Frederick McGhee
On this date in 1861, we mark the birth of Fredrick McGhee, a Black lawyer and civil rights activist.
Fredrick L. McGhee was from Mississippi. His father could read and write and passed him the benefits of education. As a youngster, the family moved to Knoxville, TN, where he attended school with help from the Freedmen’s Bureau and the Presbyterian Church. Later, he went to Chicago and worked as a waiter to pay for law school, graduating in 1885.
McGhee was the first Black lawyer in the state of Minnesota. With a keen sense of legal business, his most notable asset was his ability as an orator in the courtroom. He won clemency for a client, Lewis Carter, a Black soldier falsely accused of a crime, from President Benjamin Harrison. He was always mindful of the plight of Blacks and sought to be a part of a legal solution.
McGhee was director of the legal bureau of the National Afro-American Council and a founder of the Niagara Movement. Active politically, he was elected president by the Minnesota Republican Party in 1892.
After protests by white Republicans, he was replaced that summer of 1892. He stayed with the party until the spring of 1893, when the party reneged on another political promise. Later that year, he was refused a seat as a delegate at the Republican National Convention. Frustrated, McGhee changed his allegiance to the Democratic Party, becoming one of the first nationally prominent Black Democrats. A Catholic, he was very involved in Saint Peter Claver Church and the Rondo community in St. Paul, MN.
He helped arrange the foundation for a branch of the NAACP but died in 1912 before the plan could be completed.
Fredrick L. McGhee, A Life on the Color Line
Paul Nelson
Minnesota Historical Society Press, St. Paul, MN.
Copyright 2001
