Philip Joseph

Philip Joseph was a politician and journalist in Reconstruction and Jim Crow-era Alabama. An African American, he was a Republican.

Early life Joseph was born free in about 1846 in Florida and traced his ancestry to Spain, France, Africa, and Cuba. His mother was the daughter of a wealthy Cuban and she liberated the family's nine hundred slaves. Joseph was well educated and was fluent in three languages, French, German, and English.

Joseph served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1868 and 1872. In early 1872, he served as a postal clerk in Mobile and as a clerk in the Mobile custom house.

In 1870 he began his journalism career founding the Mobile Republican. He eventually founded and edited four newspapers in Mobile and Montgomery from 1870 until 1884 which became law in 1875. In 1874 he ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the Alabama legislature and was a leading figure at the black convention in Montgomery. Later that year he was sued for libel and ordered to pay the plaintiff $10,000 in damages. After this he left Mobile and moved to Delta, Louisiana in Madison Parish where he was appointed supervisor of registration and began editing the Madison Journal.

Post-Reconstruction politics By 1880 he had returned to Mobile and was editing the Mobile Gazette. By that time the Republican Party had diminished greatly in Alabama, and the Gazette was called the only Republican paper in the state. In lieu of the absent Republican tickets, Joseph and the paper endorsed the Greenback Party ticket.

In March 1880, Joseph spoke before Congress at the Exodus Investigation, testifying that blacks in Alabama were kept from the polls and were violently prevented from leaving the state. He was aggressively cross-examined by Zebulon Baird Vance, who questioned why blacks should be allowed to vote if they were intimidated away from the polls in spite of outnumbering whites in some areas by a count of eight to one. In 1881, he was appointed postmaster of Mobile by president James A. Garfield just before Garfield was shot by an assassin on July 2. Garfield survived in intensive care for 11 weeks, and on account of the political turmoil, Joseph's commission was never confirmed.

In 1883, Congressman Thomas H. Herndon died and Joseph was nominated by the Republican Party to replace him. James Taylor Jones was nominated by the Democrats and Jones won by a landslide in the July election, with Joseph receiving no votes in two of the counties which were part of the district.

In late September, 1884, he was appointed collector of internal revenue of the Mobile District, to replace A. L. Morgan. However, the appointment was revoked before the month was out.

Also in 1884 he was in charge of the Alabama African-American exhibit at the New Orleans World's Cotton Centennial Exposition, a world's fair. In 1888 he was director general of the National Colored Exposition at Atlanta.

In 1903 Joseph was convicted for assault and attempted murder when he shot a woman. He was pardoned by Governor William D. Jelks, reportedly because when committing the crime Joseph was under the influence of morphine and did not know what he was doing.