Philip Joseph (politician)
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Philip Joseph was an African American politician and journalist in Reconstruction-era Alabama.
Joseph was born free in 1846 in Florida and traced his ancestry to Spain, France, Africa, and Cuba. His mother was the daughter of a wealthy Cuban and she liberated the family's nine hundred slaves. Joseph was well educated and was fluent in three languages.[1]
During reconstruction (1865-1872), Joseph was the president of the Mobile Union League.[1] Joseph served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1868 and 1872,[2] and served as a postal clerk[3] and as a clerk in the Mobile custom house in the early 1870s.[4] In 1870 he began his journalism career founding the Mobile Republican. He would come to found and edit four newspapers in Mobile and Montgomery from 1870 until 1884[2]
In 1872 he decided to oppose the reelection of Benjamin S. Turner to the United States House of Representatives. This split the Republican vote, and allowed the Liberal Republican and Democratic Party fusion candidate Frederick G. Bromberg to win the election.[5] During the campaign, Turner accused Joseph of having been a "secret agent of the rebel government" during the Civil War.[1] When African-American Republican politician, Jack Turner, was lynched in 1882 in Choctaw County, Alabama, Joseph was outspoken in his outrage, frequently writing about the case in the Mobile Gazette, the paper he was then editing.[6]
Joseph remained involved in politics and was a clerk of the Alabama legislature from 1872-74.[1] He also continued working as a journalist and founded the Montgomery Watchman in February 1873, and edited the weekly for the following year.[2] He frequently wrote in favor of the proposed Civil Rights Act,[7] which became law in 1875. In 1874 he ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the Alabama legislature and was a leading figure at the black convention in Montgomery.[1] In 1875 he testified before the US Congress about efforts to break up black Republican political meetings in Alabama.[8] Later that year he was sued for libel and ordered to pay the plaintiff $10,000 in damages.[9] After this he left Mobile and moved to Delta, Louisiana in Madison Parish where he was appointed supervisor of registration and began editing the Madison Journal.[10] By 1880 he had returned to Mobile and was editing the Mobile Gazette. By that time the Republican Party had diminished greatly in Alabama, and the Gazette was called the only Republican paper in the state. In lieu of the absent Republican tickets, Joseph and the paper endorsed the Greenback Party ticket.[11]
In 1884 he was in charge of the Alabama African-American exhibit at the New Orleans World's Cotton Centennial Exposition. In 1888 he was director general of the National Colored Exposition at Atlanta.[12]
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e Foner, Eric. Freedom's Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders during Reconstruction. Oxford University Press, USA, 1993.
- ^ a b c Suggs, Henry Lewis, ed. The Black press in the south, 1865-1979. No. 74. Praeger Pub Text, 1983. p26
- ^ No Headline Mobile Weekly Tribune (Mobile, Alabama) 23 Aug 1872, page 1, accessed at Newspapers.com
- ^ No Headline, Eufaula Daily Times (Eugaula, Alabama) 12 May 1872, page 1, accessed at Newspapers.com
- ^ "Turner, Benjamin Sterling (1825-1894)" at blackpast.org
- ^ Rogers, William Warren, and Robert David Ward. August Reckoning: Jack Turner and Racism in Post-Civil War Alabama. University of Alabama Press, 2004. p72, 119, 148
- ^ No Headline Choctaw Herald (Butler, Alabama) 19 Aug 1874, page 1, accessed at Newspapers.com
- ^ Alabama Negroes Intimidated, The Marengo News (Demopolis, Alabama) 11 Feb 1875, page 2, accessed at Newspapers.com
- ^ No Headline The Tuskaloosa Gazette (Tuscaloosa, Alabama) 18 Mar 1875, page 3, accessed at Newspapers.com
- ^ No Headline The Mobile Daily Tribune (Mobile, Alabama) 31 Aug 1876, page 3, accessed at Newspapers.com
- ^ Endoresement, The Montgomery Advertiser (Montgomery, Alabama) 6 Aug 1880, page 2
- ^ Our Colored Citizens, The Montgomery Advertiser (Montgomery, Alabama) 14 Mar 1888, page 3, accessed at Newspapers.com
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