This is Karen Hunter and welcome to the hub. After helping to organize the first U.S. colored troops, Henry McNeil Turner became a

delegate to the State Constitutional Convention in Atlanta and was elected as a

representative to the Georgia State legislature in

1868. Soon after though he was among two dozen legislators who were expelled for the

crime of being black.

Here is an excerpt of his address to his fellow legislators denouncing the expulsions.

I wish the members of this House to understand the position I take.

I hold that I am a member of this body, therefore, sir, I shall neither fond or cringe before any party, nor stoop to beg them for my rights.

Some of my colored fellow members in the course of their remarks took occasion to appeal to

the sympathies of members on the opposite side and to eulogize their character.

It reminds me very much, sir, of slaves begging under the lash.

I am here to demand my rights and to hurl thunderboats as the men who would dare to cross the threshold of my manhood. There's an old aphorism which says fight the

devil with fire and if I should observe the rule in this instance, I wish gentlemen to

understand that it is but fighting them with their own weapon. The scene

presented at this house today is one unparalleled in the history of the world.

Never in the history of the world has a man been arraigned before a body closed with legislative judicial and executive functions

charged with the offense of being of a darker hue than his fellow men. Cases may be found where men have been deprived of

their rights for crimes and misdemeanors, but has remained for the state of Georgia in the very heart of the 19th century to call a man

before the bar and they charge him with an act for which he is no more responsible than the head which he carries upon his shoulders.

The Anglo-Saxon race, sir, is the most surprising one.

No man has ever been more deceived in that race

than I have been for the past three weeks.

...