James Rapier:
One of First Blacks Elected to Congress

In 1873, James Rapier was one of the first African Americans elected to represent Alabama in Congress. The son of a white father and black mother, he was a staunch advocate of racial unity, trade unions and civil rights. He was an organizer for the Colored National Labor Union and traveled throughout Alabama on horseback to organize sharecroppers, tenant farmers and workers.

In Congress, speaking fervently for the passage of a Civil Rights Bill in 1875, he said he would accept no compromise.

"This question resolves itself into this:

"Either I am a man or I am not a man. If I am a man, I am entitled to all the right and privileges and immunities that any other American citizen is entitled to. If I am not a man, then I have no right to vote. I have no right to be here upon this floor, or if I am tolerated here, it is in violation of the Constitution of our country.

"If any man is entitled to the protection of the laws of this country, I hold that the colored man is that man. When he had no particular reason for liking this government; when your government was threatened with destruction, when those who had always been fostered and cared for by the government hesitated as to what they should do, when this great Republic was in the act of going down, then it was that the Negro came forward, made bare his breast and in it received the thrusts of the bayonets aimed at the life of the nation. And now you hesitate to say whether I shall be regarded as a man or not in this country, being a representative of that race."

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