This book introduces America to the Black Reconstruction politicians who fought valiantly for the civil rights of all people-important individuals who have been ignored by modern historians as well as their contemporaries.

Foreword by Molefi Kete Asante Preface Acknowledgments Introduction by Matthew Lynch Chapter 1 "No Peer in His Race": Robert Brown Elliott and the Racial Politics of Reconstruction Era South Carolina J. Brent Morris Chapter 2 A Lasting Legacy: James Edward O'Hara's Post-Reconstruction Struggle for Racial Equality Kevin E. Grimm Chapter 3 "That Is All We Ask For—an Equal Chance": Oscar James Dunn, Louisiana's First Black Lieutenant Governor Linda English Chapter 4 In the Midst of the "Nadir": Samuel A. McElwee and the Search for Democracy and Freedom Derrick D. McKisick Chapter 5 From "Just above Slave Level" to State Treasurer: Antoine Dubuclet and the Politics of Race in Reconstruction Louisiana Joshua Butler Chapter 6 Joseph Hayne Rainey and the Beginnings of Black Political Authority William P. Kladky Chapter 7 Race, Reconstruction, Radical Republicans, and a Renegade: The Rise and Fall of Tunis Campbell F. Erik Brooks Chapter 8 Footprints of Freedom: Mifflin Wistar Gibbs and the Pursuit of Equality across North America Jake Sudderth Chapter 9 The Biography of John Willis Menard, First African American Elected to the U.S. Congress Glenn L. Starks Chapter 10 "Rise in the Scale of Being": Jonathan Clarkson Gibbs, Philadelphia Ministry, and Florida Politics Kaye Wise Whitehead Chapter 11 "I Shall Not Be Muffled Here": Thomas E. Miller, the Lost African American Congressman, 1890–1891 Travis D. Boyce and Winsome M. Chunnu-Brayda Chapter 12 Like a Lion Bound, Hear Him Roar: Richard Harvey Cain and a Rhetoric of Reconstruction Martin A. Parlett Chapter 13 Robert Smalls and the Politics of Race and Freedom in Low Country South Carolina, 1865–1890 Karen Cook Bell and Peter J. Breaux About the Editor and Contributors Index

"To students in the 21st century, it is all too easy to assume that black Americans and the U.S. government remained distanced and estranged from one another until the 1960s, little realizing how much uncertainty and potential existed in the 1860s and 1870s before the dramatic gains of the Civil War and Reconstruction were disassembled. This collection of essays about black lawmakers in Reconstruction offers to perform the valuable service of introducing students to the uncertainty, promise, black agency, and ultimate disappointment that those crucial years held. "

This book introduces America to the Black Reconstruction politicians who fought valiantly for the civil rights of all people—important individuals who have been ignored by modern historians as well as their contemporaries.