James E. O’Hara was the only Black Member on the first
day of the 48th Congress (1883–1885), having succeeded
on his fourth attempt to win a seat representing North
Carolina’s “Black Second” district. A resolute legislator, he
worked to restore the civil rights that had been stripped
from African Americans since the end of Reconstruction
in 1877. “I for one, sir, hold that we are all Americans,” he
told his congressional colleagues. “That no matter whether
a man is white or black he is an American citizen, and that
the aegis of this great Republic should be held over him
regardless of his color.”1
James Edward O’Hara was born February 26, 1844, in
New York City. His father was from Ireland, and his mother
had roots in the Caribbean. O’Hara spent time in his youth
in what was then known as the Danish West Indies—now the
U.S. Virgin Islands. By 1862, O’Hara had arrived in Union-occupied
eastern North Carolina with a group of New York-based
missionaries. Well-educated, he taught primary school
to free Black children in New Bern and Goldsboro, North
Carolina. In 1864, O’Hara married Ann Maria Harris; the
couple separated two years later and eventually divorced.
They had one son. O’Hara married Elizabeth Eleanor Harris
in 1869, and they had a son, Raphael.2
O’Hara began making a name for himself in Republican
Party circles soon after the Civil War. He served as a
secretary at the North Carolina freedmen’s convention in
1866 and at Republican Party meetings in 1867. At the
1868 North Carolina constitutional convention, he was
a delegate and an engrossing clerk. His party activism
paved the way for O’Hara to receive valuable patronage
positions. From 1868 to 1869, O’Hara was an engrossing
clerk in the state house of representatives. He also worked
for the U.S. Treasury Department in Washington, DC, as
a clerk for about two years. During this time, he studied
law at Howard University in Washington, DC, but there
is no record of his graduation. The first African American
admitted to the North Carolina bar in 1873, he established
a private practice in Enfield, North Carolina. That same
year, he was elected chairman of the Halifax County board
of commissioners.3
O’Hara began his long quest for a seat in the U.S.
Congress in 1874, when he made a bid to represent
North Carolina’s northeastern “Black Second” district.
Centered in the cotton-growing region of the state, the
district acquired its nickname because 58 percent of the
population was African American—the largest portion of any congressional district in the state. O’Hara lost the Republican nomination to John Adams Hyman, who
became the first Black lawmaker to represent North Carolina
in the Congress. With Democrats having regained control
of the state government and a patronage position unlikely to
be forthcoming, O’Hara sought to keep his political career
alive amid narrowing opportunities. In part as a result, he
remained committed to winning the congressional seat.4
While not a candidate for Congress in 1876, O’Hara
nonetheless faced great difficulty in that year’s tumultuous
election season. He was forced to resign his post as a
presidential elector in the face of threats to his life from local
Democrats and prejudice from White Republicans. “I may
have to a certain extent yielded to a case of prejudice,” he
said justifying his resignation to local newspapers, “but by
whom is this prejudice fostered, kept alive and used?”5
Despite that experience, O’Hara remained politically
active and made another attempt at the “Black Second”
nomination in 1878. He obtained the Republican
endorsement over Hyman, another former Representative,
Curtis Hooks Brogden, and three other candidates. The
fight for the nomination lasted 29 ballots at the contentious
party district convention. In the general election, O’Hara’s
opponents accused him of corruption during his tenure
on the board of commissioners and even charged him
with bigamy amid questions as to whether he was legally
divorced from his first wife. O’Hara’s American citizenship
was also debated by those who claimed he was born in the
Caribbean, not New York. O’Hara had been in the process
of applying for naturalization when he discovered evidence
of his New York birth. Dissatisfied with his defenses, state
Republican leaders gathered three weeks before Election
Day to try to nominate another Black candidate, James H.
Harris, to take O’Hara’s place. But O’Hara refused to
step down, and despite the attacks and the loss of party
support, he won the three-way race between the two
Republican candidates and Democrat William Hodges
Kitchin, a member of a politically powerful family in North
Carolina. Citing technicalities, however, election canvassers
subsequently eliminated enough of O’Hara’s votes in three
counties to hand Kitchin the victory. O’Hara made a failed
attempt to demand a recount at the state level before he
formally contested the election in the House.6
While the House Committee on Elections considered
his case in 1879, O’Hara appeared before a Senate Select
Committee investigating the causes of Black emigration
from the South. He testified to the relative prosperity of
Black landowners near his home in Halifax County, North
Carolina, and shared his view that Black laborers fared
better in the absence of competition from White immigrant
labor. O’Hara stated that he opposed Black emigration from
the South; he expected prejudice in all parts of the country
and distrusted advertising by “agents that are going around
through the country making glowing representations and
distributing highly-wrought descriptive circulars, telling
how easily houses and lands can be obtained in the North.”
When asked about the political pressures put upon Black
North Carolinians, O’Hara first condemned members of
his own party. “I say that the colored Republicans of the
South have more to fear from the white Republicans than
from the Democrats,” he observed. “And there is always
a combination between the white Republicans against
any intelligent colored Republican who seeks to aspire
to office.” O’Hara also testified that racial prejudice and
discrimination were not only a problem for southern states,
such as North Carolina; for O’Hara, bigotry was a national
problem. “I suppose if a colored man should attempt to take
a principal seat in a theater in North Carolina he would
have the same difficulty as in New York.”7
A member of O’Hara’s own party, Senator Henry William
Blair of New Hampshire called him a “carpetbagger from
New York” and implied that his motives for testifying
were cynical: attempting to keep the support of Black
Republicans in his district—his most dependable voters—and currying favor with the Democratic majority in the
46th Congress (1879–1881) to win his pending contested
election contest. O’Hara responded calmly to Blair’s
accusations and focused on conveying the difficult situation
faced by Black Americans who felt that they needed greater
independence from Republican power brokers but who also
feared the designs of the openly racist Democratic party.
“I am one of those who think the American negro ought
to be left to work out his own destiny, and that he has been
a foundling and a ward too long already,” O’Hara stated.
“At the same time, I believe that no man ought to be made
discontented in his condition simply in order that he may
be cheated out of that which he has.”8
The Committee on Elections did not report on O’Hara’s
case until February 17, 1881, well into the third session of
the 46th Congress. The committee accused O’Hara of not
submitting his contest within the legal time window and
rejected his complaint. Meanwhile, O’Hara again sought the congressional seat in the 1880 election but lost the Republican nomination to Orlando Hubbs, a New York
native who had moved to North Carolina in 1865.9
Between congressional bids, O’Hara was active in local
and national politics. By 1881, he had aligned himself with
a statewide anti-Prohibition campaign. That same year,
he made his fourth attempt to gain the “Black Second”
seat, bolstered by discontented local Black politicians
who believed they were being marginalized within the
party. At the state Republican convention, two other
candidates opposed him: the incumbent Hubbs and
Lotte W. Humphrey. None of the candidates controlled
the convention’s first ballot, and all three ruthlessly
attacked their opponents while promising patronage for
their potential supporters. Humphrey eventually bowed
to O’Hara, giving him the majority of the delegates. An
O’Hara delegate called for his nomination by voice vote.
Though the crowd roared in O’Hara’s favor, the convention
chairman declared the vote to have gone for Hubbs and
quickly adjourned.10
Both sides claimed victory. In the following months,
Hubbs and O’Hara demanded their opponent’s withdrawal
from the race. Shortly before the election, Hubbs capitulated
to pressure from O’Hara’s forces, who spoke for the majority-Black district electorate when they threatened to abandon
the state Republican ticket if their candidate was not on
the ballot. O’Hara was unopposed in the general election.
Reapportionment in 1883 changed the borders of O’Hara’s
district in his favor, increasing the Black population with the
addition of Bertie County. In 1884, he was easily re-elected
over Democrat Frederick Augustus Woodard, taking 59
percent of the total return.11
As part of the Republican minority in the House,
O’Hara received appointments to the Committee on Mines
and Mining and the Committee on Expenditures on Public
Buildings when he took his place in the 48th Congress
(1883–1885) in December 1883. He later traded his Mines
and Mining position for a spot on the Invalid Pensions
Committee in the 49th Congress (1885–1887). O’Hara
was active on this committee, referring more than 100
individual pension cases to the House for consideration.
He also held a leadership role on an ad hoc subcommittee
charged with reporting on a pension benefit bill for
individuals with eye injuries.12
On Capitol Hill, O’Hara delivered concise speeches
and introduced legislation designed to protect Black
Americans from discrimination. On January 8, 1884,
O’Hara boldly proposed a constitutional amendment to
ensure equal accommodations for African Americans on
public transportation. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 had
nominally guaranteed that right, but a series of Supreme
Court decisions rendered in 1883 had struck down the law,
denying Congress the authority to prohibit discrimination
by private individuals. The House refused to consider
O’Hara’s measure. The following December, O’Hara
proposed an amendment to regulate interstate travel
and commerce, calling for equal accommodations for all
railroad passengers, regardless of color. Under existing state
laws, when a railroad passed into some southern states,
first-class Black passengers were typically forced to move
to a second-class car. “It is not a race question, nor is it a
political action. It rises far above all these,” he said while
introducing the amendment. “It is plain, healthy legislation,
strictly in keeping with the enlightened sentiment and spirit
of the age in which we live; it is legislation looking to and
guarding the rights of every citizen of this great Republic,
however humble may be his station in our social scale.”
O’Hara capitalized on contemporary arguments favoring
federal regulation of interstate commerce, maintaining
that if Congress had authority over freight passing between
states, it could regulate how railroads served their customers.
O’Hara’s amendment passed on the first vote, but
Democratic opponents quickly countered with their own
amendment allowing railroads to classify passengers at their
own discretion. The final bill passed—without O’Hara’s
vote—in the 48th Congress with language so vague that the
railroads easily continued their discriminatory practices.13
On January 12, 1885, O’Hara offered a bill that required
restaurants in the nation’s capital to charge customers
equally without discriminating on the basis of race or risk
fines up to $100. Referred to the Committee on the District
of Columbia, the bill was never reported back. He reiterated
his request at the opening of the 49th Congress, but the bill
met the same fate.14
On March 17, a White mob stormed a Carrollton,
Mississippi, courthouse where a White man was being
charged with the attempted murder of two Black men.
The mob opened fire on all the Black men in attendance,
killing as many as ten. Afterward, O’Hara introduced a
resolution requesting that Speaker John G. Carlisle of
Kentucky appoint a five-member committee to investigate
the incident and issue a report. His original request was rejected before it could be submitted to the Rules
Committee, and a renewed request submitted the following
month was referred to the committee but never reported.15
As the Representative of a coastal district, O’Hara sought
river and harbor appropriations for North Carolina in
nearly every session of his congressional service. He pursued
funding for waterway improvements to support his district’s
cotton-growing industry. Although most of O’Hara’s requests
were rejected, he obtained funding to remove obstructions
from one North Carolina stream and to expand another.16
Recognizing that a great number of his constituents
were laborers, he opposed the passage of a labor arbitration
bill that allowed a third party to settle disputes between
employers and employees. Although he favored arbitration
in the abstract, O’Hara wanted to concentrate on organizing
unions to defend labor interests.17
O’Hara led the way in pursuit of legislation recognizing
the wartime contributions of his Black colleague Robert
Smalls of South Carolina. During the Civil War, while still
enslaved, Smalls commandeered a Confederate transport
ship, the Planter, sailed it out of Charleston harbor under
the cloak of darkness, and turned it over to the Union naval
blockade. Smalls’s Black House colleagues repeatedly sought
compensation for him equal to the value of the ship as a
reward for his actions more than 20 years earlier. O’Hara
was the first of many Black Congressmen to submit such a
bill in the 49th Congress; Smalls eventually received a sum
of $5,000 in 1900.18
Internal feuds among “Black Second” Republicans ended
O’Hara’s congressional career. Although O’Hara won 75
percent of the 1886 nominating convention’s vote, he faced
stinging accusations that he was unable to meet the needs of
his constituents, that he did not distribute available patronage
positions to worthy Black aspirants, and that he preferred to
associate with White colleagues and only congregated with
the Black community in the district when he needed its votes.
Another Black Republican, Israel B. Abbott, opposed O’Hara
in the 1886 race, running as an Independent Republican.
Abbott had one term in the state legislature to his credit, had
served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention
in 1880, and emphasized that he had roots in the district—in contrast with O’Hara’s New York origins. Nevertheless,
O’Hara won most of the Black vote,
taking 40 percent to
Abbott’s 15 percent. However, Democrat Furnifold McLendel
Simmons capitalized on the Republican fissure, capturing 45
percent of the vote, which was enough for victory. Two years
later, O’Hara again sought congressional nomination, but
lost to Henry Plummer Cheatham, who would reclaim the
Second District by defeating Simmons in 1888.19
O’Hara returned to his law practice, partnering with
his son, Raphael. He began publishing a newspaper, the
Enfield Progress, shortly before his death in New Bern,
North Carolina, on September 15, 1905.20
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