"Benjamin Sterling Turner" (March 17,1825-March 21 1894

Reconstruction politician,was born a slave near Weldon Halifax County North Carolina.His

parents are unknown.He was owned by Elizabeth Turner, a widow who took the five-year-old with her in 1830,she moved to Dallas County in Alabama's rich cotton-producing and slave-dense Black Belt.He grew up in Dallas County and in Selma, on the Alabama River.When Benjamin was twenty his owner sold him to Major W.H. Gee,her stepdaughter's husband, to pay off debts.Benjamin was intelligent and industrious,and overseer once found him with a spelling book and threatened to whip him if he repeated the offense.The powerful built Benjamin was placed in charge of Gee House,his new owner's hotel in Selma.State law prohibited the education of slaves,Gee's children ignored the statute and taught him to read and write.He honed his skills further by studying newspapers. When W.H. died,his brother James T. Gee became Benjamin's owner, and was placed in charge of James Gee's Saint James Hotel.Permitted to hire out his time,Benjamin operated a livery stable and a wood yard,and he became respected among both blacks and whites.He was an affluent man by 1860.At some point he married a black woman named Independence,but a white man purchased her for his mistress The incident allegedly embittered him to the point that he renounced ever marrying again.In any event the 1870 federal census for Dallas County lists a Benjamin S. Turner,and beneath his name lists that of Osceola, a nine-year-old "mulatto"boy.When the Civil War began,Benjamin bought two hundred dollar's worth of Confederate bonds.Throughout the conflict Selma was an important manufacturing and ordnance center for the Confederacy, and he continued his own business affairs.He also looked after the operations of his owner,who was absent serving with Confederate Military forces.In spring 1865 the Union general James H. Wilson's cavalry forces swept through Alabama,capturing Selma and burring two thirds of the city.Benjamin's properties were lost in the general destruction.He later sought reimbursement of eight thousand dollars from the Southern Claims Commission.It is not clear  how much if any compensation he received,But Benjamin went to work and soon prospered as a general merchant.After the war, concerned about the welfare of his race,he put up his own money to establish a school for black children in Selma.His efforts urging former slaves to make work contracts helped establish a peaceful return to order and earned him respect of the white community.After the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, Benjamin was appointed county tax collector with biracial approval.He resigned after a year and,running as an Independent,was elected city councilman.He and another former bondsman were Selma's first black city councilmen.When the city began paying them,Benjamin resigned,because he believed that in such destitute times a city official should serve without compensation.During the presidential election in 1868,when conservative Democrats failed to promise voting rights for blacks,he helped deliver the town and county to the victorious Ulysses S. Grant.He recouped economically to the point that in 1870 he had personal property worth ten thousand dollars.He was nominated for Congress in that year with the aid of newly enfranchised blacks and naive white Republicans,known derisively as "scalawags."His moderate political philosophy cost him the financial support of the First District's northern-born Republicans,the "carpetbaggers." Undeterred, Benjamin sold a horse to raise campaigns funds,and,running on a platform of Universal Suffrage and Universal Amnesty," of black voters;in Dallas County alone blacks outnumbered whites 32,152 to 8,522.He was the first African American elected from to the U.S. House of Representatives.In the house he was appointed to the Committee on invalid  Pensions and impressed his congressional colleagues with his political ability and judgement.Besides his general work with the committee,Benjamin iintroduced three bills that provided pensions  for individual Union army veterans,one of them a black man.During his term Benjamin established himself by both deeed and word to be antithesis of a Radical Republican.He introduced  five bills to remove the fourteenth Amendment's political disabilities from eight whie Alabamians.Seeking aid for Selma,which was still rebuilding,Benjamin failed to obtain federal money for repairs to a war-damaged Episcopal church.His tenure was marked by three main attempts,all unsuccessful,to improve  the economy of Alabama and the south.Denied floor time for supporting speeches,he had his remarks placed in the appendix of the Congressional Globe.The neophyte congressman strongly opposed the cotton tax imposed by Congress.In effect from 1866 to 1888,the tax was justified as a means of having the South pay a part of the war costs.For years southern states unsuccessful petitioned Congress to refund the money.Benjamin presented a memorial from the Mobile Board of Trade asking for reimbursement,and he introduced his own bill to return the cotton tax to the southern states.He argued that the law was unconstitutional,favored foreign competitors over Americans,and hurt small farmers, both black and white, as well as landowners,merchants,and manufacturers.He also failed to obtain passage of a bill appropriating $2000,000 in federal money to construct in Selma public building to be used primarily as a customhouse,post office, and revenue office.The Commitee on Public Buildings and Grounds gave no serious attention to the bill.Benjamin's most significant bill authorized U.S.land commissioners to purchase private lands sold at public auction,subdivide the acreage,and sell it to landless citizens living in the immediate vicinity.The prperty would be sold in tracts of 160 acres or as much less as the purchaser desired and the buyer would pay ten percent down and ten percent annually.Benjamin intended "the landless and poor people of our country"to benefit,especially blacks.Calling the bill an act of justice made compelling by dire need,he asked priority of passage over various laws providing federal relief to foreigners.The bill never got past the Committee on Public Lands.He returned to Selma and was renominated by the Republicans in the First District.His conservative course in Congress and nonpartisan patronage appointments provoked a challenge from Philip Joseph,black editor of the Mobile Watchman,who ran as an Independent.Philip action spilt both the black vote and the vote of white Republicans,and resulted in the election of Frederick G.Bromberga native white who ran for both the Democrats and the newly formed Liberal Republicans.After his defeat,Benjamin retired from seeking elective office.The cripping economic depression of the 1870s forced him into bankruptcy,and turned in desperation to farming.Actually,he owned more land-three hundred acres in Dallas County-than most whites owned.Not a candidate himself,he sustained his interest in politics.He served three times on the state Republican Executive Committee through 1880,he was a delegate at large to the Republican National Convention in 1880,and he was a RE=epublican presidential elector in 1880.After that,he withdrew from political affairs to concentrate on farming.Hard economic times continued,and he died on farm near Selma.