James Harris

James Henry Harris (c. 1832–1891) was an American upholsterer and politician. Born into slavery, he was freed as a young adult and worked as a carpenter's apprentice and worker before attending Oberlin College in Ohio. For a time, he lived in Chatham, Ontario, where he was a member of the Chatham Vigilance Committee that aimed to prevent blacks being transported out of Canada and sold as slaves in the United States.

During the American Civil War (1861–1865), he was commissioned to organize black troops in Indiana for the 28th United States Colored Infantry Regiment. After the war, he was an educator and politician in North Carolina.

Harris was Raleigh, North Carolina's first African American politician. On August 3, 1840 he began an apprenticeship with Charles Allen to learn to be a carpenter. Later, he was a self-employed carpenter He became free at 18 years of age. which was established by black abolitionists. Its objective was to prevent people from being kidnapped from Canada and returned or sold into slavery in the United States. Some of the members of the group were graduates of Oberlin College in Ohio. In 1858, he was appointed to serve as the National Emigration Convention's agent in Chatham. In 1862, he traveled to Sierra Leone Colony and Protectorate and the Colony of Liberia. in the North Carolina General Assembly voted against ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution—which would have guaranteed full citizenship and due process to former slaves—and passed a series of Black Codes which restricted the legal and economic rights of freedmen.

On October 2, 1866, the North Carolina Equal Rights League opened its convention at the Loyal African Methodist Episcopal Church in Raleigh and elected Harris to preside over the meeting. The delegates voted to invite "distinguished [white] citizens of North Carolina" to speak before their assembly, and in his capacity as the presiding officer, Harris reached out to Governor Jonathan Worth, Conservative Party leader William Alexander Graham, attorney Bartholomew F. Moore, and journalist William Pell. The convention reelected Harris to the presidency of the North Carolina Equal Rights League for a one-year term.

Union League and creation of the North Carolina Republican Party In late 1866 and early 1867 black held mass meetings in Raleigh and High Point to select delegates to attend the "National Colored Loyal League" convention in Washington D. C., scheduled to open on January 10, 1867. Harris was made a delegate and was made deputy president of the convention. While in Washington, he met with Congressional Republicans and with President Johnson. He advised the president that freedmen "will never be fully guaranteed in their rights as citizens without the power to vote." He was appointed a deputy member of the Grand National Council of the Union League of America on January 13, 1867 and returned to Raleigh several weeks later.

Radical Republicans in the U.S. Congress grew dissatisfied with the passage of Black Codes and white-instigated racial violence in the South and the inaction of President Johnson on these developments. In March 1867, they passed a series of Reconstruction Acts which placed the Southern states under military authority, stripped former Confederate officials of political rights, and required states of the former Confederacy to ratify new constitutions which guaranteed universal male suffrage. Meanwhile Holden, Ceburn L. Harris, and various other white Unionist politicians in North Carolina formed a committee to organize a convention to prepare for a new constitution and facilitate North Carolina's full readmission into the Union.

Plans were drawn up to hold a convention at the North Carolina State Capitol on March 27, and 156 white delegates were formally invited. Ceburn Harris was instructed by the Unionist committee to reach out to black leaders. He contacted James Harris shortly after the latter returned from Washington. James Harris indicated that blacks would like to participate in the Unionist convention as official delegates. Holden's newspaper, The Standard, subsequently reported that the convention would be open to black and white Unionists. In preparation for the convention, Harris used his position as a deputy member of the national Union League to convene a meeting of white and black political and labor leaders in Raleigh on March 26, 1867 to form the North Carolina Grand Council of the Union League to further the Unionist cause. Holden became the state president while Harris also took on an executive role.

The Unionist convention opened on March 27 in the House of Commons Hall of the State Capitol. Harris attended as one of 147 delegates and was elected one of four vice presidents of the convention. The assembly proceeded to declare the creation of the North Carolina Republican Party, adopt a party platform, and frame an organizational apparatus. Harris became one of 17 black men appointed to the party's state executive committee. Addressing the convention, he assured white delegates that blacks "did not seek domination" and would be loyal to their "true white friends" but demanded that rights for blacks be central to their political efforts. Following the convention, Harris and other black leaders canvassed the Piedmont and eastern sections of the state to promote the Republican cause, and the Union League became a key force for organizing black political power on behalf of Republicans in the state.

In 1867, Harris and fellow Equal Rights League member wrote a petition to the U.S. Congress on behalf of North Carolina's "entire colored population" to ask for the full restoration of Holden's political rights.

Constitutional convention of 1868

On October 18, 1867, General Edward R. S. Canby ordered a statewide vote to be held in North Carolina on November 19 and November 20 on the question of whether the state should call a constitutional convention and simultaneously chose delegates for said convention. Voters in the state voted in favor of a convention and elected a large majority of Republican delegates. Harris won election as a delegate for Wake County over former Confederate officer Daniel Gould Fowle. Replying to a note of congratulations from Chief Justice of the United States Salmon P. Chase, Harris wrote, "You can hardly concieve [sic] the genuine pleasure that animates us hourly [...] the effulgent sun of liberty shines with undiminished splender [sic] over the redeemed and purified Commonwealth of my nativity."

The constitutional convention convened on January 14, 1868 at the State Capitol. Historian Leonard Bernstein wrote, "Harris seems to have been acknowledged as the most prominent Negro delegate at the Convention". Harris was placed on the convention's Committee on a Preamble and a Bill of Rights and the Committee on Suffrage and Eligibility to Hold Office. He convinced the convention to create a committee to revise North Carolina's congressional districts. He opposed allowing the convention to pass private legislation, feeling it should focus on completing a constitution. Despite this, he introduced before the body the only petition for divorce concerning a black couple, which it approved. At the end of the convention he and several other delegates were paid off by banker George William Swepson in thanks of support given to state railroad investment.

Harris was among the first blacks in the United States to participate in a major national political party convention when he attended the 1868 Republican National Convention. He also attended the Republican National conventions in 1872 and 1876. Harris then devoted his energies to a bid for a seat in the state legislature.

Harris was one of 17 colored men elected to the North Carolina House of Representatives in 1868. Historian Elizabeth Balanoff wrote that he was "clearly the leading spokesman for North Carolina Negroes" in the body. The 1868 legislature sat in two sessions, the first from July to August 1868 and the second from November 1868 to April 1869. During both sessions, Harris chaired the House's Committee on Propositions and Grievances, served on the Committee on the Judiciary, and served on the Committee on Education. During the 1869 session, he additionally served as a member of a committee to investigate the purchase of land for a new state penitentiary.

In February 1869, Harris supported a bill which guaranteed that the testimony of colored persons before courts of law would be treated equally with the testimony of whites. Some other colored representatives believed that legislation of that nature was unnecessary due to provisions in the new constitution guaranteeing racial equality, but Harris believed it necessary that both the constitution and state laws explicitly guarantee racial equality. He later proposed a bill to ensure blacks would be selected for jury duty, but the measure was unsuccessful. Harris also supported measures to assist married women facing neglect and abandonment by their husbands.

In July 1868, Harris supported a resolution calling upon the federal government to supply troops for security in the state to dissuade political violence. Initially wary of the cost of a state force, by the following month he supported the creation of a new state militia. Growing Ku Klux Klan violence against blacks and Republicans led to the introduction of a new militia bill in the legislature in late 1869. Known as the Shoffner Act, it allowed the governor to declare a state of insurrection and deploy the militia to secure order. In January 1870, Harris gave a speech in support the bill, denouncing the murder of black men who had supported education and the Republican Party.

He was president of the National Convention of Colored Men in 1869. Following commanding Democratic victories in the state elections of 1876, many blacks began migrating out of North Carolina. At Harris' initiative, a meeting of black leaders was held in Raleigh in January 1880 to investigate the causes of the black outmigration. The assembly produced a list of six grievances blacks in North Carolina had, largely describing an oppressive judicial system and inequitable economic arrangements. Some blacks favored moving to Liberia, an action Harris and other black leaders in the state strongly opposed.

On September 17, 1877, Harris led other North Carolina black leaders in issuing a call for a convention "to consider the educational, moral, and national interest" of blacks "and to devise some plan for our advancement in these respects." The convention convened in Raleigh on October 18 and 19 with 130 delegates. Harris chaired the assembly.

The competitive nature of the 1880 United States presidential election led to a resurgence of black political activity in North Carolina. Though Republican nominee James A. Garfield failed to win the state, he secured the national contest and was installed as president in early 1881. Several groups of black Republicans travelled to Washington D. C. in the hopes of securing federal patronage, with one group pleading the case of Harris for postmaster of Raleigh. Realizing that his appointment would divide the local Republican Party, Harris backed away from his candidacy and supported Garfield's preference, John Nichols. At his urging, Nichols hired black leaders Stewart Ellison and Charles Norfleet Hunter as postal clerks. In May 1881, leading black Republicans in the state, including Harris, gathered in Raleigh in a convention and penned a resolution demanding an end to "discriminating against competent and deserving colored men [...] in the election and appointment of officers."

Harris was a delegate to the Republican National Conventions of 1884, when he was a supporter of Chester A. Arthur's unsuccessful bid for re-nomination. He was elected an alderman of Raleigh in 1887.

In the 1888 presidential election, he was elected as a delegate for James G. Blaine. He moved to Washington D. C. in 1891. He accepted a position in President Benjamin Harrison's administration, working in the nation's capital. Named for Oberlin College, is it considered one of Harris' significant accomplishments. The community is located along Clark Avenue, Wade Avenue, and Oberlin Road.

In 1868, a Raleigh branch of the Freedman's Saving and Trust Company was established and Harris was made one of its directors. In 1869, Harris and J. Brinton Smith founded the Raleigh Cooperative Land and Building Association, of which Harris was made president. The association operated for 10 years, issuing loans to blacks for the development of real estate.

He helped found the Negro branch of the North Carolina Institute for the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind, which was the first school for blind African-Americans in the nation. A funeral was held for him in Raleigh on June 2 and he was buried in the city's Mount Hope Cemetery.

After his death, he was remembered as a "gifted politician and a talented orator" by Republican and Democratic newspapers. According to journalist Kate Pattison: "It is possible that Harris' legacy was snuffed out by the Reconstruction backlash, while former slaves continued to lose access to education, voting, and hope." Historian Ruth Little described him as "Wake County’s most prominent 19th-century African American leader."