Isaiah Montgomery

Isaiah Thornton Montgomery was born on May 21, 1847, in Davis Island, Mississippi. He was born into slavery, the son of Mary Lewis Montgomery and Ben Montgomery, whom was enslaved by Joseph Emory Davis at Hurricane Plantation at Davis Bend.{{Cite web |last=Ruffin II |first=Herbert G. |date=2007-01-18 |title=Isaiah T. Montgomery (1847-1924) |url=https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/montgomery-isaiah-1847-1924/ |access-date=2025-04-19 |website=BlackPast.org |language=en-US}} They had a second son, William Thornton Montgomery. His father Ben had been promoted to overseer of the property. The Montgomery children learned to read and write due to their father's influential position on the Hurricane Plantation at Davis Bend; and because Davis wanted to establish a more positive working environment for slaves and encouraged education.{{Sfn|Hermann|1981|p=316}}

Montgomery married Martha Robb; they had 11 children and their daughter Mary Cordelia Montgomery Booze was a political organizer.{{Cite book |last=Garrett-Scott |first=Shennette |url=https://documents.alexanderstreet.com/d/1011011911 |title=Part II: Black Women Suffragists |date=2018 |publisher=Alexander Street Press |others=Introduction by Thomas Dublin and Kathryn Kish Sklar |location=Alexandria, VA |chapter=Mary Cordelia Montgomery Booze |access-date=March 17, 2024 |via=Alexander Street}}

Following the end of the American Civil War, Montgomery began a business with his father. It lasted until his fathers death in 1877. His father had long dreamed of establishing an independent black colony; by the time of his death, the Reconstruction era had ended and African Americans struggled to maintain themselves against white supremacists.

After his father's death in 1877, Montgomery worked to realize his father's dream. With his cousin Benjamin T. Green, he bought property in 1887 in the northwest frontier of Mississippi Delta bottomlands to found Mound Bayou. Bolivar County was the largest in area in the Delta. As farmers cleared land, they started cultivating cotton.{{Cite news |date=September 18, 1910 |title=Negroes Govern a Southern Town |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-boston-globe-negroes-govern-a-southe/129747207/ |access-date=2025-04-19 |work=The Boston Globe |pages=59 |via=Newspapers.com}}

Montgomery worked to gain freedmen protection of the law, and to keep their work and lives separate from supervision by whites.

Montgomery attended Mississippi's 1890 constitutional convention as its only black or Republican delegate. Convened in Jackson in August, the convention drafted a new constitution which was designed to secure white domination of state politics, including the adoption of an "understanding clause" which required any prospective voter to be able to read and interpret any section of the state constitution.{{sfn|Krane|Shaffer|1992|pp=48–49}} With little ability to challenge it, Montgomery accepted the clause, arguing that while it was "apparently one of unfriendliness" to blacks it was in the public interest to prevent illiterates from voting.{{sfn|Krane|Shaffer|1992|p=49}}

In what the Washington Post termed "A Notable Address Delivered by the Colored Statesman," Frederick Douglass gave a speech in October 1890 before the Bethel Literary and Historical Society of Washington, D.C.'s Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church. He strongly condemned Montgomery's stance regarding suffrage in Mississippi. Douglass had spoken of Montgomery numerous times before and on the occasion cited his position as an act of "treason, to the cause of the colored people, not only of his own state, but of the United States," referring to the effect Montgomery's act would have in other states. He also lamented having heard in Montgomery "a groan of bitter anguish born of oppression and despair" and a voice of a "soul from which all hope had vanished."{{cite news|title=DOUGLASS TO HIS RACE|url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/138443591|access-date=20 March 2017|work=pqasb.pqarchiver.com|date=Oct 22, 1890|archive-date=21 March 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170321084105/http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost_historical/doc/138443591.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:AI&type=historic&date=Oct+22,+1890&author=&pub=The+Washington+Post++(1877-1922)&edition=&startpage=7&desc=DOUGLASS+TO+HIS+RACE|id={{ProQuest|138443591}} |url-status=live}}{{cite book|last1=Douglass|first1=Frederick|title=The race problem : great speech of Frederick Douglass, delivered before the Bethel Literary and Historical Association, in the Metropolitan A.M.E. Church, Washington, D.C., October 21, 1890.THE RACE PROBLEM.|date=October 21, 1890|publisher=JOHN H. WILLS School and College Books|location=Washington, DC|url=http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/murray:@field(DOCID+@lit(lcrbmrpt0c13div1)):|accessdate=20 March 2017}}

The I. T. Montgomery Elementary School of the North Bolivar Consolidated School District (formerly the Mound Bayou School District) is named after Montgomery.{{cite web|last=Davis Betz|first=Kelsey|url=https://mississippitoday.org/2018/05/19/mound-bayous-history-a-magical-kingdom-residents-fight-to-preserve/|title=Mound Bayou's history a 'magical kingdom' residents fight to preserve |work=Mississippi Today|date=2018-05-19|accessdate=2021-05-12}}

{{Reflist|30em}}

• {{Cite book |last=Hermann |first=Janet Sharp |title=The Pursuit of a Dream |date=1981 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780195028874 |edition=1st |location=New York}}
• {{Cite book|last1=Krane|first1=Dale|last2=Shaffer|first2=Stephen D.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ygMQDdnlH6cC|title=Mississippi Government and Politics: Modernizers Versus Traditionalists|date=1992|publisher=University of Nebraska Press|isbn=9780803277588|location=}}

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• {{Find a Grave|26437879}}

{{Mississippi Constitution signatories|state=collapsed}}

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Category:1847 births

Category:1924 deaths

Category:19th-century American businesspeople

Category:African-American mayors in Mississippi

Category:Mayors of places in Mississippi

Category:19th-century mayors of places in the United States

Category:Mississippi Republicans

Category:People from Mound Bayou, Mississippi

Category:19th-century African-American businesspeople

Category:19th-century African-American politicians

Isaiah

Category:People enslaved in Mississippi

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