Benjamin F. Randolph

Benjamin Franklin Randolph (1820 – October 16, 1868) was an American educator, spiritual advisor, newspaper editor who served as a South Carolina state senator during the Reconstruction Era. Randolph was selected to be one of the first African American Electors in the United States at the 1868 Republican National Convention for the Ulysses Grant Republican presidential ticket. Randolph also served as the chair of the state Republican Party Central Committee. He was a delegate to the 1868 South Carolina Constitutional Convention, where he played an important role in establishing the first universal public education system in the state, and in granting for the first time the right to vote to black men and non-property owning European-American men. On October 16, 1868, Randolph was assassinated by members of the Ku Klux Klan.

Early life Benjamin Franklin Randolph was born in Kentucky in 1820, the child of free African Americans. He moved with his family to Ohio as a child, where he attended school in Warren County, Ohio. He enrolled in Oberlin Preparatory & Collegiate in 1854 and matriculated at Oberlin College in 1857, studying in the Classics Department.