During the tumultuous years after the Civil War, as Louisiana struggled to recover and its social order was reshuffled, three Black men rose to power. Each was lieutenant governor during this period, and one became governor briefly before federal control of the former Confederate states ended and the era of Jim Crow began.
Sharon Cannon of New Orleans wrote to ask how Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback, Caesar Carpentier Antoine and Oscar James Dunn are honored.
What they achieved was unprecedented, but their collective fame was brief, as was their time in the public memory. However, in recent years, advocates for them have worked to make sure that they are remembered.
Here are their stories.
GOV. P.B.S. PINCHBACK
Born in Macon, Georgia, in May 1837, Pinchback was an officer in the Union Army during the Civil War. He came to New Orleans during that conflict to raise troops, and he stayed after the war to become active in Republican politics. He also founded The Louisianian, a biweekly newspaper, that was published from 1870 to 1882, and was director of New Orleans’ public schools.
He was elected to the state Senate in 1868 and became its president pro tempore. He became acting lieutenant governor after Oscar Dunn died and he became acting governor when Gov. Henry Clay Warmoth was forced to step aside when he was impeached. Pinchback took the oath of office on Dec. 9, 1872, becoming the first governor of color in the United States. He served for 36 days, until the end of Warmoth’s term. Warmoth was not convicted, and the charges eventually were dropped.
Back then, state legislators elected senators. Pinchback won a Senate seat in 1872 but was never seated. (This practice changed with the adoption of a constitutional amendment in 1913 calling for direct election of senators.)
He remained active, serving as a delegate to the 1879 Constitutional Convention and working with two other men to establish Southern University. Originally in New Orleans, it relocated to Baton Rouge in 1914. Pinchback was collector of customs in New Orleans and earned a law degree at Straight University, which was merged in 1930 with New Orleans University to form Dillard University.
Pinchback died in 1921 after moving to Washington, D.C., and was buried in Metairie Cemetery.
Even in death, Pinchback set another precedent: He was the first Black person buried there.
LT. GOV. C.C. ANTOINE
Born in New Orleans in 1836 to a family of free people of color, Antoine was a barber until Union forces captured New Orleans, Eric J. Brock wrote in 64 Parishes magazine. He raised a company of Black soldiers who fought in minor battles.
After the war, he became editor of The Black Republican, a short-lived newspaper that, Brock wrote, was aimed at a Black and mixed-race audience.
Because postwar New Orleans was chaotic, Antoine moved his family to Shreveport, where he opened a grocery business. In 1868, he was elected to the state Senate, and he was elected lieutenant governor four years later.
During his time in Baton Rouge, he was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and the legislation he sponsored included bills to incorporate Shreveport as a city and establish its first charity hospital.
He ran for re-election in 1876 and would have won a second term, but the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Gen. Francis T. Nicholls, dismissed the results of the election, seized the gubernatorial office by force and ousted the GOP regime.
Meanwhile, the presidential election that year was hotly disputed. The Compromise of 1877 settled it by letting Rutherford B. Hayes, a Republican, be certified as president in return for the withdrawal of federal forces from Confederate states, signaling the end of Reconstruction and the restoration of White supremacy.
Antoine died in 1921 in Shreveport and is buried in the New Bethlehem Baptist Church Cemetery. He was 85. A Shreveport park bearing his name was established in 1984, and a tombstone at his gravesite was dedicated in 1999. His home was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1999, but fire destroyed it in May this year.
LT. GOV. OSCAR J. DUNN
Born in 1826 in New Orleans, Dunn apprenticed as a plasterer but never really liked his job, said Brian K. Mitchell, a historian who describes himself as “a distant relative.”
After the Civil War, Dunn saw an opportunity to escape: Emancipated Black men were struggling with the challenges of freedom, Mitchell said, so Dunn negotiated work contracts for them and helped them register to vote.
Dunn, a Republican, became the country’s first lieutenant governor of color when he was elected in 1868.
“He’s an example of what Reconstruction was really like,” said Mitchell, the co-author of “Monumental: Oscar Dunn and the Radical Fight in Reconstruction Louisiana.” He is director of research at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Illinois.
“We have a false narrative of what was written after the Civil War – the Lost Cause narrative, which said Black people were ill-equipped to govern — and that just wasn’t the case,” Mitchell said. “Reconstruction hasn’t been given a fair shake. What made Dunn so special was that he navigated those waters. He was able to create allies on all sides and was respected by all sides.”
Dunn died mysteriously in November 1871. Some say he was poisoned at a public dinner he attended, Mitchell said, and others said he might have killed himself before Pinchback, a political rival, could release damaging information about his family.
Shortly after his death, Gov. William Pitt Kellogg signed a bill appropriating $10,000 (the equivalent of about $236,000 today) to erect a monument to Dunn, but it never was made. Earlier this year, Gov. John Bel Edwards signed a bill authorizing $75,000 for a statue or bust of Dunn in the Capitol’s Memorial Hall.
In July 2021, the New Orleans City Council gave the name Oscar Dunn Park to the square near Jackson Square formerly known as Washington Artillery Park, which was named after a Confederate military unit.
A New Orleans charter school bearing Dunn’s name opened in 2019, but declining enrollment forced it to close at the end of the 2021-22 academic year.
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