William N. Stevens

Stevens was born free to Mary A. Stevens and her contractor husband, Christopher B. Stevens, in Petersburg, Virginia; the family had been free three or four generations.Jackson 1945, p. 40 They owned their own home and another lot, which they purchased in 1850 and 1858. He studied law but never married.

Stevens was admitted to the Virginia state bar and moved to Sussex County, which he represented in both house of the Virginia General Assembly during much of the next two decades. He also purchased additional property in Petersburg. In 1869, Sussex County voters elected Stevens to the Virginia House of Delegates. A Republican, he was the county's sole delegate.Pulliam 1901, p. 141-142

In 1871 voters from Sussex and adjoining Dinwiddie and Greensville Counties elected Stevens to the Senate of Virginia to replace white Republican David G. Carr. In 1874, he was joined in the Virginia Senate by Joseph P. Evans, who had been born a slave in Dinwiddie County, then won elected to the House of Delegates in 1871, and then in 1874 won an election to represent Petersburg to the Virginia Senate. However, Evans became embroiled in a conflict with Petersburg's Republican boss, former Confederate General William Mahone and lost the next election. Meanwhile, Sussex voters continued re-electing Stevens. Nonetheless, in the changing racial politics of as the century closed, Stevens lost the election of 1879 to Samuel Pickett. Stevens came back to defeat Pickett in 1881, thus again representing Sussex, Dinwiddie and Greensville Counties in the Virginia Senate, but George P. Barham defeated him in 1883.Cynthia Miller Leonard, Virginia General Assembly 1619-1978 (Richmond: Virginia State Library 1978) pp. 510, 515, 519, 524, 527, 536 One contemporary called Stevens an "able and scholarly man" and noted his speech had "elegance and grace."J. Clay Smith, Jr., Emancipation: the Making of the Black Lawyer 1844-1944 (University of Pennsylvania Press 1999) p. 230

Stevens died of throat cancer in 1889, at age 39, never having married.Jackson 1945, p. 40 His house in the historic African American community on Pocahontas Island (now a Petersburg neighborhood) still stands, now owned by a man dedicated to preserving the history of the island's free as well as enslaved blacks.{{cite news |last1=Schneider |first1=Gregory S. |title=One man's quest to preserve the haunting black history of Pocahontas Island |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/one-mans-quest-to-preserve-the-haunting-black-history-of-pocahontas-island/2016/09/26/b79f9b2c-7abf-11e6-beac-57a4a412e93a_story.html?noredirect=on |access-date=21 July 2018 |work=Washington Post |date=26 September 2016 |language=en}}

• African American officeholders from the end of the Civil War until before 1900

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• {{cite book |last=Jackson |first=Luther Porter |title=Negro Office-Holders in Virginia, 1865-1895 |publisher= Guide Quality Press, Norfolk, Virginia |year=1945 |isbn=9780598580269 |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=bsZ2AAAAMAAJ&q=Negro+office-holders+in+Virginia |ref=Jackson}}

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Category:Republican Party Virginia state senators

Category:1850 births

Category:1889 deaths

Category:People from Petersburg, Virginia

Category:Virginia lawyers

Category:Republican Party members of the Virginia House of Delegates

Category:African-American state legislators in Virginia

Category:19th-century American lawyers

Category:19th-century members of the Virginia General Assembly

Category:19th-century African-American politicians

Category:African-American politicians during the Reconstruction Era