The Black Calhouns: From Civil War to Civil Rights with One African American Family

by Gail Lumet Buckley

For blacks, soul meant faith, fortitude, humor, tenacity, wisdom, and the ability to overcome, despite a lifetime of “white supremacy.

were not just voting—they were winning elections. Between 1870 and 1901, twenty-two Negroes from Southern states served in the U.S. Congress: two senators and twenty representatives. Unlike Mississippi and Alabama, though, Georgia always had a white majority. But while no black from Georgia went to the Reconstruction Congress, in 1870 Coweta County elected a black man named Sam Smith to the Georgia legislature. The black Calhouns were lucky because Atlanta, whose business community courted Yankee investment, demonstrated less