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(b. April 3, 1838, Kaskaskia, Ill., U.S.–d. Oct. 8, 1893, Washington, D.C.), first black elected to the U.S. Congress, who was denied his seat by that body.
During the Civil War (1861-65) he served as a clerk in the U.S. Department of the Interior. In 1865 he moved to New Orleans, where he became active in the Republican Party, serving as inspector of customs and later as a commissioner of streets. He also published a newspaper,
The Free South, later named The Radical Standard. Elected to Congress from Louisiana in 1868 to fill an unexpired term, Menard failed to overcome an election challenge by the loser, and Congress refused to seat either man. In 1871 he moved to Florida, where he was again active in the Republican Party and published the Island City News in Jacksonville.
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Ralph David Abernathy Sr. (March 11, 1926 – April 17, 1990) was an American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was ordained in the Baptist tradition in 1948. As a leader of the civil rights movement, he was a close friend and mentor of Martin Luther King Jr. He collaborated with King and E. D. Nixon to create the Montgomery Improvement Association, which led to the Montgomery bus boycott and co-created and was an executive board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He became president of the SCLC following the assassination of King in 1968; he led the Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, D.C., as well as other marches and demonstrations for disenfranchised Americans. He also served as an advisory committee member of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE).
In 1971, Abernathy addressed the United Nations speaking about world peace. He also assisted in brokering a deal between the FBI and American Indian Movement protestors during the Wounded Knee incident of 1973. He retired from his position as president of the SCLC in 1977 and became president emeritus. Later that year he unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. House of Representatives for the 5th district of Georgia. He later founded the Foundation for Economic Enterprises Development, and he testified before the U.S. Congress in support of extending the Voting Rights Act in 1982.
In 1989, Abernathy wrote And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, a controversial autobiography about his and King’s involvement in the civil rights movement. Abernathy eventually became less active in politics and returned to his work as a minister. He died of heart disease on April 17, 1990. His tombstone is engraved with the words “I tried”.
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(b. June 21, 1832, Georgetown, S.C., U.S.–d. Aug. 2, 1887, Georgetown), former American slave, the first black to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives (1870-79).
The son of a barber who bought the family’s freedom, Rainey received some private schooling and took up his father’s trade in Charleston, S.C. During the American Civil War he was forced to work on the fortifications in Charleston harbour but managed to escape to the West Indies, where he remained until the end of the war (1865). Upon his return to South Carolina, he was a delegate to the state constitutional convention (1868) and served briefly in the state Senate before his election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1870.
He was reelected four times, the longest tenure in the House of any black during the Reconstruction era. While in office he dedicated himself to the passage of civil-rights legislation, pressing the interests not only of blacks but of other minorities such as the Indians and the Chinese in California. Upon leaving the House in 1879, he was appointed U.S. internal revenue agent of South Carolina. He resigned that post in 1881 to engage in banking and brokerage enterprises in Washington, D.C.
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Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (1966?68), b. Washington, D.C. He was successively adviser to the Secretary of the Interior (1933?37), special assistant with the Housing Authority (1937?40), and an administrative assistant with the National Defense Advisory Commission (1940). During World War II he held several offices concerned with mobilizing black labor. After holding various teaching assignments and working with the John Hay Whitney Foundation, Weaver was (1955?59) New York state rent commissioner. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed him to the post of administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency. In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him head of the newly created Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD); he was the first black to hold a cabinet post. After leaving HUD he was (1969?70) president of Bernard M. Baruch College and professor of Urban Affairs at Hunter College (1970?78). His works include Negro Labor: A National Problem (1946), The Negro Ghetto (1948), The Urban Complex: Human Values in Urban Life (1964), and Dilemmas of Urban America (1965).
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(b. March 15, 1809, Petersburg, Va., U.S.–d. Feb. 24, 1876, Monrovia, Liberia), American-born, first president of Liberia (1848-56).
A native of Virginia, Roberts was the son of free “blacks” whose heritage was more than seven-eighths white. At the age of 20 he immigrated to Liberia with his mother and younger brothers, became a merchant, and also became an unofficial aide to the white governor of the colony, Thomas H. Buchanan, a member of the American Colonization Society, which sought the return of American freedmen to Africa. On Buchanan’s death in 1842, Roberts was appointed the first black governor of the colony.
In efforts to establish the political and economic stability of the colony, Roberts and other colonists sought treaties with native tribes and recognition from foreign powers. In 1847 they proclaimed the new republic of Liberia; Roberts was elected the first president. In 1849, during a visit to England, he secured British recognition of Liberia as a sovereign nation; and in 1852, in another trip to continental Europe, he acquired recognition from other powers.
