Rev. Arthur St. Clair

Arthur W. St. Clair (died 1877) was an African-American community leader in Brooksville, Florida, who was murdered in 1877 by a mob days after he presided over the marriage of a black man and a white woman in the area that is now Dade City, Florida. Controversy followed as efforts to investigate the white men accused of killing him were stymied. The courthouse was destroyed in a fire.

Slave St. Clair was a slave on the plantation owned by John and Marina Sanderson May (who owned much of the land around what later became the town).

Career After the American Civil War, he was Hernando County's first post-Civil War voter registrar He submitted an affidavit to Congress alleging instances of ineligible voting during the November 1876 election for State Legislature.

St. Clair was a Baptist minister and founded Bethlehem Progressive Baptist Church. He also founded Hernando County's first school for blacks with his brother Hampton Sinclair. He was appointed by Florida's governor to lead the state's Third Brigade militia.

St. Clair was a candidate for office in the state legislature three times as a Republican and would have been a fourth time but was murdered two months before the election.

Death St. Clair was murdered in 1877. The killing took place after he presided over the marriage of Dave James and Lizzie Day, an interracial marriage (miscegenation). He was on his way back to Brooksville from the area that is now Dade City, Florida.