P. B. S. Pinchback

Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback was born on May 10, 1837, in Macon, Georgia, the son of Eliza Stewart, a formerly enslaved woman, and Major William Pinchback, a white Mississippi planter. When his father sent him north as a boy, Pinchback was educated at the Gilmore School in Cincinnati, Ohio, an abolitionist center. His schooling ended in 1848 upon his father's death, after which his mother took the family to the free state of Ohio to secure their liberty. As a young man he worked the western rivers as a cabin boy and steward.

When the Civil War came, Pinchback made his way to Union-held New Orleans and helped raise companies for the 1st Louisiana Native Guard, becoming one of the few African Americans commissioned as officers in the Union Army. He resigned his captaincy in 1863 in protest of unequal pay and discrimination in promotion, then turned his formidable energy to the politics of Reconstruction.

Elected to the Louisiana State Senate in 1868, Pinchback rose to president pro tempore and, upon the death of Lieutenant Governor Oscar Dunn, to lieutenant governor. When Governor Henry Clay Warmoth was suspended amid impeachment, Pinchback served as acting governor of Louisiana from December 9, 1872, to January 13, 1873 — the first African American to hold a state governorship in the United States. In his brief tenure, ten acts of the legislature became law.

In later life he founded the newspaper The Louisianian, earned a law degree at Straight University, and championed civil rights and education. He died in Washington, D.C., on December 21, 1921, and rests in Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans. His life stands as a testament to a man who claimed the highest office the nation had yet offered one of his people, and honored it with purpose.