Black History Spills Into March With Our (Soon-to-be) Four Governors
Now that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer is in talks with Lt. Governor David Paterson to transfer gubernatorial power to the legally blind, former Harlem state senator, we thought it was odd that the media kept saying that Paterson would be the fourth African American governor to serve.
We knew of Virginia's Douglas Wilder and Massachusetts' Deval Patrick, but who else was left?
Well, meet the first to serve with this distinctive title, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback. Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (May 10, 1837 – December 21, 1921) was the first African American to become governor of a U.S. state. He was also the first non-white (biracial) governor of Louisiana. Pinchback, a Republican, served as the governor of Louisiana for thirty-five 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."[1]
Pinchback was born in Macon, Georgia (Bibb County), to a white planter (William Pinchback) and his former slave, Eliza Stewart. Known as "Pinckney Benton Stewart," he was educated at the Gilmore High School in Cincinnati. After his father died in 1848, he left Cincinnati because he feared that his paternal relatives might try to force him into slavery. He worked as a hotel porter and barber in Terre Haute, Indiana.
In 1860, while in Indiana, Pinchback, 23, married then 16-year-old Nina Emily. They had two daughters and four sons.
During the Civil War, Pinchback traveled to Louisiana and became captain of the Union Army's Company A, 1st Louisiana Native Guards (later reformed as the 74th U. S. Colored Infantry Regiment).
After the war, he became active in the Republican Party and participated in Reconstruction state conventions. In 1868, Pinchback organized the Fourth Ward Republican Club in New Orleans. That same year, he was elected as a Louisiana state senator, where he became the state Senate president pro tempore. 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 incumbent Republican governor Henry Clay Warmoth, was impeached and convicted, removing him from office. Pinchback, as lieutenant governor, succeeded as governor on December 9.
Also in 1872, at a national convention of African-American politicians, Pinchbank 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.[2] Haralson supported the motion, but Pinchback opposed it because it would include Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, a lifelong anti-slavery fighter whom Pinchback felt African-Americans should laud.
After his brief governorship, Pinchback remained active in politics and public service. He was elected to both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, but both elections were contested, and his Democratic opponents were seated instead. Pinchback served on the Louisiana State Board of Education and was instrumental in establishing the predominantly black Southern University in New Orleans in 1880 (later relocated to Baton Rouge in 1914). He was a member of Southern University's board of trustees.
In 1882, Republican President Chester Alan Arthur named Pinchback as surveyor of customs in New Orleans. In 1885, he studied law at Straight University, (which was closed in 1934) in New Orleans. He was admitted to the bar in 1886, and later moved to New York City where he was a federal marshal, and then to Washington, D.C. where he practiced law.
Pinchback died in Washington in 1921 and was interred in Metairie Cemetery near New Orleans even though the cemetery at the time was segregated and deemed to be exclusively for whites.