Recalling When Congress Was a Whites-Only Club

This month will be remembered for the arrival of an African-American at the pinnacle of American political power when Barack Obama is sworn in as president on the Capitol's steps. But it also is the anniversary of another, less happy political milestone on Capitol Hill: the farewell of the last member of the first generation of black congressmen.

On Jan. 29, 1901, Rep. George H. White took the floor of the House of Representatives during a debate on a farm bill. He talked briefly about the legislation then turned to matters nearer his heart. "I want to enter a plea for the colored man, the colored woman, the colored boy, and the colored girl of this country," White intoned. "I would not thus digress...but for the constant and the persistent efforts of certain gentlemen upon this floor to mold and rivet public sentiment against us as a people and to lose no opportunity to hold up the unfortunate few who commit crimes and depredations and lead lives of infamy and shame, as other races do, as fair specimens of representatives of the entire colored race."

Between the end of the Civil War and 1901, two blacks served in the U.S. Senate and 20 in the House. All were from the South, most from the Deep South, where blacks comprised a majority, or nearly a majority, of the population (South Carolina, Mississippi, and Alabama).

By the turn of the century, White was the only one left on Capitol Hill. He was the last of the African-American congressmen of the Reconstruction era.

And after his departure in March 1901, when his term ended, it would be more than 25 years before an African-American again took a seat in the House, more than 75 years before one was elected from a Southern state. Though his prediction that blacks would again be elected to Congress came to pass, he didn't live to see it.

Like White, all the black congressmen in the early days were Republicans; the Republicans were the party of Lincoln and emancipation, while the Democrats were, at least in the eyes of their opponents, the party of rebellion and slavery. Some had been slaves; others had been free. Some rose through awesome courage and tenacity. Others could better be characterized as cunning and opportunistic—not surprisingly, because these were the defining characteristics of the politics of the time.

In the closing decades of the 19th century, Democrats dedicated to white supremacy gained control of the legislatures of Southern states and passed measures designed to disenfranchise blacks. The ranks of black congressmen thinned. The fractured politics in North Carolina provided George White a political space, as the class-based Populist Party insurgency led many hard-pressed white farmers to desert the Democrats and join with the Republicans. But White's time ran out, too; the Populist moment passed, and many Populists returned to their old political affiliations; some white Republicans resigned themselves to the Democratic resurgence; and North Carolina adopted measures to essentially eliminate the black vote.

Bowing to the new reality, White announced in 1900 that he would not seek re-election, and in January 1901, he stood before the House as a lame duck.

In entering his "plea for the colored man," White decried the "convenient howl" of the threat of "negro domination" of Southern states' governments and the resulting manipulation of politics to disenfranchise blacks. "It is an undisputed fact that the negro vote" in the South has "been effectively suppressed, either one way or the other—in some instances by constitutional amendment and state legislation, in others by cold-blooded fraud and intimidation."

He knew the fraud well; in one township in his district, he told his colleagues, there were 539 registered voters, but in the most recent election, there had been 990 votes counted for the Democratic candidate, 41 for the Republican. He also knew something about "cold-blooded intimation": the 1898 "Wilmington Riot"—essentially a coup against a city administration that included black and white officials—had left at least 22 blacks dead and sent an unforgettable message that African-Americans in his home state could not safely insist on their rights.

But White did not mention the riot or other examples of vigilante violence in this speech. Perhaps he felt he had been there, done that (he had been a vocal congressional critic of lynching); perhaps he saw it as too bitter and divisive a topic to broach at this point.

Instead, White focused on the future.

He cited statistics showing black economic and educational progress since emancipation. "With all these odds against us," he said, "we are forging our way ahead, slowly, perhaps, but surely. You may tie us and then taunt us for a lack of bravery, but one day we will break the bonds. You may use our labor for two and a half centuries and then taunt us for our poverty, but let me remind you, we will not always remain poor. You may withhold even the knowledge of how to read God's word and learn the way from earth to glory and then taunt us for our ignorance, but we would remind you that there is plenty of room at the top, and we are climbing."

In closing, White said:

"I want to submit a brief recipe for the solution of the so-called American negro problem. He asks no special favors, but simply demands that he be given the same chance for existence, for earning a livelihood, for raising himself in the scales of manhood and womanhood that are accorded to kindred nationalities. Treat him as a man; go into his home and learn of his social conditions; learn of his cares, his troubles, and his hopes for the future; gain his confidence; open the doors of industry to him; let the word 'negro,' 'colored,' and 'black' be stricken from all the organizations enumerated in the federation of labor [a reference to labor unions that excluded blacks].

"Help him to overcome his weaknesses, punish the crime-committing class by the courts of the land, measure the standard of the race by its best material, cease to mold prejudicial and unjust public sentiment against him, and my word for it, he will learn to support, hold up the hands of, and join in with that political party, that institution, whether secular or religious, in every community where he lives, which is destined to do the greatest good for the greatest number. Obliterate race hatred, party prejudice, and help us to achieve nobler ends, greater results, and become more satisfactory citizens to our brother in white.

"This, Mr. Chairman, is perhaps the negroes' temporary farewell to the American Congress; but let me say, Phoenix-like, he will rise up some day and come again. These parting words are in behalf of an outraged, heartbroken, bruised, and bleeding, but God-fearing people, faithful, industrious, loyal people—rising people, full of potential force."

The Congressional Record says that White's speech closed to "loud applause." Whether it stirred much thought is unclear; the House turned smoothly to a discussion of whether to allow the newly invented oleomargarine to be labeled "butter."

In March 1901, George White's term ended. In what must have been a bitter pill for him, he was replaced by the brother of a representative he had singled out in his farewell address as one of the House's most offensive "howlers" against African-American rights.

The return of blacks to the House that White foresaw would not come until 1928, when Oscar De Priest was elected in Chicago. Not until 1978 would a Southern state again send a black to the House.