Noxubee’s earliest Black legislators to be honored with courthouse marker
BY SCOTT BOYD
Noxubee County’s Reconstruction-era African American state legislators will soon be memorialized with a historical marker that will be placed on the lawn at the Noxubee Courthouse in Macon.
Noxubee County Supervisors recently granted a request from a researcher associated with the Mississippi State University Library to allow the marker to be installed sometime in 2026 on the Courthouse grounds.
The project’s beginning dates back to 2015 when Mississippi State Research Librarian DeeDee Baldwin was walking around an overgrown cemetery in Macon when she stumbled upon the marker for Isom Stewart, showing he was born in 1810. “It’s very unusual to find a headstone that early in an African American cemetery in Mississippi,” Baldwin said. She researched his name and found a photo and that led to her discovery that he had represented Noxubee County in the State House of Representatives during Reconstruction.
That discovery led Baldwin to research all the Black state legislators who served during the Reconstruction period that followed the Civil War (1865-1877). Her research has led her to learn more about 162 African American men who were elected and served during that period. They’re all listed, along with the county where they were elected, on Baldwin’s website: much-ado.net/legislators.
Baldwin, along with Chuck Yarborough of Columbus, applied for a grant and have been funded to install 22 markers around Mississippi – mostly in the counties with the most early Black legislators. “The counties that had more numbers of slaves were the counties who had the most Black legislators during Reconstruction,” Baldwin said. Noxubee’s population in the mid-1800’s was near 40,000, majority African American, and with a vast majority held in slavery until after the Civil War.
Baldwin found five who served from Noxubee, including Stewart, who is listed in most documents as “Isham” Stewart. He served in the House of Representatives from 1870 to 1873, and in the Senate from 1874 until 1877. The other four are Thomas A. Cotton, who served in the House 1874-1875; Alexander Kelso Davis, who served in the House 1870-1873, and Lt. Gov. 1874-1876; Lawrence W. Overton, who served in the House in 1876; and Marshall McNeese, who served in the House from 1870-1871, and again from 1874-1877.
During the mid-1870’s, white Democrats launched a counteroffensive using threats, violence, and fraud to neutralize the African American vote. After 1875, very few Black men held office in Mississippi. By 1890, the Mississippi Legislature implemented measures that effectively disenfranchised a significant portion of the Black population, including literacy tests, and poll taxes. Mississippi didn’t have another Black legislator until after the 1965 Federal Voting Rights Act. In 1967, Robert Clark of Holmes County, became the first African American elected to the Mississippi Legislature since Reconstruction.
Baldwin said they will rely on the Noxubee County Board of Supervisors to decide on the exact spot to install the marker on the Courthouse grounds.
She encourages any area history teachers to contact her with hopes that their students can take part in the program and dedication ceremony that will accompany the unveiling of the marker next year. She can be contacted at dbaldwin@library.msstate.edu, or by calling 662-325-2838. She’s also interested in hearing from anyone who is a descendant of any of the five African American legislators who served from Noxubee.