Thomas Warren Long

{{short description|American politician}}

Thomas Warren Long (January 10, 1839 – October 25, 1917) was an African Methodist Episcopal minister and politician in Florida. He fought against the Confederacy during the American Civil War and later served in the state legislature.

Born into slavery on a plantation in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1832,{{Cite web | first=Gail | last=Hollenbeck| url=https://www.tampabay.com/news/religion/allen-temple-ame-church-in-brooksville-celebrates-its-142nd-birthday/1239074/|title=Allen Temple AME Church in Brooksville celebrates its 142nd birthday|website=Tampa Bay Times | date=July 7, 2012}} Long eventually escaped and fought with the Union Army during the American Civil War.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kWercxcOL2gC&pg=PA76-IA15|title=Rebels and Runaways: Slave Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Florida|first=Larry Eugene|last=Rivers|date=July 15, 2012|publisher=University of Illinois Press|isbn=9780252094033|via=Google Books}} Thomas Wentworth Higginson was one of his commanding officers.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_1iRfGqI2LAC&pg=PA105|title=Florida's Black Public Officials, 1867–1924|first=Canter|last=Brown|date=June 30, 1998|publisher=University of Alabama Press|via=Google Books|pages=105–106|isbn=9780817309152}}

Long served as Madison County's superintendent of public schools in 1868 and 1869. He represented the Marion County, Florida in the Florida Senate from 1873 until 1879. He helped organize churches for former slaves in Florida. He proposed a legislation for free public schools in Florida.{{Cite web|title=Ocala Black History Mural|url=https://www.oncell.com/sr/CU8rh/?lang=en|access-date=2022-01-12|website=City of Ocala Recreation and Parks}}

Florida's state archives have a halftone reproduction, presumably from a newspaper, of a photograph of him."[https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/850 Reverend Thomas Warren Long]", Florida Memory.

He had a wife and two daughters who he helped "spirit away" upon his return to Jacksonville after the start of the Civil War. According to Joe M. Richardson, during the war he served in the "Twenty-Third United States Volunteer Regiment" and was sent to Beaufort, South Carolina.African Americans in the Reconstruction of Florida, 1865-1877 by Joe M. Richardson page 195