Hiram Revels (R-MS) became the first African American senator in 1870. Born in North Carolina in 1827, Revels attended Knox College in Illinois and later served as minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore, Maryland. He raised two black regiments during the Civil War and fought at the battle of Vicksburg in Mississippi. The Mississippi state legislature sent him to the U.S. Senate during Reconstruction, where he became an outspoken opponent of racial segregation. Although Revels served in the Senate for just a year, he broke new ground for African Americans in Congress. (Photo: Library of Congress)
The first African American elected to the Senate by popular vote, Edward Brooke (R-MA) served two full terms, from 1967 to 1979. Born in Washington, D.C., in 1919, Brooke graduated from Howard University before serving in the United States Army during World War II. After the war, he received his juris doctor degree from Boston University. During his Senate career he championed the causes of low-income housing and an increased minimum wage and promoted commuter rail and mass transit systems. He also worked tirelessly to promote racial equality in the South. (Photo: Senate Historical Office)
Florida S First Black Lawyers 1869 1979 pdf
Though it does not appear that Allen County had an antebellum African American rural population cluster, there was an urban settlement in Fort Wayne. Located in the Hanna Addition, this settlement, as noted by J. Randolph Kirby, would have been the first African American community in Allen County. It comprised as many as 30 families in the 1850 census. An African Methodist Episcopal Church was established in the area around 1847. Township population censuses confirm that only scant numbers of blacks lived outside the city of Fort Wayne during this time period.
Howard County was established in 1844. The county had a healthy African American population that grew steadily from its first federal decennial population census taken in 1850; it registered 105 black people that year. It enumerated 165 blacks in 1860 and 304 in 1870. In both 1860 and 1870 about a third of the black population in the county lived in Ervin Township. There were also large population numbers in Clay and Monroe Townships and the city of Kokomo (Centre Township).
Jackson County was established in 1816. From the first federal decennial census for the county in 1820 to 1870, the African American population increased from 36 to 164 people. Like so many other Indiana counties, the black population census numbers fell between 1850 (214) and 1860 (187). It dropped again in 1870 and rallied in 1880. Most blacks that came to Jackson County by 1870 were from North Carolina, Virginia, Illinois, and other Indiana counties.
Kosciusko County was founded in 1835. The decennial federal population census for the county records ten or less blacks from 1840 through 1870. The first recorded lone, black resident of the county was Filda Butt, recorded as a servant for a family in Jefferson Township in the 1850 census.
According to local history books, the earliest black settler in Miami County was a young man named Wesley Cossey who worked as an interpreter for Francis Slocum. The first documented account of Cossey in the county is with a September 2, 1839 visit by the brother and sister of Francis Slocum. There is evidence that he could have been there earlier, however no connection has been solidified between Cossey and an earlier account of an interpreter working with John McClure at a trading post southeast of Peru. Other notable African Americans who established a sense of community in the county were the Moss family, who operated a barber shop in Peru. Alexander Moss campaigned for a black school in Peru, was instrumental in establishing an African Methodist Episcopal church, and acquired a significant degree of wealth through his various land holdings.
From the first federal decennial census for the county in 1850 to 1870, the African American population increased from 37 to 189 people. Like many other Indiana counties, the black population census numbers fell between 1850 (37) and 1860 (23) and zoomed upward in 1870, very much reflecting the end of the Civil War and the political mood of the state. (See below population census numbers for Ohio County African Americans.)
Pike County was established in 1816. From the time of the first federal decennial census taken for the county in 1820 through 1870, there were never more than 20 African Americans enumerated. Most of the black population lived in Monroe or Washington Township. The 1880 county population census recorded 27 blacks. The African American population escalated the last two decades of the nineteenth century; the census enumeration was 56 in 1890 and 147 in 1900.
Ripley County was founded in 1816. From the first federal decennial census for the county in 1820 to 1870, the African American population increased from 2 to 103 people. The black population census numbers fell slightly between 1850 (96) and 1860 (87) before rallying in 1870 and 1880.
The story of the first black landowners in Shelby County presents another interesting scenario of migration. In his 1821 will, Thomas Graffort, a white slave-owner in Bourbon County, Kentucky, provides his fifteen slaves eighty acre-tracts of land that have been entered in Shelby County and Rush County, Indiana. Three men, Hazard, Hedgeman and George Graffort share in the 480 acres purchased in Addison Township. They did not, however, have long tenure as the land seems to have been sold within a few years.
Vermillion County was formed in 1824 and its 1830 census recorded the presence of 19 free blacks. This small population continued in successive years, with 23 in the 1840 census, 18 in the 1850 census, 30 in the 1860 census and 48 in the 1870 census. Most of these residents lived in the town of Clinton. The surnames of families recorded in the 1850 census included Davis, Musgrave, Richards and Thomas. Their birthplaces included Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia. Surnames of families recorded in the 1870 census included Adams, Banks, Cooper and Taylor from Virginia and Maryland. The first (and perhaps only) African American church was the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which was established in 1876 with six members. One of its pastors, Rev. W.R. Hutchison, was a resident of Lost Creek in Vigo County.
Warren County was formed in 1827, and the first African Americans in the county were recorded in the 1850 federal decennial census. By 1860, this number had almost doubled to 17, and to 22 by 1870, mostly living within white households. This area of the state did not experience the significant influx of black population that many other Indiana counties had realized after the Civil War. There is no indication that the black population established a school or church, and no landownership was reported in 1850 (Heller).
By 1860 the Green household apparently relocates to neighboring Grant County. In a family with so many female members, the parents may have decided to move to find eligible mates for their children in Weaver, a thriving black settlement. An index to Grant County marriages shows Matilda Green marrying John W. Winslow 15 December 1869; Nancy E. Green marrying George W Trout 18 September 1861; Patience Green marrying Osborn Mitchell 23 April 1869, and Silka and Sitka Green (may be Silkey) marrying Robert Fleming on 17 March1855 and William Gulliford on 27 November 1862, respectively. 2ff7e9595c
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