ATLANTA — Legislation to honor Georgia’s first Black lawmakers is winding through the legislature. There were thirty three of them – who entered the legislature all at the same time.
They are commemorated in one of the state capitol’s most obscure monuments, at the capitol's northeast corner.
One hundred fifty four years ago, Georgia’s capitol was in Milledgeville. That city had been Georgia’s civil war capitol. Reconstruction followed. It gave voting rights to people previously enslaved in the South. In 1868, they elected thirty three Black men to serve in the legislature – now known as "the original thirty three."
The white majority declined to seat them.
"They got expelled just because they were black," said state Sen. Tonya Anderson (D-Lithonia), chair of the Senate Black Caucus.
A court intervened and the Original thirty three served for a few months. But the hostility of the white majority grew. The New Georgia Encyclopedia says one quarter of the Original 33 were “killed, threatened, beaten or jailed.”
Reconstruction fell apart, and white supremacy prevailed again in Georgia politics.
"We commemorate not only their service and sacrifice but that they were brave enough, brave enough to still stand in the face of adversity," Anderson said.
The names of the original 33 Black legislators are enshrined on a monument outside the capitol in an area with little foot traffic and where a fence now blocks it from the street.
Anderson is behind a resolution that would add a plaque to the interior of the state capitol honoring the Original 33 -- giving their story, she hopes, a little more visibility.