Emanuel Fortune

Emanuel Fortune (3 January 1833 – 27 January 1897) was an American politician who represented Jackson Country.

Fortune was born into slavery in 1833 on the Russ Plantation near Marianna, Florida. Fortune worked as a shoemaker before entering politics.[1] Fortune was an African Methodist Episcopal Church layman and was appointed to the county board of voter registration.[2] In the 1850s Fortune married Sarah Jane Miers; the couple's son, Timothy Thomas Fortune, became a noted radical newspaper editor and activist for African American rights.[3]

Fortune was elected to the 1868 Florida Constitutional Convention as one of four representatives for Jackson County.[3][2] Fortune was forced to leave Jackson Country due to lawlessness and served the remainder of his elected term in Jacksonville.[1]

In November 1871 Jackson testified at the United States Senate Select Committee on Outrages in Southern States, a special session of the 42nd United States Congress that investigated Ku Klux Klan violence in North Carolina and Florida.[4][5] Jackson was questioned by the chairman of the committee, Henry Wilson, and Thomas F. Bayard.[6] Fortune testified as to the difficulty that black farmers had in obtaining small parcels of land and the racially motivated attacks and violence that he had witnessed.[6][7]

Fortune is buried at the Old Jacksonville City Cemetery in Duval County, Florida.[8]

References
  1. G a -J C T S Alumni Association (1 December 1999). Jackson County, Florida. Arcadia Publishing. p. 17. ISBN 978-0-7385-0098-0.
  2. T. Thomas Fortune (30 September 2014). After War Times: An African American Childhood in Reconstruction-Era Florida. University of Alabama Press. p. 92. ISBN 978-0-8173-1836-9.
  3. Anthony Appiah; Henry Louis Gates (2005). Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. Oxford University Press. p. 689. ISBN 978-0-19-517055-9.
  4. "United States Senate: A History of Notable Senate Investigations". United States Senate. Retrieved 12 March 2018.
  5. "Landmark Legislation: The Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871". United States Senate. Retrieved 12 March 2018.
  6. Congressional Series of United States Public Documents. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1872. p. 94.
  7. Mitchell Snay (1 September 2010). Fenians, Freedmen, and Southern Whites: Race and Nationality in the Era of Reconstruction. LSU Press. p. 114. ISBN 978-0-8071-5481-6.
  8. "Find a Grave: Emanuel Fortune". Find a Grave. Retrieved 12 March 2018.
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