Senator

Tunis Campbell, Sr.-2nd District

| Cynthia Jennings

Called “the oldest and best-known clergyman in the African Methodist Church”, Tunis Gulic Campbell Sr. served as a Reverend, abolitionist activist, civil rights leader, Union Army chaplain, Military Governor, voter registration organizer, Justice of the Peace, delegate to the Georgia Constitutional Convention of 1867–1868, and was one of three Black Georgia state senators in the1868 Georgia General Assembly. 

Campbell was born in Jersey City, NJ, and was one of 10 children born to John Campbell, a successful blacksmith and a free person of color, in Middlebrook, NJ.  When Campbell was five, a white friend of the Campbell family placed Campbell in an all-white Episcopal school in Babylon, New York, where he attended school until the age of 18 as the only person of color in the school. In his teens, Campbell trained to be a missionary to Liberia through the American Colonization Society, but he grew to oppose the ACS and their stance to resettle Black Americans in West Africa.  By 18, Campbell had become an anti-colonization and abolitionist lecturer preaching against slavery and colonization and often joined Frederick Douglass on speaking tours.

During Reconstruction, Campbell worked with the Federal Government in Union-occupied Georgia to help rebuild Georgia’s newly freed Black communities after the abolition of slavery. Soon after Congress established Freedman’s Bureau in 1865, Campbell was appointed to supervise land claims and the resettlement of newly freed people on five Georgia Sea Islands: Ossabaw, Delaware, Colonels, St. Catherine’s, and Sapelo. He settled in McIntosh County along Georgia’s coast and worked to empower the newly freed slaves by promoting education, land ownership, economic opportunities, and political participation. As Bureau Agent and Military Governor to the Sea Islands, Campbell played a key role in assisting Black Americans in coastal Georgia during their transition from slavery to freedom and helped many gain education through newly established Black schools in the area as well as acquire land to start their own farms.

Campbell was a delegate during the Georgia State Constitutional Convention of 1867-68 and served as Senator for the Second Senatorial District, which included Liberty, McIntosh, and Tattnall counties in the Georgia Assembly. As a senator, Campbell served on the Senate’s Petitions and General Education committees. He introduced 15 bills promoting civil rights for Black Georgians in equal education, integrated court juries, homestead exemptions, elimination of imprisonment for debt, full access for Black Georgians to public facilities, and fair voting procedures. 

Along with 32 other Black Georgia representatives, Campbell was expelled from the General Assembly in September 1868 under the false claim that while Black Georgians had the right to vote, the Georgia constitution prohibited Black Americans from holding office. Campbell immediately protested the resolution and was one of the loudest speakers defending Black eligibility to hold office, his speech on the topic appearing on the front page of the Atlanta Constitution.  While expelled, Tunis continued to build his political presence in the Sea Islands and fight for civil rights, often amid violent threats by white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan. 

Campbell was reinstated in 1871 but lost his bid for re-election in 1872 due to efforts by his enemies to intimidate Black voters. He continued to serve as Justice of The Peace on St. Catherine’s Island, angering many who saw his role as having too much power for a Black official over white Georgians.  He would be indicted on multiple trumped-up charges when he defended the rights of Black sailors on ships docked in Darien, Georgia, and was convicted and sentenced to one year of hard labor at a Georgia convict labor camp. Following his imprisonment, Campbell moved to Washington, DC, and continued his political activism. He also published a memoir, Sufferings of the Reverend T. G. Campbell and His Family in Georgia (1877).

Tunis Campbell Sr. died in Boston on December 4, 1891. In the early 2000s, the Gullah/Geechee Nation began holding the Tunis Campbell Celebration to honor the man who had led many formerly-enslaved coastal Georgians to political empowerment and economic prosperity. 

A book was written about his life titled Freedom’s Shore: Tunis Campbell and the Georgia Freedmen. The rights to the book were purchased by Malcolm Jamal Warner.

George Wallace-20th District

| Cynthia Jennings

Born around 1840, George Wallace was a native of Georgia and represented District 20 (Hancock, Baldwin and Washington counties) in middle Georgia in the1868 Georgia Assembly and in the Georgia State Constitutional Convention of 1867-68. Wallace was biracial and was one of the first three Black senators elected in Georgia, the other being Tunis Campbell Sr. Unseated with the other Black members, Wallace was restored to his senate seat in 1870 by an Act of Congress.  Wallace served on the Republican state committee in 1868, attended the 1869 Georgia labor convention, and was a delegate to the Republican national convention of 1876. According to the 1870 census, Wallace owned $100 in personal property. 

In addition to serving in the Georgia Assembly, Wallace was a founder of the Macon Union League, an organization that demonstrated unwavering support for the Union and was active in the Georgia Educational Association. He represented District 20 in the Georgia State Constitutional Convention, which was the first constitutional convention to include Black delegates and was held in Atlanta. During the convention, Wallace was an outspoken critic of the proposed move of the capital from Milledgeville to Atlanta. As a representative of District 20, which Milledgeville, Wallace proposed putting the move to a state-wide vote. Ironically, the reason the convention was moved from Milledgeville to Atlanta in 1867-1868 was because Milledgeville’s innkeepers refused to allow the Black delegates room and board for the state constitutional convention. Without lodging in Milledgeville for all delegates, US Army General John Pope ordered the convention to be held in Atlanta. The Capital was permanently moved from Milledgeville to Atlanta in 1877. 

Aaron Alpeoria Bradley – District 1

| Cynthia Jennings

Aaron Alpeoria Bradley (c. 1815–1881) was a lawyer and civil rights activist in the United States. He was born into slavery on a Plantation in South Carolina around 1815 and was of mixed ethnicity. He escaped slavery, went North, and became a lawyer in Massachusetts in 1856. He was the third African American admitted to the Massachusetts Bar. At the end of the Civil War, Bradley moved to Savannah in 1865. He applied for the Georgia Bar but was denied admittance due to his race and controversial political activism against racial injustice.  He became a lawyer in neighboring South Carolina and continued to practice law in Georgia without a license until 1875.

Bradley was elected as a representative to Georgia’s Constitutional Convention of 1867/68 and to the Georgia Assembly as one of 3 Senators. He represented District 1, which covered Chatham, Bryan and Effingham counties.

Bradley was a powerful orator and outspoken civil rights activist. He believed in the freedom of the Black race and championed all black causes. He is accredited as an early proponent of what would become the Black Power Movement, often calling for liberation and escalation of Black Americans in his speeches. He was also an anti-capitalist and held beliefs that predated the Populist Movement decades later.  Bradley also pushed on shared social issues like the Homestead Acts, labor reform, end to debtors’ prison, which banded poor whites with many Black Georgians and fueled hatred among many white Georgians.

Bradley is buried at Greenwood Cemetery in St. Louis Missouri.