(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION) ALBRIGHT GEORGE WASHINGTON Carte de

Sale 2171 - Lot 25

Price Realized: $ 1,140

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500

(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) ALBRIGHT, GEORGE WASHINGTON. Carte-de-Visite by E. von Seutter. the subject's name, the date this photograph was taken and the subject's age, in ink on the reverse. Jackson, MISS, 1875

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Rare carte-de-visite photograph of George Washington Albright (1846-circa 1940?) born a slave in Mississippi. Albright learned to read and write at an early age and was active in the slave underground though remaining in slavery. Following the Civil War, he studied in a freedman''s school and married one of its white teachers. In 1873, Albright was elected to the Mississippi Legislature on the Republican ticket headed by radical white Adelbert Ames. Albright was one of nine African-Americans in the thirty-seven member State Senate.
Albright and his black colleagues in the Mississippi Senate achieved significant victories in the areas of Civil Rights and Education. During the violent elections of 1875, Albright was named by governor Ames to head an armed black militia to protect black voters. This incensed whites and Albright and other black legislators were targeted by the Klan, several injured and one killed. By 1879, the Democrats had regained control in the South and Albright retired from politics. He was last heard of in 1937 when the Daily Worker did a feature on him. In that article, Albright explained that he and many other blacks had abandoned the Republican Party because it had "turned against the common fellow." He now supported the Communist party and its candidate, James Ford.