Pinckney benton stewart pinchback biography examples
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The Carpetbagger
His name seems pure invention —Pinckney B. S. Pinchback. It sounds so much like pinchbeck , dictionary-defined as “counterfeit or spurious,” that one suspects a joke by political enemies. But the name was genuine, and so was the man, and so was the record. Louisiana voters elected him to important public office at least five times, and for thirty-five days in December of and January of he was the governor of Louisiana. And that was a landmark—the highest official position in a state ever achieved by an American black man.
“Black,” that is, only in the language that lumps all those with any African blood under one color label. Actually Pinchback was a mulatto—”not darker than an Arab, less so than the Kanaka,” according to one reporter, with features “just perceptibly African.” He had, said another observer, a “comely figure” and was a “very Othello in appearance, with … good teeth, full jet-black beard and moustache,” dark eyes, small hands and feet, and a sty
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Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback was born on May 10, to parents William Pinchback, a successful Virginia planter, and Eliza Stewart, his former slave. The younger Pinchback was born in Macon, Georgia during the family’s move from Virginia to their new home in Holmes County, Mississippi. In Mississippi, young Pinchback grew up in comfortable surroundings on a large plantation. At the age of nine, he and his older brother, Napoleon, were sent by his parents to Ohio to receive a formal education at Cincinnati’s Gilmore School. Pinchback’s education was cut short, however, when he returned to Mississippi in because his father had become seriously ill. When his father died shortly after his return, his mother fled to Cincinnati with her children for fear of being re-enslaved in Mississippi. Shortly thereafter, Napoleon became mentally ill, leaving 12 year old Pinckney as sole-provider for his mother and four siblings.
Pinchback found work as a cabin boy on a canal boat and worked h
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by Leslie D. Burke, MLIS (editorial support from Dr. Fari Nzinga andDr. Regina Stevens-Truss)
The Kalamazoo College Library subscribes to Accessible Archives, where in fall , was published a vit paper on Pinckney Benton Stewart (P.B.S.) Pinchback – the first Black Governor of the state of Louisiana!
Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (known bygd his contemporaries as P.B.S. Pinchback) was at the helm as the governor of the state of Louisiana &#; for only 30 days (from månad 9, to January 13, ). During the contentious political struggles of the Reconstruction, P.B.S. Pinchback and the Republican party were embroiled in the debate around Negro rights, once the institution of slavery had been abolished through armed struggle. During that time period, Republicans were typically the anti-slavery party with the Democrats generally on the other side, and political corruption equally divided.
P.B.S. Pinchback was ganska a character by all accounts, having both successes and f