Fred Savage

Fred Savage

Fred Savage became the first black to serve on the Board of Education in 1885.

The Commercial Appeal Archive - Newspapers.com™

THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL MEMPHIS, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 26, 1991

Herenton adds to elected heritage - Blacks prominent in early offices

Herenton adds to elected heritage, blacks prominent in early offices

When Dr. Willie W. Herenton is sworn in as Memphis's first elected black mayor next week, it will mark a new era for the city.

But more than 100 years ago, there were several blacks elected to city offices in Memphis.

Ed Shaw was the most famous black to hold elective office in Memphis. Born in Kentucky, he came to Memphis as a free man around 1852 and opened a saloon on Linden. After the Civil War, he became a leader in radical Republican politics.

Historian Lester Lamon says that "Edward Shaw experienced more political failures than successes, but he was never 'led by the nose'. For twenty years he fought for his own and he race's civil rights." He was articulate and ambitious, and never compromised in his crusade for Negro rights.

Shaw was a target of the Klu Klux Klan in 1868. His Militancy increased in 1869 when he campaigned for the Shelby County Commission, and discovered that he was being opposed within the Republican party solely on the basis of his race. He countered by entering the race for Congress as an independent, using bitter humor to remind local blacks of the racism of white Republicans.

He lost the race, but so did his Republican opponent, and a Democrat was sent to Washington.

In 1873, Shaw and another black, Joseph Clouston, were elected aldermen. Shaw was elected Wharfmaster in 1874, making him the highest-paid city official at the time.

He later practiced law in Memphis and edited a newspaper, The Memphis Planet. Disillusioned in the 1880's, he became less active in politics, but his contributions were remembered years later. In 1916, The Nashville Globe wrote, "Ed Shaw demonstrated what Negro leadership can do for Negroes."

Joseph Clouston was another antebellum freedman. He operated a barber shop on Brown Avenue as early as 1860, and was one of the first blacks to own property on Beale Street, where he had a grocery store.

He was elected to the City Council with Shaw in 1873, but failed to win re-election in 1876. His son, Arthur, was later active in the Lincoln League.

A decade later, Lymus Wallace also served as alderman. He had worked as a drayman and hostler, then opened a saloon at 117 Beale in 1883, and later became a contractor. He was elected to four-year terms in 1882 and 1886, at a time when five aldermen made up the Public Works Board and three aldermen were commissioners of fire and police.

Fred Savage became the first black to serve on the Board of Education in 1885. He was a shoemaker who had a store on Beale.

Benjamin Franklin Woodson served as deputy surveyor of customs in Memphis in 1886. He was born a free man in Ohio in 1844, where his father's farm was one of the first stops along the Underground Railroad for fleeing slaves.

He attended Wilberforce College and was admitted to the bar in Ohio in 1879. He moved to Memphis around 1881, and became a contractor because he could make a better living for his family. He died in 1912.

Woodson's cousin, Thomas F. Cassells, also made his home in Memphis, where he practiced law as early as 1876 and later held several political of the Port of Memphis.

When Cassells was one of the citizens chosen to escort former president Ulysses S. Grant on his visit to Memphis in 1880, Cassells was serving as assistant attorney general. He was elected to the Tennessee General Assembly representing Memphis and Shelby County from 1881 to 1883.

Isham F. Norris was another African-American who represented Shelby County in the state legislature. He came to Memphis from Fayetteville and had a coal and wood business and a grocery store.

Norris served in the legislature in 1881-83, and again in 1891-93. It was said that he had a dispute with some white man over business, and left overnight for Oklahoma, later settling in Seattle, where he again became active in politics.

Roberta Church and Ronald Walter, in their book Nineteenth Century Memphis Families of Color, 1850 - 1900, quote the Journal of Negro History as saying, "The men from Memphis and Haywood County were more highly educated than the others. They were free men of high class and up to the standard of the whites who were sent to the legislature in those days."

Josiah T. Settle had a political career in Mississippi before coming to Memphis. He was born in 1850 in East Tennessee. His mother was a slave, and his father was a planter who freed her and their eight children and sent them to Ohio.

Settle was educated at Oberlin College and was a member of the first law school class to graduate from Howard University in 1875. He moved to Mississippi, where he practiced law in Sardis, and was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1883.

Settle moved to Memphis in 1885 and became assistant attorney general of the Criminal Court of Shelby County. He died in 1915.

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Perre Magness is a Memphis freelance writer.

Sources:

Roberta Church and Ronald Walter, Nineteenth Century Memphis Families of Color, 1850 -1990 (1987).

Annette Church and Roberta Church, The Robert R. Churches of Memphis (1974).

Green P. Hamilton, The Bright Side of Memphis (1908).

Lester C Lamon, Blacks in Tennessee 1791-1970 (University of Tennessee Press, 1981)

David Tucker, Black Pastors and Leaders, Memphis 1919 - 1972 (Memphis State University Press, 1975).

The Commercial Appeal, Black Achievements section, February 1989.

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