Thread by @RepValDemings

#BlackHistoryMonth is American History. #BlackHistoryMonth2020

Josiah Thomas Walls was born enslaved.

But the Civil War freed him, and he decided to fight.

He enlisted with the Union Army, served out the war. Bought land. Got educated.

Here's what happened next:

The Ku Klux Klan began a campaign of terrorism against freed Blacks in Florida.

Josiah, already a community leader, was unafraid. At the urging of his party, he ran for Congress.

His opponent? A former slave owner and a Confederate army veteran.

The slave owner started a smear campaign. Josiah, the former slave, wasn't "educated enough" to serve in Congress, he argued.

Josiah's response? He challenged him to a debate.

The campaign raged on. Josiah was holding strong. They tried to kill him.

On election day, he won.

Representative Josiah Thomas Walls became Florida's first Black Member of Congress.

Over the course of his career, "challenges" by his white opponents would lead to him being removed from his rightfully-won seat TWICE.

But voters kept electing him.

He served with other African-Americans like Representatives Benjamin S. Turner from Alabama, Jefferson F. Long from Georgia, Representative Robert Carlos De Large, Robert B. Elliot, and Joseph H. Rainey from South Carolina. They were the original @TheBlackCaucus.

Representative Walls fought for farmers, veterans, education, trade, infrastructure, and civil rights.

But President Lincoln had been assassinated, and the tide was turning backwards on equality.

When Josiah Thomas Walls died in 1905, he died in obscurity.

No newspaper in Florida published an obituary.

But today, 115 years later, we remember Congressman Josiah Thomas Walls. #BlackHistoryMonth
history.house.gov/People/Detail/…