James Harris (North Carolina politician)

For the African-American Medal of Honor winner, see James H. Harris.

James Henry Harris (c. 1832–1891) was an American upholsterer and politician. Born into slavery, he was freed as a young adult and worked as a carpenter's apprentice and worker before he went to Oberlin College in Ohio. For a time, he lived in Chatham, Ontario, where he was a member of the Chatham Vigilance Committee that aimed to prevent blacks being transported out of Canada and sold as slaves in the United States.

During the American Civil War (1861–1865), he was commissioned to organize black troops in Indiana for the 28th United States Colored Infantry Regiment. After the war, he was an educator and politician in North Carolina.

Harris was Raleigh, North Carolina's first African American politician.[1] He became a political leader, helping to found the North Carolina Republican Party, serving as a Raleigh alderman, president of the State Equal Rights League, vice president of the Union League, and chairman of the 1866 Freedmen's Convention. He was elected as a delegate to the state's 1868 constitutional convention, as a member of the North Carolina House of Representatives (1868–1870, and 1883) and of the North Carolina Senate (1872–1874).

Early life

In 1830[1] or 1832, Harris was born into slavery, with both black and white heritage, in Granville County, North Carolina.[2] On August 3, 1840 he began an apprenticeship with Charles Allen to learn to be a carpenter. Later, he was a self-employed carpenter[2] or upholsterer in Raleigh, North Carolina.[3] He became free at 18 years of age.[1] A certificate of his freedom was issued by the Granville County Clerk's office in 1848.[4]

He left the state and attended Oberlin College in Ohio for two years.[2] He moved to Chatham, Ontario, in the 1850s and was a member of the Chatham Vigilance Committee,[5] which was established before the American Civil War by black abolitionists. Its objective was to prevent people from being kidnapped from Canada and returned or sold into slavery in the United States. Some of the members of the group were graduates of Oberlin College in Ohio.[6] He was an agent of the National Emigration Convention.[5] In 1862, he traveled to Sierra Leone Colony and Protectorate and the Colony of Liberia.[2] He supported the exploration of the Niger Valley by Martin Delany.[5] After falling ill, Harris returned to Oberlin. Discovering that his wife's family had relocated to Terre Haute, Indiana in his absence, he quickly moved there to join them.[7]

Civil War activity

After the outbreak of the American Civil War, Harris was commissioned in 1863 by Governor Morton as a recruiting officer to organize black troops in Indiana, including the 28th United States Colored Infantry Regiment.[2]

Career

Teaching

After the end of the war, Harris returned to Raleigh, North Carolina.[2] Having received a teaching certificate from the New England Freedmen's Aid Society,[1] he worked for them as a teacher in Raleigh beginning in June 1865.[2]

Politics

Harris started his political career in 1865. He was particularly focused on reforms for orphans, women, laborers, and the poor. He was known to be a good orator.[1] His political career started at the National Equal Rights Convention of 1865, when he was the event's vice-president.[2] In 1865, he attended the first Freedman's Convention in the South; Held in Raleigh, he was a representative for Wake County, North Carolina. A committee of white men elected him a state representative at the State Convention in 1865.[1] He chaired a committee of the convention which drafted a letter to the state's constitutional convention.[8] He attended the convention as a spectator.[9] He was chairman of North Carolina's second Freedmen's Convention held in Raleigh in October 1866.[10]

Harris helped found the North Carolina Republican Party in 1867.[3] He traveled to Washington D.C. in early 1867 to meet with Congressional Republicans and with President Andrew Johnson.[11] African American men obtained the right to vote by the Reconstruction Acts passed in 1867.[1]

Harris was made a deputy member of the Grand National Council of the Union League of America on January 13, 1867.[12] Harris convened a meeting of white and black members of the organization in Raleigh on March 26, 1867 to form the North Carolina Grand Council of the Union League.[13] Harris was among the first blacks in the United states participate in a major national political party convention when he attended the 1868 Republican National Convention.[14]

Harris was elected as a delegate at the January 14, 1868 North Carolina Constitutional Convention and represented a predominantly black constituency.[1][2] Historian Leonard Bernstein wrote, "Harris seems to have been acknowledged as the most prominent Negro delegate at the Convention".[15] He nominated Calvin J. Cowles to serve as the convention's president.[16] Harris was placed on the convention's Committee on a preamble and a Bill of Rights and the Committee on Suffrage and Eligibility to Hold Office.[17] He convinced the convention to create a committee to revise North Carolina's congressional districts.[18] He opposed allowing the convention to pass private legislation, feeling it should focus on completing a constitution.[19]

In 1868, it was reported that Harris was "the first negro regularly nominated to Congress in the United States," a nomination he turned down.[20] He attended the Republican National conventions in 1868, 1872, and 1876.[2] In 1868 Governor William Woods Holden appointed him as one of two black men to the Raleigh Board of Commissioners.[21]

Harris was one of 17 colored men elected to the North Carolina House of Representatives in 1868.[22] Historian Elizabeth Balanoff wrote that he was "clearly the leading spokesman for North Carolina Negroes" in the body.[7] The 1868 legislature sat in two sessions, the first from July to August 1868 and the second from November 1868 to April 1869. During both sessions, Harris chaired the House's Committee on Propositions and Grievances, served on the Committee on the Judiciary, and served on the Committee on Education.[23] During the 1869 session, he additionally served as a member of a committee to investigate the purchase of land for a new state penitentiary.[24]

In February 1869, Harris supported a bill which guaranteed that the testimony of colored persons before courts of law would be treated equally with the testimony of whites. Some other colored representatives believed that legislation of that nature was unnecessary due to provisions in the new constitution guaranteeing racial equality, but Harris believed it necessary that both the constitution and state laws explicitly guarantee racial equality. He later proposed a bill to ensure blacks would be selected for jury duty, but the measure was unsuccessful.[25] Harris also supported measures to assist married women facing neglect and abandonment by their husbands.[26]

In July 1868, Harris supported a resolution calling upon the federal government to supply troops for security in the state to dissuade political violence. Initially wary of the cost of a state force, by the following month he supported the creation of a new state militia.[27]

He was president of the National Convention of Colored Men in 1869.[2] The same year, he pressed for ratification of a new education bill after the state public school fund had been depleted.[1] He was a member of the North Carolina House of Representatives (1868–1870, and 1883) and of the North Carolina Senate (1872–1874).[2] He served as a Raleigh alderman,[2] president of the State Equal Rights League, and vice president of the Union League.

He lobbied for legislation for equal rights for blacks, by chairing a delegation that met with U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant and presented a memorial to him.[2] He was the National Black Convention's vice president in 1877.[2]

Harris lost two races for the United States House of Representatives, the first by a slim margin in 1870 to Sion H. Rogers.[28] Harris served as a member of the United States Electoral College in 1872,[2] voting for Ulysses S. Grant.

End of Reconstruction

By 1874, disfranchisement after the Reconstruction era was instituted by so-called redeemers and state laws passed to take away African Americans' rights that had been granted to them after the Civil War. "Red Shirt" Democrats used scare tactics to prevent African Americans from voting and the Republican party chose to have "lily white" tickets to make it more likely to win elections.[1]

Harris moved to Warren County in 1876.[1] In 1878, his place on the ballot opposing another African-American Republican, James E. O'Hara, contributed to the victory of white Democrat William H. Kitchin.[28][29]

Harris was a delegate to the Republican National Conventions of 1884, when he was a supporter of Chester A. Arthur's unsuccessful bid for renomination.[30] In the 1888 presidential election, he was elected as a delegate for James G. Blaine.[31] He accepted a position in President Benjamin Harrison's administration, working in the nation's capital.[32]

Oberlin and other community development

Harris developed what became known as Oberlin, a Raleigh-area community where former slaves were able to own their first homes.[1] Named for Oberlin College, is it considered one of Harris' significant accomplishments. The community is located along Clark Avenue, Wade Avenue, and Oberlin Road.[2]

In 1868, a Raleigh branch of the Freedman's Saving and Trust Company was established and Harris was made one of its directors.[33] In 1869, Harris and J. Brinton Smith founded the Raleigh Cooperative Land and Building Association, of which Harris was made president. The association operated for 10 years, issuing loans to blacks for the development of real estate.[34]

He helped found the Negro branch of the North Carolina Institute for the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind, which was the first school for blind African-Americans in the nation.[1] He was a member of the North Carolina Agricultural Society for his lifetime.[2]

North Carolina Republican

Harris returned to Raleigh in 1880 and started a newspaper, the North Carolina Republican.[1] which was produced on "behalf of the Republican party and the advancement of the negro."[2]

Personal life

He married Bettie Miller, with whom they had two children,[2] Florence (died in 1876[1] or 1889) and David Henry Harris (died 1935).[2] Harris died in Washington, D.C., on May 31, 1891, suddenly of heart disease.[32] A funeral was held for him in Raleigh on June 2[35] and he was buried in the city's Mount Hope Cemetery.[2]

After his death, he was remembered as a "gifted politician and a talented orator" by Republican and Democratic newspapers.[2] His records are held at the Records Relating to African Americans section of the State Archives of North Carolina in Raleigh, North Carolina.[36]

Legacy

A historical marker on Person Street at Davie Street in Raleigh states: "James H. Harris 1832-1891. Black legislator & orator; member 1868 convention; a founder of Republican Party & Union League in N.C. Home was 1 block W."[4] According to journalist Kate Pattison: "It is possible that Harris' legacy was snuffed out by the Reconstruction backlash, while former slaves continued to lose access to education, voting, and hope."[1]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Pattison, Kate (January 11, 2009). "Raleigh's first black politician | Raleigh Public Record". Archived from the original on 2012-09-07. Retrieved 2021-04-12.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Alexander, Roberta Sue (1988). "Harris, James Henry". NCPedia. North Carolina Government & Heritage Library. Retrieved 2021-04-12.
  3. ^ a b "J. Henry Harris, Esq. of North Carolina". The Weekly Standard. Vol. XXXIII, no. 17. April 24, 1867. p. 1.
  4. ^ a b "James H. Harris 1832-1891 (H-86)". North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. December 22, 2023. Retrieved June 11, 2025.
  5. ^ a b c Lapsansky-Werner, Emma J.; Bacon, Margaret Hope (2010). Back to Africa: Benjamin Coates and the Colonization Movement in America, 1848-1880. Penn State Press. p. 111. ISBN 978-0-271-04571-9.
  6. ^ "Reframing Resistance: 1858". Huron Research. 2017-11-30. Retrieved 2021-04-11.
  7. ^ a b Balanoff 1972, p. 27.
  8. ^ Alexander 1985, p. 26.
  9. ^ Beckel 2010, p. 46.
  10. ^ Beckel 2010, pp. 47–48.
  11. ^ Beckel 2010, p. 49.
  12. ^ Beckel 2010, p. 51.
  13. ^ Beckel 2010, p. 50.
  14. ^ "Political firsts: Breakthroughs by long line of Black pioneers changed the color of American politics". Ebony. Vol. XXXIX, no. 10. August 1981. pp. 114, 116, 118, 120.
  15. ^ Bernstein 1949, p. 392.
  16. ^ Bernstein 1949, p. 394.
  17. ^ Bernstein 1949, p. 395.
  18. ^ Bernstein 1949, p. 396.
  19. ^ Bernstein 1949, p. 400.
  20. ^ Chicago Tribune, Thursday, March 12, 1868, page 1.
  21. ^ Rabinowitz 1994, p. 215.
  22. ^ Balanoff 1972, p. 23.
  23. ^ Balanoff 1972, p. 31.
  24. ^ Balanoff 1972, pp. 37–38.
  25. ^ Balanoff 1972, p. 41.
  26. ^ Balanoff 1972, pp. 43–44.
  27. ^ Balanoff 1972, p. 44.
  28. ^ a b "NC District 02 Race". Our Campaigns. November 5, 1878.
  29. ^ Justesen, Benjamin R. (2009). ""The Class of '83": Black Watershed in the North Carolina General Assembly". The North Carolina Historical Review. 86 (3): 282–308. JSTOR 23523861.
  30. ^ "North Carolina Delegates, Working the Convention in Favor of Arthur" (PDF). New York Times. May 2, 1884.
  31. ^ "A Long Contest for Delegates: Exciting Debate in the North Carolina Republican Convention" (PDF). New York Times. May 25, 1888.
  32. ^ a b "Funeral of James H. Harris". The Asheville Weekly Citizen. 1891-06-11. p. 7. Retrieved 2021-04-12.
  33. ^ Little 2020, p. 439.
  34. ^ Little 2020, p. 438.
  35. ^ "The Funeral of James H. Harris". The News & Observer. Vol. XXX, no. 119. June 3, 1891. p. 4.
  36. ^ "Archives Information Circular" (PDF). Department of Cultural Resources, Office of Archives and History, State of North Carolina. 2002. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-04-19.

Works cited

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