Jeremiah Haralson (April 1,1846-1916)

Was a clergyman,natural politician,powerful orator,and talented debater who served in the Alabama House of Representatives (1870-1872),State Senate (1872-1874),State Senate (1872-1874) and U.S. Congress (March 4,1875March 3,1877).He was the third African American Republican congressman from Alabama,combated a Democratic majority in the House of Repressentatives,and fought against Jim Crow politics in the South Reconstruction.As a result of his contentious relationship with Republicans,his contemporaries described him as uncompromising,irritating,and bold.Jeremiah was born into slavery on a plantation in Muscogee County near Columbus,Georgia,little is known about his early life.During childhood,he was sold twice before John Haralson,a lawyer from Selma,Dallas County,purchased him in 1859.Alabama ratified the 13th Amendment on December 2,1865,which mandated Jeremiah freedom.He taught himself to read and write and worked as a farmer,minister,and influential civic leader.In 1867,he began his political career as a Democrat,which reported stemmed from a loyalty to his former owner and uncertainty regarding the future of the Republican Party in the South.He campaigned for Democratic presidential candidate Horatio Seymour in 1868 but accused by  former Confederates and Democratic officials of being insincere in his support and secretly swaying support to Republicans.He also made an unsuccessful bid for Congress as Democrat in 1868,despite being too young to meet the constitutional age requirement.By 1869,Jeremiah had allied himself with the Republican Party after Democrats aligned themselves with former Confederates and failed to attract the support freedmen.He told a meeting of prominent African Americans politicians in New Orleans that if he were forced to choose between Democrats and Republicians,he would choose the latter,given the support for African Americans suffrage and Emancipation.Yet, the following year he was elected as an independent to the Alabama House of Representatives,beginning a career-long tendency to run as a third-party candidate.
In 1870,Jeremiah married Ellen Norwood,and they had a son,Henry,who later attended Tuskegee University.Jeremiah was elected to preside over the Republician Party's First District convention,which nominated Benjamin S.Turner as the first African American to serve in Congress.In January 1871,he was elected president of the Alabama Negro Labor Union,serving until 1873.In 1872,he was elected as Republican to the Alabama State Senate for the twenty-first District and assisted in shepherding a civil rights bill through the Senate.Local media described as perhaps the most influential freedman in the legislature.
In 1874,Jeremiah received the Republican nomination in Alabama's First District,formerly held by Benjamin which included his hometown of Selma.He won the general election with 54 percent of the vote,but incumbent liberal Republican Frederick Bromberg contested the victory.On April 18,1876,Democratic chairman John Harris of Virginia delivered the decision of the Committee on Elections,which uncovered evidence of fraud,and the committee unanimously rejected Frederick's challenge and awarded Jeremiah the seat,some of his votes were declared invalid as well.He went on to serve on the Committee on Public Expenditures of the 44th Congress and introduced legislation to use proceeds from the sale of public lands for education.Jeremiah also presented a petition from the citizens of Mobile requesting compensation for the use of a medical college and supplies by officers of the Freedmen's Bureau,neither these nor four other proposed bills passed.Generally,he supported the policies of President Ulysses S.Grant,especially the Civil Rights Act of 1875,and leveraged his African American heritage to gain political support from his constituents,who feared the possibility of a southern race war.Jeremiah had a contentious with his fellow Republicans.Alabama's "carpetbagger" Republicans viewed him suspicion because of his former Democratic ties and accused him of accepting a $ 50 bribe from railroad offcials and stealing a $ 100 bale of cotton.The charges were not substantiated and had little impact Jeremiah political career.Meanwhile,he accused white Republicians of conspiring against African Americans voters and alienated Radical Republicans by criticizing the use od federal soldiers to maintain orderly voting in the South,supporting general amnesty for former Confederates,and favoring strict segregation in public schools.They likewise objected to his friendships with Democrats such as Jefferson Davis,former president of the Confederacy,Represative Lucius Q.C.Lamar of Mississippi,and Georgia Senator and later governor John B.Gordon.
In 1876,the Alabama state legislature redrew Jeremiah's district which moved
moved Selma from the first to the Fourth District and increased the African American electorate to nearly 65 percent.Freeborn African American candidate James Rapier challenged Jeremiah in the 1876 primary for Alabama's Fourth District and won.As a result,Jeremiah reentered the general election as an Independent and began a decade-long attempt to win back his congressional seat.
Democrat Charles M.Shelley,a former Confederate general,won the seat with 38 percent of the vote as a result of the spilt among Republican voters.Jeremiah contested the election and submitted an official complaint to the Committee on Elections on April 16,1878,to avail.
Jeremiah received the Republican nomination for his former seat in 1878 but had too little support from African Americans.Democratic incumbent Charles won reelection with 55 percent of the vote,Jeremiah asserted that thousands of votes were not counted and contested the election.Charles supporters attempted to have Jeremiah and his lawyer arrested,and while
traveling to Montgomery and Selma,he was attacked by an armed mob and ordered to leave the atate.Jeremiah fled to the District of Columbia and submitted a written complaint to the Congressional Record regarding the
incident The letter was published,the Committee on Elections never ruled
Jeremiah's case.
In 1879,President Rutherford B.Hayes appointed Jeremiah as a clerk at Baltimore's federal customs house.He later became a clerk at the Department of the Interior and then worked at the Pension Bureau in Washington,D.C.,
from 1882-1884.He ran as an Independent Republican in final bid for Congress in 1884 overwhelmingly lost the election to Democrat Alexander Davidson.Jeremiah briefly lived in Louisiana before settling in Arkansas as pension agent.On December 21,1894,he was sentenced to ten years in the penitentiary at Fort Smith Arkansas,for pension fraud.Jeremiah remained in Arkansas until at least 1904 and returned to Selma in 1912.He drifited through Texas and Oklahoma before settling,in Colorado,where he became a coal miner at the age of 70.He was reportedly killed and eaten by wild animals while hunting in Denver in 1916,there is no death certificate was ever filled.