the Democratic ticket with Gen. William B. Bate, Norris was defeated, although Governor Bate and others on the ticket won easily.

16. Isham (Isaac) F. Norris, p. 2 Isham Norris was one of Memphis’s elite African American group who saw several of their number elected to offices ranging from asst. wharfmaster and coal inspector to assistant attorney general during the 1870s & 1880s. Norris was a grocer and coal & wood dealer when he was elected to the General Assembly. During the election of 1882 the Democrats, who had persuaded Norris to join their ticket, referred to him in several news stories as a man “of fine practical sense and good judgment.” To their dismay, it was not enough to get him elected, or to convince very many black voters to vote for a Democratic candidate.

17. On March 30, 1881, Rep. Isham Norris introduced House Bill No. 682, “To prevent racial discrimination by railroad companies among their passengers who are charged and pay first class fare, and fixing penalty for same.” The bill passed its first and second readings, but it was apparently tabled in committee and was not brought forward for a third and final reading. This was one of the earliest bills to make an effort to repeal Chapter 130 of the Acts of 1875, one of the earliest of the “Jim Crow Laws.”

18. Isham (Isaac) F. Norris, p. 2 Norris, randomly called both Isham and Isaac, left Memphis and moved his family to Oklahoma some time after 1892. They owned a farm and grocery there for several years. By the time of the 1910 census, however, they were living in Seattle, where Isham owned a trucking company and had already paid off the mortgage on their home. Their 5th son was born after the move to Washington state. After Norris died in 1928, his children stayed on in Seattle, working a police officers, transportation agents, & stevedores.

19. Thomas A. Sykes THOMAS A. SYKES ca. 1835 – ca. 1905  A former member of the North Carolina Legislature, a gauger at the Customs House, and owner of a Nashville furniture store, Sykes was elected to represent Davidson County in the 42nd Tennessee General Assembly, 1881-1882.

20. Thomas A. Sykes, p. 2 The 1870 North Carolina census, which erroneously indicated that Sykes could not read or write, showed that he and his wife Martha had three daughters before moving to Tennessee, and listed his NC occupation as “Representative.” During the 1870s & 1880s Sykes joined city councilman James C. Napier and others in a reform movement against Mayor Thomas Kercheval’s political machine. The group made significant progress in moving African Americans into city jobs – as bridge watchmen, public works employees, and laborers; a few blacks even obtained leadership positions, serving as bosses of road crews or captains of African American fire companies. After his term in the state legislature Sykes, whose wife was a teacher, became the Asst. Superintendent of the TN Industrial School in Nashville. His name did not appear in city directories after 1893.

21. Thomas A. Sykes, p. 3 Although a total of 12 black legislators served in the General Assembly in the 1880s, by the end of the decade there were none. Thomas Sykes was not re-elected after his term ended in 1882, and his career after that time serves as a poignant example of the effects of the Jim Crow laws on black Southerners. In 1885 Thomas Sykes had owned a thriving dry goods store, Sykes, Harris, and Company. However, by 1890, the first term in a decade in which there were no African Americans seated in the Tennessee legislature, Thomas Sykes was working as an elevator operator at the United States Customs House where he had once held a highly respected position as an assessor/gauger.

22. Leon Howard LEON HOWARD ca. 1849 – March 8, 1912  A porter, janitor, & cook, he was elected to represent Shelby County for one term as a Republican in the 43rd Tennessee General Assembly, 1883-1884. No photograph available

23. Leon Howard, p. 2 When Leon Howard unexpectedly defeated two other black candidates, Norris and Price, who had been persuaded to run as Democrats in the 1882 election, the strongly Democratic Memphis news- papers, which had ignored Howard’s candidacy during the campaign, condescendingly referred to him as “a very respectable representative of his race.” Howard had been a laborer most of his adult life, living with his mother and brothers until he married at 34. He introduced several significant pieces of legislation during his term. One, requested by Governor Bate, would create the position of Assistant Superintendent of Public Instruction to oversee the education of African American students. The second sought to end racial discrimi- nation in public transportation and places of entertainment. A third bill legislated punishment for white men who raped black women. All of Howard’s bills were tabled or defeated. By the time of the 1900 census Howard was living with his wife and children in Bakersfield, California, where he was once again working as a janitor (a respectable and highly sought-after job). Leon Howard died in Kern County, California, and is buried in Union Cemetery, Bakersfield.

24. Rep. Leon Howard introduced this bill, HB 493, on February 15, 1883. It was a response to Governor Bate’s request that the General Assembly approve the appointment of an Assistant State Superintendent of Public Instruction to oversee schools for African American students. The bill passed its first and second readings and was then referred to the Committee on Education and Common Schools. However, it did not pass out of committee. Howard re-introduced this legislation in a special House session later in the same year, but the bill failed once again.

25. Samuel Allen McElwee Samuel A. McElwee June 26, 1858 – October 21, 1914 Scholar, teacher, storekeeper, and newspaperman, he was elected to represent Haywood County in the 43rd Tennessee General Assembly, 1883-1884, while still a student at Fisk University. • Re-elected to the 44th (1885-1886) and 45th (1887-1888) General Assemblies; • Earned a law degree from Central Tennessee College in 1886, during his second term; • The first African American to serve three terms in the legislature; AND • The first African American to be nominated as Speaker of the House.

26. Samuel A. McElwee,p. 2 Samuel A. McElwee was born a slave in Madison County TN. After emancipation his family moved to a farm in Haywood County, where young McElwee attended Freedmen’s Bureau schools part of the year. Having been taught to read by his former master’s children, he pro- gressed quickly through school, even though he had to devote much of the year to farm work. By 16 he was a teacher himself, and at 18 he attended Oberlin College for a year, paying his way by washing windows, waiting tables, and picking fruit. Later, supporting himself by teaching and selling Bibles and patent medicines, he studied German, Latin, and mathematics with a Vanderbilt student. Accepted to Fisk University with a Peabody scholarship, he was still a student when he was elected to the General Assembly in 1882 from Haywood County. About the same time, his wife died, leaving him with two small children. He served two more terms in the House, earning a law degree (1886) from Central Tennessee College in his second term.

27. Samuel A. McElwee, p. 3 During his second legislative term, the 26-year-old McElwee was nomi- nated by former U.S. Senator Roderick R. Butler to be Speaker of the House of Representatives, receiving 32 of the 93 votes cast. McElwee was also the first African American Tennessean elected to a third legislative term. During that third term he delivered a celebrated oration calling for stronger statutory sanctions against lynch mobs. After reminding members of three recent Tennessee lynchings, he exclaimed: “Great God, when will this Nation treat the Negro as an American citizen? ... As a humble repre- sentative of the Negro race, and as a member of this body, I stand here to- day and wave the flag of truce between the races and demand a reformation in southern society by the passage of this bill.” Despite his eloquence, the bill was tabled by a vote of 41–36.

28. The cover and first page of Samuel A. McElwee’s bill, HB 526 (1883) to ensure fair jury selection. The bill was tabled by the Judiciary Committee.

29. Samuel A. McElwee, p. 5 By 1888, as he campaigned for a fourth term, Samuel McElwee had gained a national reputation. He had spoken at the Tuskegee Institute and other educational institutions; chaired the state Republican Convention and represented Tennessee at the Chicago Republican Convention. Meanwhile, white separatists in Haywood County were working to get rid of McElwee. As armed patrols terrorized African American neighborhoods and blocked the ballot boxes, fearful black voters stayed away from the polls. Despite lawsuits brought later by federal election officials, the local officials, who made no secret of the fact that they had deliberately miscounted votes, were never punished. The 1890 General Assembly, which had no black members, quickly passed a series of laws intended to disfranchise African American voters. McElwee and his family fled Haywood County, barely escaping with their lives. For several years they lived in Nashville, where the former legislator established a successful law practice and a popular newspaper. McElwee spent his final years in Chicago as the head of a prosperous law firm.

30. David F. Rivers David Foote Rivers July 18, 1859 – July 5, 1941 A Peabody Scholarship student at Roger Williams University at the time of his election, he represented Fayette County as a Republican in the 43rd Tennessee General Assembly, 1883-1884. ……. Rivers was re-elected to the 44th General Assembly but never took his seat, having been driven out of Fayette County by racial violence. David F. Rivers, about 1930

31. David F. Rivers, p. 2 David Rivers was born in Montgomery, Alabama, to Edmonia Rivers, a free woman of color. He was listed in the 1870 census in his grandfather’s Somerville TN household, along with two younger brothers and an assortment of relatives and boarders. Rivers did not learn to write until he was 19, when he first attended high school, probably in Fayette County. Successful in his studies, he was invited to attend Roger Williams University in Nashville on a Peabody Scholarship. He was studying for a degree in theology there when he was elected to the state legislature at the age of 24. A challenge to Rivers’ eligibility, based on his periodic absences from Fayette County to attend college in Nashville, was unsuccessful, probably because it would also have made others ineligible.

32. David F. Rivers, p. 3 Although elected to the General Assembly for a second term in 1885-1886, Rivers never took his seat, having been driven out of Fayette County by what his son Francis referred to as “a large body of racially prejudiced whites.” However, having earned his degree in theology from Roger Williams University, he stayed on and taught there for two years, then preached at the Fifth Ward Baptist Church in Clarksville for some time. In 1893 he moved his family to Kansas City, Kansas, where he became pastor of the Metropolitan Baptist Church. In 1898 David F. Rivers was invited to Washington, D.C., to accept a post as pastor of the Berean Baptist Church. He served that congre- gation for 43 years, until his death in 1941. His son Francis, equally distinguished, was a member of the New York General Assembly and also held the posts of Assistant District Attorney in New York County and Justice of the City Court of New York.

33. 44th General Assembly, 1885-86 The four African American legislators are at lower right.

34. Greene E. Evans Greene E. Evans September 19, 1848 – October 1, 1914 A well-educated businessman and former teacher, he was elected as a Republican to the 44th Tennessee General Assembly, 1885-1886. A member of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers, he took part in their first U.S. concert tour in 1871-1872. 

35. Greene E. Evans, p. 2 Greene Evans was born a slave in Fayette County. As a teenager he escaped from his master, becoming the servant of a Union officer in Alabama. He lived in Indianapolis after the Civil War. There he paid a tutor part of his $10-a-week salary to teach him to read. To pay his way through college, he hauled sod and gravel, and he taught school during the summer months in a school- house he built with his own hands from scrap lumber. At twenty he entered Fisk University, where he sang bass with the original Fisk Jubilee Singers, performing before President Grant in the White House. After college, Evans worked in the whole- sale coal and wood business and as mail agent & deputy wharf-master at Memphis. Active in Republican party politics, this hard-working young man received the party’s nomination to run for the legislature in 1884.

36. The first Fisk Jubilee Singers. Greene Evans is seated second from left.

37. Greene E. Evans, p. 3 During his single legislative term Evans introduced bills to repeal Chapter 130 of the Acts of 1875, to amend the public road law in order to permit fair employment of African American workers, and, supporting a request by the governor, to provide for an Assistant Superintendent of Public Instruction to oversee the education of black students. None of Evans’s bills passed into law. The 1900 census showed him, at the age of 51, living with his wife Anna in Chicago, Illinois. His occupation was listed as “coal dealer.” He died in Chicago on October 1, 1914, at the age of 64.

38. William Alexander Feilds William A. Feilds ca. 1852 – September 9, 1898 A farmer and school teacher, he was elected as a Republican to represent Shelby County in the 44th Tennessee General Assembly, 1885-1886.  His surname has also been spelled Feild, Field, and Fields. A prominent slave-owning family in West Tennessee spelled their own surname Feild, but many of their slaves changed the spelling after emancipation.

39. William A. Feilds, p. 2 William Feilds was one of four African American American legislators who had been slaves on plantations within a fairly small area in the south- west corner of Tennessee. The others were Greene Evans, Monroe Gooden, and John Boyd, who was almost certainly Feilds’ cousin. W. A. Feilds was a teacher and school principal in the 5th District of Shelby County when he was elected to the Tennessee General Assembly. After his term in the legislature, he served as a Shelby County magistrate until his death.

40. William A. Feilds, p. 3 Feilds introduced a number of bills: to support compulsory school attendance, to oppose discrimination in public facilities, and to urge fair and honest labor contracts. None of his bills became law.

41. William C. Hodge William C. Hodge ca. 1846 – ca. 1900 A man who held many jobs, including railroad agent and jailer, he was elected to represent Hamilton County in the 44th Tennessee General Assembly, 1885-1886. He served as a member of the Chattanooga city council for several years.

42. William C. Hodge, p. 2 Born in North Carolina, Hodge held a number of jobs before he became a legislator: house mover, contractor, stone-cutter, night mail transfer agent at the railroad depot, alderman for the 4th Ward of Chattanooga, and city jailer. During his term in the House he introduced bills to safeguard employment and voting rights and to overturn Chapter 130 of the Acts of 1875, which allowed discrimination in public trans- portation, hotels, and places of public amusement. All his bills were tabled or rejected. Hodge ran for the legislature in 1884, just as state Republicans declared themselves opposed to black candidates. He said it was time for white voters to get “educated up” and allow blacks to hold responsible positions. Chattanooga’s black leaders reminded Republican office holders that African American votes were keeping them in office (the city’s black voters out- numbered whites more than 3 to 1!), and suggested that a little reciprocity would go a long way . Hodge won the election, to become the county’s first African American representative.

43. 45th General Assembly, 1887-88 The three African American legislators are at lower right.

44. Monroe W. Gooden Monroe W. Gooden 10 May 1848 – 19 January 1915 The only African American Democrat in the Tennessee legislature in the 19th Century, he was elected to represent Fayette County in the 45th Tennessee General Assembly, 1887-1888 ………. …….

45. Monroe W. Gooden, p. 2 A farmer and cotton ginner near Somerville, Tennessee, Gooden and his wife Anne Baskerville were the parents of seven children. He was a deacon in the Baptist church and a member of the Masonic order. Black Freemasons groups have existed in the U.S. since 1775; the number of black lodges increased significantly after the Civil War. After the Civil War Gooden, who became quite wealthy , owned the very plantation on which he had been a slave. Appointed to the Agriculture and Federal Relations committees, Gooden introduced a bill to ensure honest ballot counting, but it failed. One of the few black Democrats in Tennessee during the 1880s, and the only one to serve a term in the legis- lature, Gooden was the second man to represent Fayette County, after David F. Rivers. From 1830 to 1980 the Fayette County population consisted of many more blacks than whites (by 1865 the ratio was 2-1), yet only two black legislators have ever been elected to represent the county.

46. Styles L. Hutchins Styles Linton Hutchins 21 November 1852 – 7 September 1950 A Chattanooga attorney, he was elected to represent Hamilton County in the 45th Tennessee General Assembly, 1887-1888. Styles Hutchins, Monroe Gooden, & Samuel McElwee were the last African Americans to serve in the General Assembly until Shelby County Representative A. W Willis, Jr., was elected in 1964.

47. Styles L. Hutchins, p. 2 Styles Linton Hutchins was born in Lawrenceville, Georgia, in 1852. He evidently lied about his age (he was 12!) to join the Union Army in 1864. The son of a free black who had run a busy Atlanta barber shop since before the Civil War, Hutchins was one of the first black graduates of Atlanta University (1875). A year later he earned a law degree from the University of South Carolina and was admitted to the South Carolina bar. He served briefly as a Republican state judge, resigning when the Democrats returned to power.  Returning to Georgia to open a law practice, Hutchins overcame opposition from the legislature to become the first African American lawyer admitted to the Georgia bar and the first to plead a case there. In 1881, after dealing with some legal predicaments of his own, he opened a law practice in Chatta- nooga, also becoming editor of The Independent Age, a popular black newspaper. An straight-talking champion of civil rights, he ran for the state legislature in 1886, winning by a mere eight votes!

48. Styles L. Hutchins, p. 3 Tireless in his role as legislator, Hutchins served on the Education and New Counties committees and was successful in passing laws to repeal poll taxes in Chattanooga and to prevent criminals from other states from testifying in Tennessee courts. His bill to limit the use of convict labor was not successful. After his legislative term, Hutchins returned to his busy law practice in Hamilton County.

49. Legislator and attorney Styles L. Hutchins introduced HB 447 on February 12, 1887, in an attempt to better regulate the work and confinement of convicts. Referred to the Committee on Penitentiary after its second reading, the bill was tabled in committee.

50. Styles L. Hutchins, p. 5 In 1906 Hutchins was involved in one of the most famous lynching cases in history. Hired to appeal the rape conviction of a black man named Ed Johnson, Hutchins and law partner Noah W. Parden carried the appeal to the Supreme Court, who agreed to hear it and issued a stay of execution. That very night, however, a mob broke into the Hamilton County jail, with the help of the sheriff, dragged Johnson out and hanged him from a bridge. Hutchins and Parden immediately urged federal officials to file suit against the sheriff and the mob. In a precedent-setting case, the Supreme Court found Sheriff Shipp and others guilty of contempt of court. After serving a brief sentence, Shipp returned home to a hero’s welcome, while Hutchins and Parden , fearing for their lives, took their families and fled from Tennessee. In 1910 Hutchins was practicing law in Peoria, Illinois; the 1920 Census lists him as the owner-operator of a barber shop. He died in Mattoon, Illinois, in 1950 . . . at the age of 98!