When did Reconstruction end?

ryanteaguebeckwith — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 10:55:27 -0400

Was Eva Clayton the first black Congressional representative from North Carolina since Reconstruction?

In a robocall, the former U.S. representative urges voters to make Beverly Perdue the first woman governor of North Carolina and notes her own history as a record-breaker.

"As many of you know I was the first woman from North Carolina ever elected to Congress and I was the first African-American elected since Reconstruction," she says.

Before Clayton's win in a 1992 special election, the last black Congressional representative was George Henry White, who was elected in 1898.

That's about two decades after the end of Reconstruction, which historians typically peg at 1877, though White is often — and inaccurately — referred to as the last African-American Congressman of the Reconstruction era.

The next black Congressman elected was in 1928, and the next black Congressman from the South was not until 1972.

Clayton call for Perdue