Today in Black History: March 8th, 1876

The United States Government refused to seat P. B. S. Pinchback, elected Senator from Louisiana. He was the first non-white and first person of African American descent to become governor of a U.S. state. A Republican, he served as the 24th Governor of Louisiana for 35 days, from December 9, 1872, to January 13, 1873.
"In 1863, during the Civil War, Pinchback traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana, and recruited African-American volunteers for the Union Army. He became captain of Company A, 1st Louisiana Native Guards (later reformed as the 73rd U. S. Colored Infantry Regiment). He resigned his commission because of racial prejudice against black officers.
After the war, Pinchback returned to New Orleans and became active in the Republican Party, participating in Reconstruction state conventions. In 1868, he organized the Fourth Ward Republican Club in New Orleans. That same year, he was elected as a State Senator, where he became senate president pro tempore of a Legislature that included 42 representatives of African American descent (half of the chamber, and seven of 36 seats in the Senate). In 1871 he became acting lieutenant governor upon the death of Oscar Dunn, the first elected African-American lieutenant governor of a U.S. state.
In 1872, the incumbent Republican governor Henry Clay Warmoth, suffered impeachment charges near the end of his term. State law required that Warmoth step aside until convicted or cleared of the charges. Pinchback, as lieutenant governor, succeeded as governor on December 9 and served for 35 days until the end of Warmoth's term. Warmoth was not convicted and the charges were eventually dropped.
Pinchback became the recipient of vicious hate mail from across the country as well as more local threats on his own life.
Also in 1872, at a national convention of African-American politicians, Pinchback had a public disagreement with Jeremiah Haralson of Alabama. James T. Rapier (also of Alabama) submitted a motion that the convention condemn all Republicans who had opposed President Grant in that year's election.[3] Haralson supported the motion, but Pinchback opposed it because it would include Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, a lifelong anti-slavery fighter whom Pinchback believed African-Americans should laud.

After his brief governorship, Pinchback remained active in politics and public service. In the elections of 1874 and 1876, Pinchback was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and then the U.S. Senate respectively, another pioneering accomplishment as the state's first African American representative to Washington. Both elections were contested, and his Democratic opponents were seated instead. It was the beginning of a reversal of the political gains African Americans had achieved since the war's end.
Pinchback served on the Louisiana State Board of Education and was instrumental in establishing Southern University, a historically black college, in New Orleans in 1880. It relocated to Baton Rouge in 1914.[4] He was a member of Southern University's Board of Trustees (later redesignated the Board of Supervisors).
In 1882, Republican President Chester Arthur appointed Pinchback as Surveyor of Customs in New Orleans. In 1885, he studied law at Straight University, which later became Dillard University, in New Orleans. He was admitted to the Louisiana bar in 1886. He was part of the Comité des Citoyens (Citizens' Committee) which in 1892 staged the New Orleans civil-rights actions of Homer Plessy which led to the U.S. Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson (legalizing racial segregation). Later Pinchback moved to New York City and worked as a Marshal. Finally he moved to Washington, D.C., where he practiced law.
Pinchback died in Washington in 1921 and is interred in Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans. His service as governor helped him to be interred there although the cemetery was segregated and reserved for whites."

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.B.S._Pinchback