Politics
Following increased pressure from Southern politicians, Congress passed a revised Fugitive Slave Act in 1850.
Part of Henry Clay’s famed Compromise of 1850—a group of bills that helped quiet early calls for Southern secession—this new law forcibly compelled citizens to assist in the capture of runaways. It also denied enslaved people the right to a jury trial and increased the penalty for interfering with the rendition process to $1,000 and six months in jail.
In order to ensure the statute was enforced, the 1850 law also placed control of individual cases in the hands of federal commissioners. These agents were paid more for returning a suspected runaway than for freeing them, leading many to argue the law was biased in favor of Southern slaveholders.
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was met with even more impassioned criticism and resistance than the earlier measure. States like Vermont and Wisconsin passed new measures intended to bypass and even nullify the law, and abolitionists redoubled their efforts to assist runaways.
The Underground Railroad reached its peak in the 1850s, with many enslaved people fleeing to Canada to escape U.S. jurisdiction.
Resistance also occasionally boiled over into riots and revolts. In 1851 a mob of antislavery activists rushed a Boston courthouse and forcibly liberated an escapee named Shadrach Minkins from federal custody. Similar rescues were later made in New York, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Politics
In 1950, Elizabeth Simpson Drewry became the first African- American woman elected to the West Virginia Legislature. She was born in Motley, Virginia, on September 22, 1893. She moved to McDowell County, West Virginia, as a small child and had a daughter at the age of fourteen. Her husband was Bluefield professor William H. Drewry, who died in Chicago in 1951.
Elizabeth Drewry began teaching in the black schools of coal camps along Elkhorn Creek in 1910, and later taught in the McDowell County black public school system. Drewry received her education at Bluefield Colored Institute, Wilberforce University, and the University of Cincinnati, and received a degree from Bluefield State College in 1933.
She first entered politics as a Republican precinct poll worker in 1921. In 1936, Drewry switched her party affiliation to Democrat and became involved in the state Federation of Teachers. She took an interest in local organizations such as the American Red Cross and the McDowell County Public Library. Drewry served on the Northfork Town Council and rose to the position of associate chairperson of the powerful McDowell County Democratic Executive Committee.
In 1948, she ran for the House of Delegates for the first time, but was defeated in the primary election by Harry Pauley of Iaeger. Five Democrats and five Republicans from McDowell County were elected in the primary to run in the general election. Since McDowell County was overwhelmingly Democratic, it virtually assured the five Democratic nominees of winning. Drewry was announced as the winner of the fifth spot on the Democratic ticket in the initial vote count, but Pauley protested the result. In a recount, 64 disputed ballots were all given to Pauley and he defeated Drewry by 32 votes.
In 1950, Drewry ran again and won the fifth spot on the Democratic ticket. In the general election, she received nearly 18,000 votes, becoming the first African-American woman elected to the legislature. In 1927, Minnie Buckingham Harper was appointed to succeed her late husband in the West Virginia Legislature, becoming the first black woman in the nation to serve in a state legislature. However, Harper was never elected.
During her thirteen years in the legislature, Drewry was a leading advocate for education and labor. She chaired both the Military Affairs and Health committees and served on the Judiciary, Education, Labor and Industry, Counties, Districts and Municipalities, Humane Institutions, and Mining committees. She introduced legislation in 1955 allowing women to serve on juries. West Virginia was the last state to eliminate this form of discrimination. In 1956, Ebony magazine honored Drewry as one of the ten outstanding black women in government. She retired due to poor health in 1964, having served longer in the legislature than any other McDowell Countian. Drewry died in Welch on September 24, 1979, at the age of eighty-five.
Politics
(UNIA), primarily in the United States, organization founded by Marcus Garvey (q.v.), dedicated to racial pride, economic self-sufficiency, and the formation of an independent black nation in Africa. Though Garvey had founded the UNIA in Jamaica in 1914, its main influence was felt in the principal urban black neighbourhoods of the U.S. North after his arrival in Harlem, in New York City, in 1916.
Garvey had a strong appeal to poor blacks in urban ghettos, but most black leaders in the U.S. criticized him as an imposter, particularly after he announced, in New York, the founding of the Empire of Africa, with himself as provisional president. In turn, Garvey denounced the NAACP and many black leaders, asserting that they sought only assimilation into white society. Garvey’s leadership was cut short in 1923 when he was indicted and convicted of fraud in his handling of funds raised to establish a black steamship line. In 1927, President Calvin Coolidge pardoned Garvey but ordered him deported as an undesirable alien.
The UNIA never revived. Although the organization did not transport a single person to Africa, its influence reached multitudes on both sides of the Atlantic, and it proved to be a forerunner of black nationalism, which emerged in the U.S. after World War II.
Politics
1900-1989
C. L. Dellums made significant social contributions as a pioneer in the union movement and as a key officer in the California chapter of the NAACP. As a young man, Dellums took a job as a Pullman porter and
soon afterward began speaking out for his rights and those of his fellow portersmuch to the dismay of the Pullman Company.
He was fired for his union activity in 1927. Undaunted, Dellums organized a union for porters on the West Coast. After meeting A. Philip Randolph, Dellums joined the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and was elected its national vice president.
In 1940, Dellums and other civil rights leaders organized what would have been the first march on Washingtonbut the march never occurred. The impetus for the march ended when President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the defense industry to hire minority workers.
Politics
Robert Seale was born on Oct. 22, 1936, in Dallas, Texas. He was an African-American political activist and co-founder, along with Huey Newton, of the Black Panther Party. He would eventually become the national chairman of the organization. Seale was one of a generation of young African-American radicals who broke away from the traditionally nonviolent Civil Rights Movement to preach a doctrine of militant black empowerment. Following the dismissal of murder charges against him in 1971, Seale somewhat moderated his more militant views and devoted his time to effecting change from within the system.
Seale grew up in Dallas and in California. Following service in the U.S. Air Force, he entered Merritt College, in Oakland, Calif. During his time at Merrit, his political views took root in 1962, when he first heard Malcolm X speak. Seale helped found the Black Panthers in 1966. Noted for their aggressive views, they also ran medical clinics and served free breakfasts to school children, among other programs.
In 1969 Seale was indicted in Chicago for conspiracy to incite riots during the Democratic national convention the previous year. The court refused to allow him to have his choice of lawyer. When Seale repeatedly rose to insist that he was being denied his constitutional right to counsel, the judge ordered him bound and gagged. He was convicted of 16 counts of contempt and sentenced to four years in prison. In 1970-71 he and a co-defendant were tried for the 1969 murder of a Black Panther suspected of being a police informer. The six-month-long trial ended with a hung jury.
Following his release from prison, Seale renounced violence as a means to an end and announced his intention to work within the political process. He ran for mayor of Oakland in 1973, finishing second. As the Black Panther Party faded from public view, Seale took on a quieter role, working to improve social services in black neighborhoods and to improve the environment. Seale’s writings include such diverse works as Seize the Time (1970), a history of the Black Panther movement and Barbeque’n with Bobby (1988), a cookbook.
Politics
b. 1926
Born in Cedros, Trinidad, Mervyn Dymally emigrated to the United States in 1946 to study at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. He earned a bachelor of arts degree in education from California State University in 1954 and began teaching school in Los Angeles.
Subsequently, he began a political career and became the first black elected to the California senate, the only black to serve as lieutenant governor of the state (1975), and the first foreign-born black to serve in Congress (1980). Dymally defeated four other candidates to win the primary in California’s Thirty-First Congressional District.
From 1987 to 1989, he was chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. Today, Dymally heads an international consulting firm in Los Angeles.
