An ongoing illustrative history study
This piece originally posted 10/5/2020
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Another name you almost certainly didn't know: Texas State Senator George Thompson Ruby, the first-ever elected Black representative in a Southern state. Ruby served during the Reconstruction era, from 1869 to 1873.
Ruby was born a free man in New York, and later moved with his family to Maine, where he was educated and ultimately embarked on a teaching career. He later took a job in Haiti writing as a correspondent for Pine and Palm, an abolitionist publication. In 1866, in the aftermath of the Civil War, he moved to Louisiana and attempted to establish an integrated school in Jacksboro, but wouldn't you just know it; a mob took issue with this and forced him to flee to Galveston, Texas.
Ruby joined the Freedmen's Bureau and took a job as a traveling agent (while at the same time writing for the New Orleans Tribune). It was during this time that Ruby cultivated many political acquaintances (including Texas governor Edmund Davis), and Galveston area businessmen. Ultimately Ruby was elected to the state Senate from the 12th District. While his time in the state legislature was comparatively brief, he quickly became known to many of his colleagues as a quietly tactful and diplomatic problem-solver; often the last to speak but also the first to solve the problem. He advocated for incorporation of the railroads and helped to form the Labor Union of Colored Men.
When the influence of the Radical Republicans waned in the sourthern states, Ruby chose not to seek re-election and returned to private life in 1873. He returned to journalism and edited the New Orleans Observer. In his final years he was a prominent advocate for the Exoduster movement --a migration of Blacks out of the South to escape racial violence, resettling in states such as Kansas, Oklahoma and Colorado.
Next page - Lesson 45: Oliver W. Hill, Sr.