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Politics and Government

Early Political Activities

What leading African American was the first black delegate to a national political convention?

In 1866 Frederick Douglass (1817–1895) was the first black delegate to a national political convention, that of the National Loyalists’ Union Party. In 1872 he was the first black to be nominated as a vice-presidential candidate at the Republican Convention, by the National Woman Suffrage Association. He received one vote. During Reconstruction, he demanded the vote for the freedman. He moved to the nation’s capital and became the first black recorder of deeds in 1881 and U.S. minister to Haiti in 1889.



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