Oscar Dunn, the first African-American Lieutenant Governor
https://grandoldpartisan.typepad.com/blog/2022/11/oscar-dunn.html
Grand Old Partisan honors Oscar Dunn, born into slavery at New Orleans. His stepfather apprenticed him to a plasterer and painting contractor. After trying to escape, newspapers printed offers of a reward for his capture. He taught himself to read and later purchased his freedom.
Dunn proved to be an eloquent speaker at pro-freedom rallies in late 1864. Newspapers described him as "well educated" and "of pure negro blood". He served on the Friends of Universal Suffrage executive committee, and when that organization transformed itself into the Louisiana GOP was elected to the state central committee.
Peace restored, Dunn managed an employment agency and worked with the Louisiana Association of Workingmen. He also advised the Freedmen's Bureau, a federal agency established by the GOP-controlled 38th Congress to assist emancipated slaves. While on the city council, he ensured that "all children between the ages of 6-18 be eligible to attend public schools and that the Board of Aldermen shall provide for the education of all children...without distinction to color.
Dunn chaired the convention to write a new state constitution. April 1868, he became the first Black public official to meet with a President. That year, he was elected Lieutenant Governor. Advocating for civil rights, this ardent Republican chaired the state party's 1870 convention.
Dunn passed away suddenly on November 22nd 1871, cutting short what would have been a spectacular political career. Fifty thousand people attended his funeral procession. Had he lived, he, not Pinckney Pinchback, would have become the nation's first Black Governor, upon the impeachment and conviction of the Governor the following year.
"It was Oscar J. Dunn who led his people from the land of oppression and bondage; it was he who, when they were hard pressed by political hate, with the mountains of prejudice on one side and the great deep sea of duplicity on the other, cheered their terror-stricken hearts with his own matchless faith calling for them to stand fast and see the salvations of the Lord."