George W. Albright

George W. Albright (born c. 1846) was an American farmer, educator, and politician who was born enslaved in the U.S. state of Mississippi. A Republican, Albright represented Marshall County in the Mississippi State Senate from 1874 to 1879 during the end of the Reconstruction Era. In 1873, Albright won his Senate seat by defeating the Democrat E. H. Crump, a leader in the Ku Klux Klan. ^[1]

1874 photo by E. Von Seutter

After he was emancipated from slavery, Albright worked as a field hand. His father, who was sold to an owner in Texas shortly before the American Civil War, joined the Union Army and was killed at the Battle of Vicksburg in Mississippi. During the War, Albright was a member of the Union League, which promoted loyalty to the Republican Party and spread news of the Emancipation Proclamation among still enslaved people. After the war, he attended a school run by Sheriff Nelson Gill.^[2]

Albright married a white teacher and became a teacher himself. When he narrowly escaped with his life in a confrontation with Klansmen, Albright moved to Chicago, Kansas, and later Colorado. In 1937, in an interview with the communist Daily Worker newspaper, he hailed Communist Party USA for nominating a Black man, James W. Ford, for the vice-presidency in the 1936 presidential election.^[3][2]

In 2021, DeeDee Baldwin, a research librarian heading the Against All Odds archival history effort on African American legislators in Mississippi during and after the Reconstruction era and one of Albright's ancestors were part of a recorded talk and slide presentation.^[4]

See also

• List of African-American officeholders during Reconstruction

References

1. Society, Mississippi Historical (1912). Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society. pp. 193–. Retrieved March 5, 2016.
2. Foner, Eric (1996). Freedom's Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders During Reconstruction. Louisiana State University Press. pp. 2–3. ISBN 9780807120828. Retrieved March 5, 2016.
3. Boritt, Gabor S.; Hancock, Scott (May 30, 2007). Slavery, Resistance, Freedom. Oxford University Press. pp. 117–. ISBN 9780190282875. Retrieved March 5, 2016.
4. Baldwin, Deedee; Burch, Karen; Ford, Bianca (May 21, 2021). "Against All Odds: Telling the Stories of the First Black Legislators in Mississippi". University Libraries Publications and Scholarship.