Cheatham, Henry Plummer, 1857-1935

CHEATHAM, HENRY PLUMMER, a Representative from North Carolina; born near Henderson, Granville (now Vance) County, N.C., December 27, 1857; attended the public schools, and was graduated from Shaw University, Raleigh, N.C., in 1883; principal in 1883 and 1884 of the State normal school for black students at Plymouth, N.C.; moved to Henderson, N.C., and served as register of deeds of Vance County 1884-1888; studied law but did not practice; delegate to the State convention at Raleigh in 1892; delegate to the Republican National Conventions in 1892 and 1900; elected as a Republican to the Fifty-first and Fifty-second Congresses (March 4, 1889-March 3, 1893); unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1892 to the Fifty-third Congress; recorder of deeds of the District of Columbia 1897-1901; moved to Oxford, N.C., in 1907; superintendent of the North Carolina Colored Orphanage at Oxford from 1907 until his death; one of the founders, incorporators, and directors of the same institution, founded in 1887; president of the Negro Association of North Carolina; also engaged in agricultural pursuits and lecturing; died in Oxford, N.C., November 29, 1935; interment in Harrisburg Cemetery.

<p>Henry Plummer Cheatham (December 27, 1857 – November 29, 1935) was an educator, farmer and politician, elected as a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from 1889 to 1893 from North Carolina. He was one of only five African Americans elected to Congress from the South in the Jim Crow era of the last decade of the nineteenth century, as disfranchisement reduced black voting. After that, no African Americans would be elected from the South until 1972 and none from North Carolina until 1992.</p>

<p>Born into slavery in 1857 in what is now Henderson, North Carolina, Cheatham had an enslaved mother and a white father who was rumored to be a prominent local man during the 1850s.</p>

<p>After the Civil War and emancipation, he attended the first public schools for black children in Vance County, established by the state legislature in the Reconstruction era. With the financial aid of a white friend, Robert A. Jenkins, Cheatham attended Shaw University, a historically black college in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he graduated in 1883.</p>

<p>He worked briefly as a school principal before being elected as the Register of Deeds for Vance County (1884–1888), which was majority black and Republican. In this period, the Democrats had regained control of the state legislature, but many blacks continued to be elected to local office, as the state was more than 30% black.</p>

<p>Henry Plummer Cheatham, politician, educator, and racial spokesman, was born to a house slave on a plantation near Henderson. Treated with favor by his white father, a prominent planter, Cheatham experienced few of the physical hardships of slavery. After the death of his father, another white man, Robert A. Jenkins, took an interest in him and was largely responsible for providing him the opportunity to attend Shaw University. Although Cheatham studied law, he never became a practicing attorney. After graduating from Shaw in 1883, he served briefly as principal of the black normal school in Plymouth. Both his alma mater and Howard University later conferred honorary degrees upon him.</p>

<p>A dedicated Republican, Cheatham first entered politics in 1884, when he was elected register of deeds in his native Vance County. During his four years in this office, he broadened the circle of friends, both black and white, who later figured prominently in the realization of his political ambitions. He rose rapidly in Republican councils and was elected a delegate to district, state, and national conventions. Chosen as the party's nominee for Congress from the Second Congressional District, the so-called black second, in 1888, he waged a successful campaign against the white Democratic incumbent, Furnifold M. Simmons. At the expiration of his first term in Congress, Cheatham confronted a disorganized Democratic opposition and won reelection with a larger majority than in 1888. But his attempt two years later to retain his seat proved unsuccessful. The emergence of the Populist party and dissension among black voters caused by the question of fusion between Republicans and Populists contributed to his defeat. His 1894 and 1896 efforts to return to Congress as the representative of the black second also failed. As his political star waned, that of his rival and brother-in-law, George H. White, became ascendant.</p>

<p>In the House of Representatives (1889–93), Cheatham was cast as a racial spokesman, especially in the Fifty-second Congress, in which he was the sole black member. Though he championed the cause of black people, he remained aware that his constituency also included white voters. Throughout his two terms he strived to protect the interests of small farmers and home industry—to perform in a manner that would "be best not for one race or the other but for both equally." He sponsored a federal aid-to-education bill, opposed a tax on lard made from cottonseed oil, supported trust regulation and the silver purchase act, and attempted to get the federal government to compensate the depositors of the defunct Freedman's Bank. None of the measures he sponsored were enacted into law, not even his bill for an appropriation to finance a black exhibition at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The latter proposal became embroiled in the struggle over the federal election (force) bill, which he reluctantly endorsed. Even though he failed to win congressional approval of his legislation, he was remarkably successful in obtaining federal appointments for his constituents.</p>

<p>A lifelong proponent of education and of the recognition of African–American achievements in the post–emancipation years, Henry Cheatham won back the "Black Second" district in eastern North Carolina, recapturing the seat formerly held by Representatives John Hyman and James O'Hara. "Politically, I am a Republican," he told the Washington Post in 1889. "I was elected to Congress by the Republican party and upon Republican principles and there is no question about my not cheerfully supporting the party."1 However, Cheatham's political loyalty was tempered by his increasing frustration with the party's ambivalence toward Black Americans.</p>

<p>Henry Plummer Cheatham was born into slavery in Henderson, North Carolina, on December 27, 1857. His mother was a plantation–house slave, and his father was rumored to be a prominent local white man. Cheatham was emancipated at the end of the Civil War at age eight, and because of his relative youth, his formal education was more extensive than most of his future black congressional colleagues'. Cheatham attended Henderson Public School, a makeshift school for free black children. With financial help from a white friend, Robert A. Jenkins, Cheatham attended North Carolina's first college for African Americans, Shaw University Normal School in Raleigh, earning his A.B. degree in 1882. In 1887, the school awarded him an honorary master's degree.2 While studying at Shaw, he met his first wife, fellow student Louise Cherry, who later became a music teacher. The Cheathams had three children: Charles, Mamie, and Henry Plummer, Jr. After Louise Cherry Cheatham died in 1899, Henry Cheatham married Laura Joyner, with whom he had three more children: Susie, Richard, and James.</p>

<p>Initially an educator, Cheatham soon found himself more interested in politics. In 1883, he was named principal of North Carolina's Plymouth Normal School. A year later, he was elected register of deeds for Vance County. Cheatham made valuable political connections during his two terms as register. In 1887, he founded and incorporated an orphanage for black children in Oxford, North Carolina, and in 1888, he made his first bid for Congress.</p>