In Arkansas, between 1868 and 1893, at least 87 Black men were elected to and served in the Arkansas General Assembly. Reconstruction policies and amendments to the U.S. Constitution outlawed slavery, redefined citizenship to include freed slaves and granted universal male suffrage regardless “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” In Arkansas, these changes led to the election of Black men to state and local offices.
These legislators and other officeholders were primarily elected from areas with large Black populations — Arkansas’ plantation regions in the east and southwest as well as urban areas like Little Rock, Pine Bluff and Helena. Historians are still piecing together the lives of these men; nevertheless, research shows that they were a diverse group. Many had been free, living in the North before the Civil War, while others were former slaves in Arkansas or nearby states. Leaders in their communities, most appear to have received an education and were capable, literate and ambitious men. They came to prominence as educators and ministers, but their ranks also held former Union soldiers, newspaper editors, merchants, farmers, lawyers and at least one doctor.
Early in Reconstruction, a number of important leaders emerged. Most prominent among the eight Black delegates to the 1868 Arkansas Constitutional Convention were William H. Grey, James T. White and James W. Mason. All three were educated and later served in the General Assembly. Of the three, only Mason was born in Arkansas. The son of Arkansas’ largest planter and an enslaved woman named Cynthia, Mason received an education at Oberlin College in Ohio and in Paris. In 1867, at Sunnyside in Chicot County, he became the first known Black postmaster in the country. Grey and White, born free in Washington and Indiana, respectively, came to Helena in 1865. Grey was a merchant and minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and later became the first Grand Master of the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge (Colored) of Free and Accepted Masons of Arkansas. White, a Baptist minister, headed the church’s mission work among the freedmen in Helena and later edited newspapers like the Arkansas Review. During the 1868 convention, these three, along with the other Black delegates, defended the right of Black men to vote, a key provision for readmission to the Union.
During the initial period of Reconstruction from 1868 to 1874, Arkansans elected 35 Black men to 45 positions in the General Assembly. In 1873, the number of Black men in the Legislature peaked at 21 — 17 in the House and four in the Senate. The men took an active role within the Republican Party supporting civil rights, public education, economic development and efforts to maintain law and order — especially combating intimidation of Blacks by the Ku Klux Klan.
In the post-Reconstruction years, in which Democrats “redeemed” or regained political power, Black men continued to serve in the General Assembly, albeit in smaller numbers. While there were efforts to intimidate Black voters, Arkansas remained relatively moderate. Democratic “redeemer” Gov. Augustus H. Garland set the tone when he was elected in 1874, throwing his support behind the state’s 1873 Civil Rights Act, access to public schools and the right to vote. Garland also encouraged the “fusion principle” in Black-majority Delta counties. Fusion essentially shared power between Republicans and Democrats by dividing the political tickets between the parties. The arrangements also had the effect of quelling potential political violence.
With few exceptions, 19th-century Black legislators aligned with the Republican Party. The year 1879 appears to be the first year that any Black legislators were willing to break with the Republicans. Four had been elected on the Greenback ticket and one as a Democrat. The early 1880s also saw a few Greenbackers elected, but fusion and Republican alliances with Greenbackers and members of the Agricultural Wheel seem to have kept Black voters and candidates within the Republican fold. The final exception in the 19th century is Benjamin F. Adair, who served in the 1891 General Assembly as a Democrat.
The passage of the 1891 Election Law by the Democratic-controlled General Assembly was the first of a series of laws that disenfranchised Black voters. Black Republicans like Sen. George W. Bell and Rep. John Gray Lucas voiced their objections to the 1891 bill, but the party was unable to defeat the measure. The 1891 law, under the guise of election reform, removed local control of elections and reforms to ballot printing that intimidated illiterate voters. A law requiring a poll tax receipt in order to vote came in 1893. These measures suppressed Black voter turnout and effectively ended political participation and representation for over a quarter of the state’s population. No Black Arkansan was elected to the state Legislature again until 1972.
A list of 19th-century Black legislators can be found at encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/african-american-legislators-nineteenth-century-13932/. — Blake Wintory
This story is adapted by Guy Lancaster from the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas, a project of the Central Arkansas Library System. Visit the site at encyclopediaofarkansas.net.
James W. Mason was the first African American to serve in the Arkansas Senate. (Courtesy of the Arkansas Senate) Portrait of Arkansas state Sen. James T. White (Courtesy of the Arkansas Senate)
