James T. Rapier Black suffrage sent fourteen African American congressmen to Washington, D.C., during Reconstruction, among them James T. Rapier of Alabama. Temporarily at least, he and his black colleagues helped shape post-emancipation society. In 1874, when Rapier spoke on behalf of a civil rights bill, he described the humiliation of being denied service at inns all along his route from Montgomery to Washington. Elsewhere in the world, he said, class and religion were invoked to defend discrimination. In Europe, “they have princes, dukes, lords”; in India, “brahmans or priests, who rank above the sudras or laborers.” But in America, “our distinction is color.”
Alabama Department of Archives and History.