A seasoned local and state politician, Thomas E. Miller
joined the U.S. House of Representatives after a contested
election in 1890. Miller brought his extensive experience
fighting for Black civil and political rights in post-Civil War
South Carolina to an abbreviated term in the 51st Congress
(1889–1891). With little time to legislate, Miller used his
new position as a platform to protest the deterioration of
Black civil and political rights occurring in the South. “I shall
not be muffled here,” Miller declared on the House Floor.
“I am in part the representative of the living; of those whose
rights are denied; of those who are slandered by the press, on
the lecture platform, in the halls of legislation, and oftentimes
by men in the livery of heaven, and I deem it my supreme
duty to raise my voice, though feebly, in their defense.”1
Thomas Ezekiel Miller was born on June 17, 1849, in
Ferrebeeville, South Carolina. He was raised by Richard
and Mary Ferrebee Miller. Many years later, Thomas Miller
recalled that his father was White and claimed that his
mother was the daughter of Judge Thomas Heyward, who
had signed the Declaration of Independence.2
By the late 1850s, Thomas Miller was living in
Charleston, South Carolina, attending illegal schools for
free Black children, and selling the Charleston Mercury
newspaper at hotels. During the Civil War, Miller delivered
newspapers on the railroad line that ran between Charleston
and Savannah, Georgia. He was made assistant conductor of
the railroad, which required him to wear the uniform of the
Confederate army because the rebel government controlled
the railroads. Captured by Union forces in January 1865,
he spent two weeks in a Savannah prison camp before
his release. When the Civil War ended, Miller went to
Hudson, New York, where once again he sold newspapers
on a railroad line. He finished his education at the Hudson
School, just north of New York City, before earning a
scholarship to Lincoln University, a school for African-American students, in Chester County, Pennsylvania. After
graduating in 1872, Miller returned to South Carolina,
where he won his first elective office as school commissioner
of coastal Beaufort County. He subsequently moved
to Columbia and studied law at the newly integrated
University of South Carolina. He continued his legal studies
under the tutelage of state solicitor P.L. Wiggins and state
supreme court justice Franklin L. Moses Sr. Admitted to
the South Carolina bar in December 1875, Miller set up
his practice in Beaufort, South Carolina, seat of the coastal
county where he had won his first election just three years before. In 1874 he married Anna Hume, with whom he had nine children.3
Shortly after establishing his law practice, Thomas Miller
was elected to the state general assembly where he served
until 1880 before securing a term in the state senate. Miller
was deeply involved in attempts to revive the flagging
South Carolina Republican Party after Democrats led
by Governor Wade Hampton gained control of the state
in 1877. He served as a member of the Republican state
executive committee from 1878 to 1880. Miller was also a
customs inspector and served in the state militia throughout
the 1880s. He unsuccessfully sought the Republican
nomination for a U.S. House seat in 1884, and in 1886 he
returned to the state house of representatives for one year.4
In 1888, Miller entered the race for a seat in the
U.S. House that had been formerly occupied by Black
Representative and Civil War hero Robert Smalls. Covering
the center of the South Carolina’s pre-Civil War rice and
cotton plantations, the “shoestring district” had narrow
borders that twisted from Sumter County in the center of
the state to Georgetown and parts of Charleston on the
coast. African-American residents were 82 percent of the
gerrymandered district’s population. Republicans expected
Smalls to run in 1888 to avenge his 1886 election loss to
Democrat William Elliott, an outcome Smalls unsuccessfully
contested. But Miller’s supporters convinced Smalls to defer.
Facing the incumbent Elliott, Miller received financial
backing from Randall D. George, one of the wealthiest
Black men in the state. Representative Elliott was initially
declared the winner by slightly more than 1,000 votes, with
54 percent to Miller’s 45 percent of the vote.5
Miller contested the election, charging that many
registered Black voters had been prevented from casting
their ballots. Though the Republican-controlled Committee
on Elections in the 51st Congress ruled in Miller’s favor, his
case did not come up on the House Floor until September
23, 1890, immediately after a vote seating Virginia’s first
Black Representative, John M. Langston. Democratic
Members had tried to obstruct the seating of Langston
by deserting the House Chamber in an effort to prevent a
quorum; however, Republican Speaker Thomas Brackett
Reed of Maine declared a quorum present and held a vote
to seat Langston.6
Inspired by their success seating Langston, House
Republicans moved quickly to take up Miller’s claim.
Representative Charles Triplett O’Ferrall of Virginia,
who was charged with looking after the Democratic Party’s
interests during the Langston vote, protested that the case
was unexpected and reiterated previous complaints that a
quorum was not present. Daniel Kerr of Iowa asked for 20
minutes to debate the nomination. Accusing Democrats of
conspiring to stonewall Miller’s consideration, Speaker Reed
shut down all protest. Shouts from the packed Republican
side of the chamber implored the Speaker to call a vote.
Over O’Ferrall’s vehement protests, the House seated
Miller by a vote of 157 to 1. Elliott was unseated, and the
following day Miller was sworn in and was assigned to the
Committee on Labor.7
Miller got to work and began introducing legislation
almost immediately. Six days after his swearing-in, he
submitted a bill to appropriate funds for the construction of
a monument to Black Union soldiers. The proposal would
have also created a commission of three former Union
generals—former Representative Benjamin Franklin Butler
of Massachusetts, Oliver O. Howard, and William Birney—tasked with choosing the monument’s location. Miller also introduced legislation to fund, construct, and operate a
home for Black Americans who had been formerly enslaved
and needed assistance in old age.8
Miller only had a week on Capitol Hill before the first
session of the 51st Congress concluded on October 1. He
then returned to South Carolina to run for re-election to
the 52nd Congress (1891–1893). In November 1890, in a
campaign once again funded by Randall George, Miller won
an apparent victory in a three-way contest that included
White Independent Republican candidate Ellery M.
Brayton and former Representative Elliott, the Democrat
whom Miller had unseated in September. Elliott insisted
the vote count was fraudulent and contested the results. On
November 9, the South Carolina supreme court, seizing on
minor details such as discrepancies in paper size, color, font
sizes, and weights, ruled that Miller’s ballots were illegal
and that Elliott was therefore the winner. Miller contested
the court’s decision before the House of Representatives
and returned for the final session of the 51st Congress
with the election still unresolved. He submitted just three
private bills during the three-month session but made two
significant speeches on pressing matters for Black Americans
in the South.9
On January 12, 1891, Miller spoke in favor of
Massachusetts Representative Henry Cabot Lodge’s bill
authorizing the federal government to oversee federal elections and protect voters from violence and intimidation. Miller urged the Senate to join the House in passing the
Lodge proposal, which he considered to be a crucial means
of undermining the “infernal lynch law” employed across
the region against African-American voters. Republicans
had delivered a number of federal appointments to Black
Americans, but voting rights protections were more
important, he said. Only then could Black Americans elect
candidates that might take action to arrest the growth of
extrajudicial terror in the South. “Offices are only emblems
of what we need and what we ought to have,” Miller
pleaded. “We need protection at home in our rights,
the chiefest of which is the right to live.”10
Miller worked to secure Black Americans a place
of respect in a peaceful and prosperous South. On
February 14, 1891, Miller rebutted a discriminatory
speech by Senator Alfred Holt Colquitt of Georgia,
in which he blamed southern freed people for slowing
regional economic development. Miller’s passionate reply
took on Colquitt point by point, arguing that it was
White southerners who encouraged economic stagnation
by exploiting Black farmers and denying Black Americans
full citizenship. “It is not the negro,” he said, “that keeps
Northern capital and Western energy from within the
borders of the South land.” Rather, he argued, “it is the
clannishness of the white citizens, it is the petty prejudices
of the white citizens . . . it is the mean jealousy of the white
citizen, it is his love of misjudging and misrepresenting
historical achievements that drive from our borders thrift,
capital, energy, and inventive genius.”11
Miller told his colleagues of the economic obstacles
facing Black agricultural workers, citing the way many
landowners paid tenant farmers in credit to be used only
at certain stores, where merchants frequently charged
exorbitant prices for their wares. He submitted copies of
these credit notes to the Congressional Record, documenting
how this system trapped Black workers in crushing debt.12
Miller, who was still contesting the 1890 election,
acknowledged that he may lose his seat for speaking out
against South Carolina Democrats but declared himself
willing to pay that price. “If it should lose me a single vote,
I will accept it. I have stated nothing but the truth; I have
done nothing but my duty; I would not for anything do
less,” he vowed. “I leave here possessed of the consciousness
that I have endeavored to defend, in this Chamber, my
people and my party.”13
When the House convened for the 52nd Congress in
December 1891, Miller, now a private citizen, appealed
to his former colleagues to overturn the state supreme
court decision and declare him the winner of the 1890
contest against Elliott. However, the makeup of the
new Congress was drastically different: Democrats now
outnumbered Republicans nearly two-to-one. Their firm
majority meant the Committee on Elections could stall
consideration of Miller’s contest. In fact, the panel did
not take up the case until one month before the end of
the Congress: February 11, 1893. Indiana Republican
Henry Underwood Johnson lambasted the committee for
traveling “at the pace of the tardy snail” and submitted a
resolution demanding that Miller’s case should be decided
within five days. Although Speaker Charles Frederick Crisp
of Georgia rejected Johnson’s resolution, the committee
soon ruled against Miller on February 25, 1893. By that
time, George Washington Murray had defeated Miller for
the Republican nomination to represent the district in the
53rd Congress (1893–1895).14
While Murray went on to win election to the U.S.
House, Miller returned to the South Carolina state
house for a single term in 1894. For the next 40 years, he
remained an active observer of politics. He also was one of
six prominent South Carolina Black politicians—including
former Representative Robert Smalls—who served as
delegates to the 1895 state constitutional convention.
White Democrats, led by then Senator Benjamin Ryan
Tillman, dominated the convention and were determined
to draft a new state constitution with measures designed to
disenfranchise the state’s Black citizens. Miller and the Black
delegates tried to delay convention resolutions and offer
alternatives but were consistently rebuffed.15
Following the convention debacle, Miller redoubled
his efforts to serve his community, especially through
education, and helped establish the Colored Normal,
Industrial, Agricultural and Mechanical College of South
Carolina, which later became South Carolina State
University. Although previously affiliated with Claflin
University, a Black school staffed by White educators,
the new college hired only Black teachers. Miller himself
was named its first president when it opened in 1896.
He held this position until 1911, when he was forced to
resign by newly elected Governor Coleman Livingston
Blease, a Democrat who Miller had opposed during the
1910 campaign.16
Miller later retired to Charleston, where he remained
active in civic affairs. He supported American entry into
World War I, helping to recruit more than 30,000 Black
soldiers. He served on a Black subcommittee of the all-White state committee on civic preparedness during
the war. By 1924, Miller had moved to Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. Miller testified before the House Judiciary
Committee that year regarding several bills proposing to
investigate race relations in the South.17
He returned to Charleston in 1934, where he lived with
his daughter as his eyesight failed. Thomas Miller died in
Charleston on April 8, 1938.18
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