Disagreement about disenfranchised white voters played out in newspapers in 1869 | Opinion
I am amazed by the activities of Black civic leaders and politicians of the 1860s. Slavery ended in Tennessee Feb. 22, 1865, and 2,452 people in Knox County voted to abolish it. Since supporters of the Confederacy had been disenfranchised, there were only three votes against abolishment. The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery in the United States was ratified Dec. 18, 1865.
Immediately after emancipation questions arose about the rights of the newly freed slaves. The Knoxville Whig of Feb. 6, 1867, reported, "The question of the right of the colored citizens to vote is no longer open to discussion. Those who have most vehemently opposed this just measure have abandoned their opposition to its justice and humanity, and arrayed themselves upon technical objections.
"They talk no more of the ignorance of the colored people and their incapacity to properly and discretely exercise the elective franchise, but frankly admit that their plundered rights must sooner or later be restored, and their manhood recognized. Not one of the talented opponents of the Bill providing for the enfranchisement of the colored men of Tennessee have dared oppose it on its merits."
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After the passage of the bill, the Whig on Feb. 13, 1867, said, "God Bless and protect the loyal members of the Tennessee House of Representatives. They passed the Bill enfranchising all loyal men in the state regardless of color as an act of justice by which the black man has been restored to the rights of which he was robbed in 1834." A year later Black men were given the right to hold elective office and sit on juries.
On Jan. 2, 1869, two Black men, Isaac Gammon and David Brown, were elected to the Knoxville Board of Aldermen. The newspapers reported their statements and activities at each meeting.
A very interesting exchange began when a Black barber, Gus Phinizy, wrote a letter to the Daily Press on June 19, 1869, criticizing a statement from Brown: "In a meeting of colored people last night at Mt. Zion Church you took occasion to refer to myself and some remarks I had seen proper to make from the veranda of the Lamar House. On that occasion I believed and still believe to be the truth. It would be not only ingratitude, but the worst policy we could pursue to aid in keeping the white people of Tennessee from the ballot box.
"It is not honest for the colored man in Tennessee to use the liberty that has been given him to oppress and disenfranchise the white people who pay the taxes by which our state government is supported. Mr. Alderman Brown, you spoke very derisively of me and my associates. You called us 'skinned head barbers'. Our business is at least respectable, and let me tell you, that it brings us in contact with the gentlemen of this community. Two-thirds of the money you get from your work as a shoemaker is made from the very men you wish to keep in political slavery."
Brown responded in the June 30, 1869, Whig with as much vitriol as he could muster: "I noticed an article in the Press and Herald signed Gus Phinizy, barber, addressed to me. My remarks were made at a meeting of colored people and Gus was there. He could have answered me then. He had to wait until some person, probably the Press and Herald man, supplied brains to the brainless instrument, and write something over his signature. No one will ever think him capable of understanding the letter, much less that he could write it."
The Whig then took Brown to task and called him "The mouth-piece of designing white men who used him to say what they would be ashamed to publish over their own signature." One of Knoxville's first Black elected officials had learned the hard way.
Robert J. Booker is a freelance writer and former executive director of the Beck Cultural Exchange Center. He may be reached at 865-546-1576.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Opinion: 1869 quarrel on disenfranchised voters played out in papers
