March 17, 1825
Birth of Benjamin Turner (R-AL), emancipated slave elected to House from Alabama in 1870; delegate to 1880 Republican National Convention.
Benjamin
Turner |
Born a slave in Halifax County, North Carolina, he was taken to Alabama at the age of five. Educated secretly, Turner eventually became an entrepreneur and stable owner in Selma. In 1867, he was elected tax collector and, two years later, city councilman. In 1870, Turner won election as a member of the Forty-second Congress. He introduced measures to appropriate $200,000 for construction of a federal building in Selma and a bill for relief for St. Paul’s Episcopal Church of that city.
He also got passage of a bill allowing Black civil war soldiers a pension of eight dollars a month. After politics, he returned to farming, confining his political activities to the county level. Benjamin Turner died on March 21, 1894.
