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The Black massacres of the 1860’s- 1880’s, highlighted in our #VRABlackHistory 2025 Article “Past American Insurrections” and covered in more detail to the left of this text, were over voting. While many more massacres occurred after 1880’s, the extreme concentration of Black massacres during this time period were specifically targeted against Black men exerting their right to vote under 15th amendment.
Despite the horror that article showed, this article follows upon the previous two articles on the Reconstruction Congress of 1867 and the First National Conference of Colored Women of America in 1895 and continues to provide a contrast to the massacres of Black people who dared to exercise their right to vote from the 1860’s – 1900’s: that even when everything seems hopeless, progress still finds a way and will always find a way to rise as a phoenix.
“Facing overwhelming odds in the wake of the further disfranchisement of North Carolina blacks, he declined to run for re-election in 1900.” White was part of the 56th Congress of the United States and was the last African-American member of Congress since Reconstruction, and there wouldn’t be another African-American Congressperson until 28 years later in 1928. White would also be the last African-American Congressman “elected from North Carolina until the 1990s”.
White represents the last of the 22 African-American men who, since 1870, “had served reconstructed southern states in Congress.” While he was last; he certainly was not least, and it is our pleasure to lift up and honor a man who so earnestly loved the law, his country, and his race.
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