Thomas E. Miller
Thomas Ezekiel Miller | |
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William Elliot | |
Personal details | |
Born | June 17, 1849 Ferrebeeville, Educator, attorney |
Thomas Ezekiel Miller (June 17, 1849 – April 8, 1938) was an American educator, lawyer and politician. After being elected as a state legislator in
Miller was a prominent leader in the struggle for
Early life and education
Miller was born in
The boy's European appearance long prompted speculation about his paternity. In 1851, his family moved to
Miller returned to South Carolina, where he was appointed as a school commissioner of Beaufort County that same year. He studied law at the South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina), where black students were admitted for the first time under the Republican state legislature, and graduated in 1875. He was admitted to the bar that year. (After Democrats regained control of the state legislature in 1876-1877, they forced black students out of the flagship college.)[3]
Marriage and family
He married Anna Hume, and they had nine children together.
Political career
Miller was elected as a Republican to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1874, serving three terms until 1880. He was elected to the South Carolina Senate in 1880, serving one term until 1882. He was nominated for lieutenant governor but did not enter the race. He struggled his entire life to find acceptance in the black and white communities. African-American political rivals dismissed him as a white imposter attempting to take advantage of the post–Civil War black electorate. Yet Miller, who embraced the black heritage nurtured by his adoptive parents, was also ostracized by white colleagues.[4]
Despite the issues, he was elected chairman of the state Republican Party in 1884.[4]
In 1888, Miller ran for
As African-American candidates competed in "black" districts, men's ancestry became part of the political fodder; tensions became heightened between mulattoes like Miller and darker-skinned politicians such as George W. Murray. Miller, Robert Smalls (also a mulatto) and Murray competed for the Republican nomination in the 7th "shoestring district" during the 1890s. Murray took it in 1892.[7] Miller was re-elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1894.
He was also a delegate to the
The new constitution was one of a number passed in southern states at the turn of the century that were designed to effectively
Miller did gain the support of Tillman to establish a
Appointed by the governor as the College's first president, Miller resigned as state representative. He continued to be politically active and, in 1910, opposed the election of
Miller moved from Orangeburg back to Charleston, where he worked on various community causes. Supporting United States participation in World War I, he helped recruit 30,000 black men to the Armed Services.[4]
From 1923 to 1934, Miller lived in Philadelphia, but he returned to Charleston. He died on April 8, 1938.[9] He asked for the following to be inscribed on his gravestone: "Not having loved the white less, but having felt the Negro needed me more", related to his work for civil rights and his decision to identify as African American rather than white.[10]
See also
References
- ^ Eric Foner, Freedom's Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders During Reconstruction, revised edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996): 149
- ^ Stephen Middleton, ed., Black Congressmen During Reconstruction: A Documentary Sourcebook (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2002): 227–228
- ^ "George Washington Murray" Archived 2009-03-25 at the Wayback Machine, Black Americans in Congress, US Congress, accessed 5 June 2012
- ^ a b c d e "Thomas Ezekiel Miller", Black Americans in Congress, United States Congress, accessed 4 June 2012
- ISBN 0-87187-339-7.
- ^ "Techniques of Direct Disenfranchisement, 1880-1965". www.umich.edu. Retrieved 2017-09-16.
- ^ a b c "The Negroes’ Temporary Farewell: Jim Crow and the Exclusion of African Americans from Congress, 1887–1929" Archived 2012-04-21 at the Wayback Machine, Black Americans in Congress, US Congress, accessed 5 June 2012
- ^ Michael Perman, Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888-1908, University of North Carolina Press, 2001, p. 93
- ISBN 1-57003-598-9.
- ^ Stephen Middleton, ed., Black Congressmen During Reconstruction: A Documentary Sourcebook (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2002): 227–228
Further reading
- United States Congress. "Thomas E. Miller (id: M000757)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
- Tindall, George Brown. South Carolina Negroes, 1877–1900, 2nd ed. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003; reprint of the 1952 edition).