Black Politicians
During the reconstruction era over two thousand African Americans served in federal, state, and local offices. Information on these individuals is difficult to find, seeing as during this time black lawmakers were condemned as subhuman, and in no need of documentation. Eric Foner, author of Black Politicians in the Reconstruction Era, stated that of the two thousand he only found about 1465 for his book. A great deal of the information on these men and the offices they held was obscure and incorrect. Many scholars had false information about the education level of these African American lawmakers. For example, many scholars claimed that most black delegates to the Georgia convention were illiterate, actually twenty-two of these thirty-seven could read and write. This was impressive seeing as it was against the law in many states for African Americans to be taught how to read or write. The basic research on these politicians was not done because these scholars thought they knew all they needed to know. These lawmakers were black; many were ex-slaves, so they must have been ignorant, corrupt, and incompetent, this was the stereoty
Many of the African American leaders saw fit to educate themselves. Men like John Roy Lynch, who took time off from his photographer's studio to observe a white classroom from across an alley. He continued this until he had mastered all of the classes taught there. Situations like this show the desire and determination these men had to learn. He used this training to become speaker of the Mississippi house and later a member of congress. These are only two of the many examples of African Americans who self educated themselves in a time when African Americans were banned from education. An extremely relevant point, and a credit to the African American politicians was the fact that there was a very small amount of vindictiveness in their actions and words. They had no dreams or desires to take advantage, or become greedy with the power they were beginning to acquire. They seemed more fixated on receiving what they thought they were entitled to. Beverly Nash, a member of the South Carolina convention, asserted in his first speech, "the white man is a true friend of the black man." He went on to say, "I you could see the scro
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 768
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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