P. B. S. Pinchback

Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (born Pinckney Benton Stewart; May 10, 1837 – December 21, 1921) was the first person of African-American descent to become governor of a U.S. state. A Republican, he served as the 24th Governor of Louisiana for 35 days, from December 9, 1872, to January 13, 1873.

Nicholas Lemann, in Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War, described Pinchback as "an outsized figure: newspaper publisher, gambler, orator, speculator, dandy, mountebank – served for a few months as the state's Governor and claimed seats in both houses of Congress following disputed elections but could not persuade the members of either to seat him."

Early life
Born Pinckney Benton Stewart in May 1837 in Macon, Bibb County, Georgia, his parents were Eliza Stewart, a former slave, and William Pinchback, a planter and her former master. They lived together as husband and wife as interracial marriage was forbidden by state law. They had diverse ethnic origins; Eliza Stewart was classified as mulatto, of African, Cherokee, Welsh and German ancestry; and William Pinchback was of European-American descent: with Scots-Irish, Welsh and German ancestry. The children had a majority of European ancestry. Shortly after Pinckney's birth, his father William purchased a much larger plantation in Mississippi, and moved his entire family there.

Pinckney Stewart, as he was then called, as a "natural" (or illegitimate) son of his father, was brought up in relatively affluent surroundings. He and his four siblings were raised as white, and his parents sent him north to Cincinnati, Ohio, to attend school. In 1848, Pinchback's father died. William Pinchback's relatives disinherited his mulatto common-law wife and children and claimed his property in Mississippi.

Fearful that the Pinchbacks might try to claim her five children as slaves, Eliza Stewart fled with her children to Cincinnati in the free state of Ohio. Pinckney at the age of 11 left school and worked on river and canal boats. For a while he resided in Terre Haute, Indiana, working as a hotel porter. During that time he was still known as Pinckney B. Stewart, as he had not yet adopted the surname Pinchback.

Marriage and family
In 1860 at the age of 23, Stewart married Nina Hawthorne of Memphis, Tennessee. They had four children---Pinckney Napoleon in 1862, Bismarck in 1864, and Nina and Walter Alexander in 1866 and 1868. Bismarck's name reflected Pinchback's admiration for Bismarck of Germany, whom he considered to be one of the world's greatest men.

Military service and Civil War
The Civil War began the following year, and Stewart decided to fight on the side of the Union. In 1862 he furtively made his way into New Orleans, which had just been captured by the Union Army. He raised several companies for the Union's all-black 1st Louisiana Native Guards Regiment, which was garrisoned in the city. A minority of men were Louisiana Creoles of color, part of the educated class; most were runaway slaves. Commissioned a captain, he was one of the Union Army's few commissioned officers of African-American ancestry. He became Company Commander of Company A, 2nd Louisiana Regiment Native Guard Infantry (later reformed as the 74th US Colored Infantry Regiment). Passed over twice for promotion and tired of the prejudice he encountered from white officers, Stewart resigned his commission in 1863.

At the war's end, he and his wife moved to Alabama, to test their freedom as full citizens. Racial tensions during Reconstruction resulted in shocking levels of violence. Stewart returned with his family to New Orleans.

Political career
In New Orleans, Stewart took his father's name and became active in the Republican Party, participating in Reconstruction state conventions. In 1868, he organized the Fourth Ward Republican Club in New Orleans. That same year, he was elected as a State Senator, where he became senate president pro tempore of a Legislature that included 42 representatives of African-American descent (half of the chamber, and seven of 36 seats in the Senate). In 1871 he became acting lieutenant governor upon the death of Oscar Dunn, the first elected African-American lieutenant governor of a U.S. state.

In 1872, the legislature filed impeachment charges against the incumbent Republican governor, Henry Clay Warmoth. State law required that Warmoth step aside until his case was tried. Pinchback took the oath as acting governor on December 9, 1872, and served for 35 days until the end of Warmoth's term. Warmoth was not convicted, and the charges were eventually dropped.

Also in 1872, at a national convention of African-American politicians, Pinchback had a public disagreement with Jeremiah Haralson of Alabama. James T. Rapier (also of Alabama) submitted a motion that the convention condemn all Republicans who had opposed President Grant in that year's election. Haralson supported the motion, but Pinchback opposed it because it would include Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, a lifelong anti-slavery fighter whom Pinchback believed African-Americans should laud.

Later life
After his brief governorship, Pinchback remained active in politics and public service. In the elections of 1874 and 1876, Pinchback was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and then the U.S. Senate respectively; he was the state's first African-American representative to Congress. Both election results were contested by Democratic opponents, as the campaigns and elections were surrounded by violence and intimidation. Congress, then dominated by Democrats, finally seated his opponents. This period marked the beginning of a reversal of the political gains which African Americans had achieved since the war's end. The White League, a paramilitary group with chapters across the state beginning in 1874, openly disrupted Republican gatherings and intimidated blacks to repress their vote. A historian described the White League as the "military arm of the Democratic Party."

Pinchback served on the Louisiana State Board of Education and was instrumental in 1880 in establishing Southern University, a historically black college in New Orleans. It relocated to Baton Rouge in 1914. He was a member of Southern University's Board of Trustees (later redesignated the Board of Supervisors).

Between 1882 and 1885, Pinchback served as surveyor of customs in New Orleans, his last politically significant position.

In 1885, he studied law at Straight University, which later became Dillard University, in New Orleans. He was admitted to the Louisiana bar in 1886, but never actually practiced.

In 1892 Pinchback was part of the Comité des Citoyens (Citizens' Committee) which set up the New Orleans civil-rights actions of Homer Plessy as a challenge of segregationist laws in public transportation. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court as Plessy v. Ferguson. It was decided in favor of state laws requiring racial segregation in public transport.

Later Pinchback moved with his family to New York City, where he worked as a Marshal. Finally he moved to Washington, D.C.. He and his family were part of the mixed-race elite in Washington, generally people who had been free before the Civil War and had gained educations.

Pinchback died forgotten in Washington in 1921 and is interred in Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans.

Legacy
Pinchback is the maternal grandfather of Jean Toomer, known as an author of the Harlem Renaissance.

It was not until 1990 that another African American served as governor of any U.S. state. In 1990, Douglas Wilder of Virginia became the second African-American state governor (and the first to be elected to office). Deval Patrick of Massachusetts was elected governor in 2006 and took office in January 2007. David Paterson of New York became the fourth African-American governor on March 17, 2008, when he succeeded to office following the resignation of Eliot Spitzer.