born May 10, 1837, Macon, Ga., U.S.
died Dec. 21, 1921, Washington, D.C.
U.S. politician.
Born to a former slave and a white planter, he became a steward on river steamboats. At the outbreak of the American Civil War , he reached Union-held New Orleans, where he raised and led a company of black Union volunteers called the Corps d'Afrique (1862–63). After the war he was elected to the Louisiana senate (1868) and served as lieutenant governor (1871). Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (1872) and Senate (1873), he was denied his seat in each body on unproved charges of election fraud. He subsequently became a lawyer and moved to Washington, D.C.