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Thursday, July 10, 1868 was a typical sweltering summer day in Columbia, South Carolina. At the state capitol building, a new official took his oath of office in a typical inauguration ceremony. But when he had finished reciting the oath and removed his hand from the Bible, there was nothing typical about what had just happened.
American history had just been made…
The Palmetto State has had more than its fair share of fascinatingly colorful political characters over the years. But this one is largely lost to us today. You must dig deep into the history books to even find him. But once you do, you uncover a remarkable story.
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Francis Lewis Cardozo’s life was remarkable from the moment he arrived in this world. Born in Charleston, S.C. on February 1, 1836, his father was a Sephardic Jew from a Portuguese background, and his mother was a free black woman. Since the two races were not allowed to marry, his parents lived together in a common-law marriage. And because their mother was free, Cardozo and his siblings were as well.
Cardozo’s father, Isaac Nunez Cardozo, was a weigher at the U.S.Customs House in the Holy City. Education was held in high regard within the family. Older brother Henry Weston Cardozo became a Methodist Episcopal minister and younger brother Thomas Whitmarsh Cardozo was a journalist and educator who served as Mississippi’s superintendent of education from 1874-1876.
Francis Cardozo was a combination of both his siblings – as well as his parents.
His family was part of what was then referred to as Charleston’s “free negro elite.” The Cardozo children studied in schools for free black children and were viewed as being a rung above other people of color.
By 1850, though, events in and around Charleston began to make the Cardozos feel uneasy. Passage of the Fugitive Slave Act – coupled with the growing secession movement – convinced them it was probably a good idea to move on. Making matters worse, Isaac died in 1855 – depriving the household of its income.
Now 17, Francis worked as a carpenter and shipbuilder to help his family make ends meet.
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By 1858, Cardozo had made his way to Scotland – the epicenter of the reformed theological movement – where he studied at two prestigious seminaries before becoming an ordained Presbyterian minister.
Francis was living abroad when that whirlwind of sorrow that was the War Between the States descended on his homeland. By 1864, he couldn’t stay away any longer and accepted the pastorate of a church in New Haven, Connecticut. That December, he married Catherine Romena Howell – the daughter of a prominent abolitionist. The couple started a family that soon grew to include seven children – although two of them would die in their youth.
Francis was serving at the church when the guns fell silent at Appomattox. Later that year, he felt a different calling. He moved back to Charleston and succeeded his brother Thomas as superintendent of a school for freed blacks. He transformed it into the Avery Normal Institute, now part of today’s College of Charleston.
Staffed with “northern white missionaries and members of Charleston’s antebellum free black community,” the school’s students and teachers were “active in the state’s civil rights movement,” according to its history.
Cardozo’s work soon shifted from saving souls to making life better for the freedmen, which soon led to his involvement in Republican politics. With that turbulently chaotic and terribly misunderstood period of Reconstruction now in full swing, people were divided just as strongly as they had been during the secession crisis a decade earlier.
Francis was a delegate to the 1868 convention that rewrote South Carolina’s state constitution, chairing its education committee. He insisted racially integrated public education be made available to all students.
Once the new constitution was complete, an election was held. And in that race, Francis Cardozo made American history by being elected South Carolina’s secretary of state – becoming the nation’s first black elected state official. He was subsequently elected state treasurer in 1872 – and reelected to the position in 1876.
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Francis was an oasis of honesty in a sea of public corruption. When his opponents had him tried on trumped-up charges after he refused to play ball with them, he was acquitted.
Things took a turn for the worse once white Democrats returned to power in 1877, however. Driven from office, Cardozo was again indicted – this time as the highest-profile figure charged in a bid to drive blacks from public office. Despite an evenly mixed-race jury, he was convicted on a legally shaky vote and spent six months in prison.
Governor William Simpson eventually pardoned him in 1879.
The handwriting was clearly on the wall, though, and Francis high-tailed it out of Dodge. He later worked for the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C. prior to turning once again to teaching.
Cardozo ended his remarkable career as principal of the Colored Preparatory High School from 1884 to 1896, adding business classes to the curriculum and making it the best school of its kind in the nation.
Francis died on July 22, 1903, at age 67. In 1950, Washington, D.C.’s Central High School was renamed Cardozo Senior High School in his honor. It’s still called that today. Cardozo was also famously portrayed by actor Billy Dee Williams in the third and final installment of the North and South franchise.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
J. Mark Powell is an award-winning former TV journalist, government communications veteran, and a political consultant. He is also an author and an avid Civil War enthusiast. Got a tip or a story idea for Mark? Email him at mark@fitsnews.com.
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1 comment
Very interesting piece. But why do we as a society generally call any person who is mixed with an african race “black” when they are also another race? Barack Obama, for example, is fully half white, i.e. he is equally as white as he is black…but we call him black. In his case, given that his father fully abandoned him and it was his white side of the family that truly took care of him, I can never understand why he doesn’t call himself white (well, I’ll admit that that’s disingenuous on my part…we all know why he choses to call himself black instead of white.)