Menard, John Willis

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John Willis Menard
1838–1893

Politician, poet

John Willis Menard was the first African American elected to the U.S. Congress. Though elected, he was not seated for this office. Menard went on to become a state legislator for Florida and to hold a number of civil service positions. Menard began various news publications throughout the course of his life that advocated for African American rights. Menard was also a poet; he wrote and published Lays in Summer Lands. Menard made many contributions as an activist, politician, writer, and publisher.

Joins Post-Civil War New Orleans

John Willis Menard was born in Kaskaskia, Illinois on April 3, 1838. Details of his early life and family background are scarce, but it is known that he and his family were not slaves. It is believed that both of his parents were born in Illinois, yet they were also believed to be of French Creole descent and to have had ties with New Orleans, Louisiana. Menard spent his first eighteen years in the small historic village of Kaskaskia. He worked on a farm in or around Kaskaskia during his adolescence. Menard attended an abolitionist school in Sparts, Illinois before attending Iberia College where James Monroe Trotter was a fellow classmate.

In 1859, twenty-one-year-old Menard delivered a speech at an event in Springfield, Illinois celebrating the end of slavery in the West Indies. In 1860, Menard penned and published An Address to Free Colored People of Illinois. During the Civil War, Menard became the first African American to work as a clerk in the Bureau of Immigration at the Interior Department in Washington D.C. The government sent Menard to the South American country of Belize to investigate the country as a possible foreign land for African Americans to relocate. Menard personally favored African Americans' immigration to foreign lands. The journey rendered fruitless for his original search, but while traveling, he met and soon married Elizabeth, a young Jamaican woman. They had three children.

Wins in Louisiana but Not Seated

Menard left the Interior Department for New Orleans, Louisiana to be active in Reconstruction of the state after the Civil War. He founded and edited two newspapers: first, the Free State, then the Radical Standard. In 1868, he won the Republican nomination for Louisiana's Second Congressional District. On the day of the election, November 3, 1868, it was immediately clear that Menard won, but his opponent, Caleb S. Hunt, contested the results. Menard was the first African American to stand on the floor of the United States House of Representatives during legislative proceedings in February 27, 1869 when he made the case for his victory in Louisiana. It is reported that his audience was captivated; still, the Committee of Elections for the House of Representatives refused to seat him. Menard was financially compensated. He received the same amount of pay that he would have received if he would have been seated.

Menard sold the Radical Standard in 1871 and moved to Jacksonville, Florida. He was appointed a clerk in the city's post office and he served as a state legislator between 1873 and 1875 while editing the newspaper, the Sun. Menard was appointed a collector of revenues position with the state after his term expired. In 1876, he was appointed as a delegate to the 1876 Republican Convention in Cincinnati. Menard was very unhappy with the white leadership of the Republican Party and sharply criticized them for exploiting the black community in order to get votes. This led Menard to coalition build with anyone who shared his agenda, no matter what their party affiliation. He would sometimes break with his own party and support Independents running for office. On a few occasions, he supported Democrats.

In 1876, Menard joined many, including Josiah Walls, in opposing the reelection of incumbent Florida governor Marcellus L. Stearns. Menard supported Stearns's opponent, Democrat George T. Drew, for governor, though Menard did support Republican Rutherford B. Hayes for president. Both Drew and Hayes won the 1876 election. In appreciation of Menard's support, Drew reappointed Menard to the position of justice of the peace in Duval County, a position that Stearns had initially given to him. African Americans in Florida criticized President Hayes for abandoning the South to the Democrats, but Menard promoted working with whoever was in office.

In 1879, Menard wrote and published Lays in Summer Lands, a book of poems covering a wide range of topics such as politics, Catholicism, and love. Menard's poems had been published in various issues of the Christian Recorder, a Philadelphia black newspaper, in 1863 while Menard was working in the Interior Department in Washington D.C.

In 1882, he began the Key West News, which was also known as the Island City News, after he had moved to Key West to work in the city's customs house. He covered the local black community, had some public exchanges with other black publications throughout the country, and the paper had a Washington D.C. correspondent, Howard University medical student Lemuel W. Livingston. In the fall 1883, the paper was renamed the Florida News and was expanded from four to eight pages. The focus shifted from local to state issues. In May 1884, the paper's run was cut from weekly to semi-weekly.

Though Menard supported the Republican presidential ticket in 1884, he lost his customs job in Key West. Accused of having pro-Cuban sympathies, Menard was asked by the Chester Arthur presidential administration to resign. Menard admitted attending the meetings of Cuban revolutionaries, but he denied supporting any anti-Cuba actions.

Menard returned to Jacksonville in 1885 and restarted the Florida News there. He enlarged the paper's staff and opened a printing shop. His son, Willis T. Menard, was the new publisher and his son-in-law, Thomas V. Gibbs, was the associate editor. Gibbs was the son of black politician Jonathan Gibbs.

Menard remained involved in Jacksonville's black political and civic life and continued to work with all who supported civil rights regardless of race or political affiliation. He changed the name of the Florida News to the Southern Leadership in January 1886. The paper was widely read in the South in the few years after the name change, but it was most popular in Florida. Menard drifted further away from party politics, advocating self-help for blacks in the pages of his publication. The white press of Florida applauded this position, but Menard and Gibbs were taken to task many times for this philosophy.

Chronology

1838: Born in Kaskaskia, Illinois on April 3
1860: Publishes An Address to Free Colored People of Illinois
1868: Wins Republican nomination for Louisiana Congressional seat; wins general election on November 3
1869: Makes his case to Congress; first African American to stand on the floor of the United States House of Representatives during legislative proceeding; Congress refuses to seat Menard
1873–75: Serves as Florida state legislator
1893: Dies in Washington D.C. on October 8

Menard was close to T. Thomas Fortune, the editor of the vocational black newspaper the New York Tribune. Fortune, a native of Florida, kept an eye on events in his state. He and Menard often exchanged pleasantries, but the two severed their friendship over Fortune's support of the Afro-American League, a black organization that sought to take a more militant stand for black rights. Menard did not want divisiveness and a race war to erupt. He felt that racism should be gently handled, that conditions would improve over time. Fortune shot back that demanding one's rights was not an act of violence and that if black people did not demand their rights, they would never receive them.

Support for black voting rights deteriorated as a poll tax was instituted in Florida, keeping many blacks from voting. In a letter to the New York Tribune, Menard's son-in-law Thomas Gibbs lashed out against the new law that he and Menard before did not think would pass in the 1887 Florida legislative session. T. Thomas Fortune commented in the paper on Gibbs's letter, stating that he could not understand why the editors of the Southern Leader still could not see the need for the Afro-American League.

While Menard and Gibbs denounced the violence against blacks in the South, they continued to advocate a non-confrontational approach to politics and in seeking black rights. In July 1888, Menard applauded Florida governor Edward Perry for enforcing the law that only black teachers could teach in black schools. Menard asserted that this law provided employment for black teachers. The editors of the Southern Leadership criticized Frederick Douglass for an April 1888 speech that he made deploring the conditions for blacks in the South. They felt that his speech harmed blacks in light of the progress that blacks made in Florida with the 1888 elections of black judges, a city marshal, and a board of police commissioners. But a month later, Menard lamented the violence and intimidation of blacks that followed the 1888 election in Florida.

In the fall 1888, the Southern Leader forever suspended publication in the face of a devastating yellow-fever epidemic. After Benjamin Harrison won the 1888 presidential election, Menard returned to Washington D.C. where he was appointed to a clerical position in the United States census office. Menard had a change of heart about the Afro-American League and wrote a letter to Fortune's paper, now called the New York Age, praising the organization. Menard also asked President Harrison to allocate some land for blacks in the West so that they could move out of the South. In 1890, Menard launched one final publication: a monthly magazine called the National American.

John Willis Menard died on October 8, 1893 at the age of fifty-four in Washington, D.C. The Tampa Bay Press reissued the Lays in Summer Lands in 2002 with commentary provided by editors Larry Eugene Rivers, Richard Mathews, and Canter Brown Jr. On February 23, 2004, Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich proclaimed February 25, 2004, to be John Willis Menard Day in Illinois.

REFERENCES

Books

Shofner, Jerrell H. "Florida." In The Black Press in the South 1865–1979. Ed. Henry Lewis Suggs. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983.

Online

"IGNN: History Press Release. Pierre Menard Home Program February 22 to Recognize Nineteenth-Century African-American Poet and Activist." Illinois Government News Network. http://www.illinois.gov/PressReleases/ShowPressRelease.cfm?SubjectID=27&RecNum=2763 (Accessed 23 December 2005).

"Proclamations." 2004 Illinois Register of Governmental Agency Rules, Volume 28, Issue 11. 12 March 2004. http://www.sos.state.il.us/departments/index/register/register_volume28_issue11.pdf (Accessed 27 February 2006).

Stone, Spessard. "John Willis Menard" Rootsweb.com. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/∼crackerbarrel/Menard.html (Accessed 20 December 2005).