History Minute: Mifflin Gibbs

Oftentimes, people get out of life what they put into it. For Mifflin Gibbs, that meant traveling the world looking for new opportunities and working hard to push himself ahead. While some details of his life have been lost, it is clear that Gibbs lived a remarkable life of adventure and public service.

Mifflin Wistar Gibbs was born a free man in 1823 in Philadelphia. His father was a respected minister. Tragically, his father died in 1831, leaving behind a wife and five children, and little money. At the age of eight, Gibbs went to work – first as a carriage driver for a local doctor and later apprenticing himself to a carpenter.

Gibbs was an ambitious young man with a sharp mind. Though he had little formal education, at the age of 16 he joined a prominent African American literary club known as the Philadelphia Library Co. There he was inspired by the city’s leading abolitionists to join the crusade to end slavery. He became active in the Underground Railroad, bringing slaves to freedom across the Maryland and Delaware border into free Pennsylvania. In 1849, abolitionist Frederick Douglass, easily one of the most famous men in the country at the time, invited Gibbs to join him on his speaking tour.

Shortly afterward, Gibbs joined the throngs of people headed to California during the Gold Rush. After the long journey across the continent, he soon started a dry goods business in San Francisco, which became very successful. In 1855, he started a newspaper, The Mirror of the Times, which was the first newspaper owned by an African American west of the Mississippi River.

Frustrated by the rising levels of racism in California, Gibbs and a group of African American prospectors left for Canada in 1858. They ultimately settled in Victoria on Vancouver Island. Canada at that time was still a part of the British Empire, and though Britain had introduced slavery to the American colonies in the years before independence, Britain had already moved on to abolish slavery.

Gibbs and his group found success in Canada, and Gibbs himself eventually became a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. He invested heavily in a new dry goods business and a successful coal mine in the area. In 1866, he was elected to the Victoria city council, becoming one of the first African Americans elected to any office in Canada.

Gibbs returned to the United States in 1870, encouraged by the post-Civil War political climate, briefly working at Oberlin College in Ohio before moving to South Carolina. There, he met Arkansas Legislator William H. Gray, who convinced him to move to Arkansas.

In 1871, Gibbs arrived in Little Rock. He soon became a popular figure in the city and rose quickly in city politics. Gibbs passed the bar exam the next year and formed his own law firm. Little Rock voters elected him as a municipal judge in 1873, making Gibbs one of the first African Americans elected as a judge in the United States. He stepped down from the position in 1875 and resumed his law practice and interest in investing in local real estate and businesses.

He received several presidential appointments in the ensuing years, including director of the federal lands office in Little Rock and as a public receiver. In 1897, President William McKinley appointed Gibbs as United States Consul to Madagascar, just as the African island kingdom was making the difficult transition to becoming a French colony. Gibbs served in this position for four years.

In 1901, he returned to Arkansas, and at the age of 78 embarked on yet another adventure as he served as president of Capital City Savings Bank, a bank designed to serve the African American community. He died quietly at his home in Little Rock in 1915 at the age of 92.

Kenneth Bridges, Ph.D., is a professor of history at South Arkansas Community College in El Dorado.

This article originally appeared on Fort Smith Times Record: History Minute: Mifflin Gibbs