P.B.S. Pinchback
Of the roughly 1,500 Black men who took office during Reconstruction, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback stood out as a trailblazer, becoming the first African-American to serve as governor of a state. The son of a Mississippi white planter and a freed slave, P.B.S. Pinchback traveled during the Civil War from the free state of Ohio to the Union-occupied New Orleans, where he organized several companies for the 1st Louisiana Native Guard. Commissioned a captain, Pinchback was one of the few African Americans to attain officer status in the Union Army. After the war, he became active in the Louisiana Republican Party, ascending to Lieutenant Governor and then Governor following the impeachment of Henry Clay Warmouth. During his short stint in office from December 9, 1872 to January 13, 1873, ten acts of the state legislature became law. Pinchback remained influential in Louisiana politics until the 1880s but then moved to Washington, D.C., as the civil rights gains were rolled back. Pinchback’s life reminds us of the promises and hopes of an interracial democracy at the outset of Reconstruction but ultimately the failure of a nation to achieve political and social equality.