The Tragedy of B. F. Randolph
On Wednesday, January 15, 1868, Benjamin Franklin Randolph opened the second day of the South Carolina Constitutional Convention with a prayer. Brief but moving, Randolph exhorted God to “fill our hearts with love for the general welfare” of all South Carolinians. “Help us in our work here, and when we finish our earthly course, receive us into that welcome abode in heaven.”
Many harbored disdains for whom the state’s Democratic press assailed as “the mulatto preacher.” A tall, educated Methodist minister, Randolph volunteered in December 1863 to serve as a chaplain in the 26th New York Colored Infantry. In July 1864, the regiment was sent to Beaufort, South Carolina, where they engaged Confederate forces on John’s Island and were “greatly complimented for [their] bravery and steadiness.”
After the war, Randolph worked in the Freedmen’s Bureau as assistant superintendent for education in Charleston, where he helped establish schools for freedmen. In 1867, Randolph co-founded the Charleston Advocate, whose slogan read, “as ye would that men should do unto you do ye even so to them.” Later that year he was elected to represent Orangeburg Country as a delegate to the state’s constitutional convention.
Randolph wasted no time. On February 13, 1868, he introduced a resolution to enshrine the principles of the recently passed 14th Amendment (which would be ratified in July) into South Carolina’s new constitution: “Distinction on account of race or color in any case whatever shall be prohibited, and all classes of citizens, irrespective of race and color, shall enjoy all common, equal, and political privileges.”
“In our bill of rights, I want to settle the question forever by making the meaning so plain that a ‘wayfaring man, though a fool,’ cannot misunderstand it,” Randolph said. “Here I would say that all of my radicalism consists in believing one thing, namely, that all men are created of one blood [by God].”
“With a display of adroitness,” a Democratic newspaper wrote, “[Randolph] has succeeded at last in having engrafted upon the bill of rights a section which distinctly recognizes social equality between the races.”
Randolph’s proposal faced stiff resistance from Democrats who nevertheless were powerless in a convention dominated by black delegates. Days earlier, Democratic delegates attempted to strike out the very first lines of the proposed constitution (Art. I, Sec. 1), taken verbatim from the Massachusetts Constitution: “All men are born free and equal.”
“This sentiment is incorrect,” one delegate sneered, echoing the dead words of John C. Calhoun. “It is entirely false that any person is born free.” Randolph jumped to defend the phrase. “It always seemed strange to me that any intelligent person should question the meaning,” he said. “If it was an axiom found in physiology or metaphysics, it might seem questionable, but in politics it ought to be clear and right.” It means, he added, “All men are born with certain inalienable rights which it is their privilege to enjoy.”
In April, South Carolinians overwhelmingly approved the Charleston constitution, one of the most radical in the country, despite heavy opposition from Democrats who saw it as “the work of Northern adventurers, Southern renegades, and ignorant negroes.” (Randolph’s resolution of February 13 was added as Section 39 of Article I.) The new constitution, Democrats lamented, established “negro supremacy” on the ruins of “the proud Caucasian race, whose sovereignty on earth God has ordained.” They resolved presciently that “the white people of our state will never quietly submit to negro rule.”
Randolph was elected to the State Senate, selected by Republican leadership to serve as chair of the state’s central committee, as a delegate to the convention that nominated Ulysses S. Grant for president, and chosen as one of the country’s first black electors.
But on Friday, October 16, the awful grace of God struck: three Klansmen shot and killed Randolph at a train station in Abbeville. Two other state legislators, Solomon Dill, a white Unionist and abolitionist, and James Martin, an Irishman and radical, were also slain around the same time.
“[It] was broad daylight,” and his assassins “were permitted to leisurely mount their horses and escape,” the state’s governor, Union officer Robert Kingston Scott, wrote angrily to the legislature. “Mr. Randolph was a man of enlarged views, a great force of character.”
Randolph’s colleagues described him as one of the “most esteemed and valued members…who, as a public man, was ever the ardent, bold, and outspoken champion of human liberty and human rights.” That he “died a martyr to our country’s cause” was indisputable, yet “we rejoice that the cause for which he died still lives, and will live as long as time shall last,” Jonathan Jasper said. “This senate has lost one of its ablest laborers, and this country a champion of liberty.”
“All I demand is simple justice,” Robert Elliot said. “We have suffered much and may suffer more; but let us be just, and be firm in our principles.” Let us work as Randolph worked, he said, and then we can say that “we have fought a good fight; we have kept the faith; we have finished our course.”
“We have been giving up martyrs ever since the war concluded,” Benjamin Boseman said, “and yet the bloody work goes on.” That work: “devotion to the principles of right and justice.” Quoting Grant’s slogan, one legislator implored, “Let us have peace.”
One senator advocated a monument in Randolph’s memory, “beneath the shadows of which the humblest citizen… can enjoy the same liberty and protection which the granite shaft of Bunker Hill affords [those in Massachusetts].”
Three years later, in 1871, nineteen black men founded the Randolph Cemetery in Columbia, wherein Randolph was reburied beneath a 20-foot-tall obelisk. There his body rests. As the Charleston Advocate eulogized in 1868, “Still’d is the voice that waked your fears. / The heart ye hated throbs no more; / But while we steep his grave in tears, / His cause is dearer than before.”