Henry Plummer Cheatham

Henry Plummer Cheatham
Born: December 27, 1857, (near Henderson) Granville County, North Carolina, NC
Died: November 29, 1935, Oxford, NC
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"Born into slavery in what is now Henderson, North Carolina, Henry Cheatham was the child of an enslaved domestic worker about who little is known. An adolescent after the American Civil War, Cheatham benefited from country’s short lived commitment to provide educational opportunities to all children.

He attended public school where he excelled in his studies. After high school Cheatham was admitted to Shaw University, founded for the children of freedmen, graduating with honors in 1882. He earned a masters degree from the same institution in 1887.

During his senior year of college, Cheatham helped to found a home for African American orphans. In 1883, Cheatham was hired as the Principal of the State Normal School for African Americans, at Plymouth, North Carolina. He held the position for a year when his career as an educator gave way to his desire to enter state politics.
Cheatham ran a successful campaign for the office of Registrar of Deeds at Vance County, North Carolina in 1884, and he served the county for four years. He also studied law during his first term in office, with an eye toward national politics. In 1888 Henry Cheatham ran for Congress as a Republican in North Carolina’s Second Congressional District. He defeated his white Democratic opponent, Furnifold M. Simmons."
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"Cheatham was elected as a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from 1889 to 1893 from North Carolina. He was one of only five African Americans elected to Congress from the South in the Jim Crow era of the last decade of the nineteenth century, as disfranchisement reduced black voting. After that, no African Americans would be elected from the South until 1972 and none from North Carolina until 1992."
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"In 1897, President William McKinley's administration appointed Cheatham as federal Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia, a prestigious and lucrative patronage position which he held through 1901 and the change in administrations. Cheatham, a friend and ally of Booker T. Washington, was criticized for standing by McKinley, as the Republican administration did little to offset the rising tide of Jim Crow racism and segregation in the South. New state constitutions were passed in the South from 1890 to 1908 that disfranchised black citizens for more than half a century, but their provisions generally survived US Supreme Court review. If one provision was declared unconstitutional, southern states passed new ones to create new obstacles.

After four years in Washington, D.C., Cheatham returned to farm in Littleton, North Carolina.

He moved to Oxford, NC when appointed as superintendent of the state Colored Orphan Asylum, which was located there. He served in that position for 28 years. Cheatham had supported the state legislation to establish the orphanage in 1883, as part of Reconstruction-era programs to provide for the welfare of people. He "was its superintendent and to him more than any man, is due the credit for the remarkable progress and development of the institution."[10] He died in Oxford in 1935."

Photo Source:https://www.ncdcr.gov/.../henry-plummer-cheatham-educator...

Source:http://www.blackpast.org/.../cheatham-henry-plummer-1857...

Source: "Henry P. Cheatham" Archived 2008-10-30 at the Wayback Machine, North Carolina History, Campbell University
"Henry Plummer Cheatham" Archived 2010-07-07 at the Wayback Machine, Black Americans in Congress, US Congress, accessed 5 June 2012
Charlotte Observer Are new N.C. A&T and N.C. Central scholarships aimed at smoothing way for name changes at 3 other black schools?, The Charlotte Observer, May 24, 2016
Our Campaigns - NC District 02 Race - Nov 06, 1888 at www.ourcampaigns.com
"The Negroes’ Temporary Farewell: Jim Crow and the Exclusion of African Americans from Congress, 1887–1929" Archived 2012-04-21 at the Wayback Machine, Black Americans in Congress, US Congress, accessed 5 June 2012

"Henry P. Cheatham" Archived 2010-07-07 at the Wayback Machine, Black Americans in Congress, US Congress
Our Campaigns - NC District 02 Race - Nov 04, 1890 at www.ourcampaigns.com
Our Campaigns - NC District 02 Race - Nov 08, 1892 at www.ourcampaigns.com
Our Campaigns - NC District 02 Race - Nov 06, 1894 at www.ourcampaigns.com
"My Future Depends Upon You!", The Colored Orphanage of North Carolina, (Oxford, N.C.), 1939, Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina