HR0223 99TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

HR0223 LRB099 09743 MST 29953 r

HOUSE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois House of Representatives wish to recognize the life of John William Edinburgh Thomas, the first African-American member of the Illinois General Assembly; and

WHEREAS, John W.E. Thomas was elected, as a State Representative, to the 30th Illinois General Assembly in November of 1876, a time when many Illinoisans living still had memories of when the Prairie State was a frontier and they themselves were facing the challenges of settling it and using it as land for crops and railroads; and

WHEREAS, John W.E. Thomas was also a pioneer; he was born a slave on May 1, 1847 in Montgomery, Alabama; he learned early how to read and write, a craft which many of his peers were also eager to learn; as a teenager during the American Civil War, he engaged in the dangerous work of teaching literacy to more than 3 dozen African-Americans, a crime under the laws of the Confederacy; and

WHEREAS, During the Civil War, the Confederacy imposed martial law and military justice upon African-Americans who violated its laws within their borders; facing these dangers, John W.E. Thomas was supported by his wife and companion, Maria Reynolds, whom he married in 1864; and

WHEREAS, After the war, John W.E. Thomas, Maria, and their daughter Hester Thomas moved to Chicago in late 1869 or early 1870; the Thomas family found a fast-growing pioneer city filled with wooden buildings, small factories, and small shops; John opened a live-in grocery store on Federal Street near the railroad tracks; he and his family became worshippers at Olivet Baptist Church, a fast-growing, African-American-oriented place of worship in their now-vanished South Loop neighborhood; and

WHEREAS, As well as his grocery store, John W.E. Thomas continued his activities as a school teacher; with a special emphasis on adult and African-American education, his work helped people left out of the early public schools of the time; a major Chicago newspaper, the Chicago "InterOcean", paid tribute to him after he "established the first school for colored [sic] people in Chicago, being himself a teacher. The child and the gray-haired freedman, side by side, learned their letters in his home."; and

WHEREAS, During the years that followed the Chicago Fire of 1871, semi-skilled and skilled craft labor was in tremendous demand in Chicago construction and manufacturing; trends encouraged white and black Chicagoans to work together for economic growth; this economic cooperation led, in turn, to political cooperation; and

WHEREAS, Olivet Baptist Church and its members, many of them small business people, were treated as a part of the Chicago Republican Party; church leaders, including John W.E. Thomas, were chosen to represent the Third Ward at the Cook County GOP convention of 1874; and

WHEREAS, In 1876, party leaders chose John W.E. Thomas as one of the South Side's candidates to run in November for the Illinois House; the young teacher and grocer had to face substantial opposition, including opposition on racial grounds, to win election; press clippings from the race show that some of the opposition came from his own Republican Party; making personal speaking appearances throughout his district, he courageously overcame these criticisms and was elected with 11,532 votes to represent what was then the Second District in Springfield; he served in 1877 and 1878, years that saw hard work in Springfield as the new State Capitol was being built; in 1878, he suffered the tragic loss of his wife Maria; he would remarry twice and father 7 additional children, 4 of whom would join Hester in living to-adulthood; and

WHEREAS, John W.E. Thomas left the Illinois House in 1879 to study law and win admission to the Illinois bar; in 1882 and 1884, he was elected to serve 2 additional terms in Springfield, this time from the Third District in Chicago; as a lawyer, he was appointed to the House Judiciary Committee; he sponsored and persuaded his committee colleagues to support Illinois's first Civil Rights law to ban racial discrimination in public places; even as "Jim Crow" laws were becoming the norm in states like his native Alabama, Illinois was enacting this pioneer law to try to reduce this conduct within the State; and

WHEREAS, John W.E. Thomas lived the rest of his life in Chicago, practicing law and working successfully in real estate; as a lifelong Republican, he ran for the Illinois electoral college of 1892-93 as a supporter of President Benjamin Harrison; he died in Chicago on December 18, 1899; upon his death, local newspapers credited him with being one of the wealthiest men on Chicago's South Side, with an estate valued at more than $100,000 in gold; and

WHEREAS, While John W.E. Thomas did not present himself to the Chicago press as a practitioner of racial identity politics, he was aware of his standing as the first African-American member of the Illinois General Assembly; the way he described his feelings was with these words: "Without egotism, I may be permitted to say that it was a proud day for me and for the colored people of the great Republican State of Illinois when, for the first time, and that in the Centennial year, a colored man took his seat in the Legislature of that state which gave to the world the emancipator of my race, the martyred Lincoln."; and

WHEREAS, John W.E. Thomas' reference to the Centennial year of the United States of America, 1876, shows where he stands in the history of Illinois and the history of our Nation; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE NINETY-NINTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we commend the work, success, and memory of John William Edinburgh Thomas, the first African-American member of the Illinois House and the Illinois General Assembly; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we commend the work of David A. Joens, Archivist of the State of Illinois, for his work in researching the life of John W.E. Thomas, published in his 2012 book "From Slave to State Legislator: John W.E. Thomas, Illinois First African American Lawmaker", published by the Southern Illinois University Press; and be it further

RESOLVED, That suitable copies this resolution should be presented to the Black Caucus of the Illinois General Assembly and to David A. Joens of the Illinois State Archives.