Louis Kossuth Atwood

L K Atwood

Louis Kossuth Atwood (Hinds County)

State House: 1880-1881, 1884-1885

Born: December 15, 1850 in Alabama
Died: January 8, 1929

Attorney. His mother’s name was Mary. Graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1874 and was admitted to the Mississippi Bar in 1879. When Booker T. Washington visited Jackson in 1908, Atwood was the one who introduced him. Treasurer of the Black-owned insurance company Union Guaranty and Insurance Company of Mississippi, which was launched in 1911. He also organized and served as president of the Southern Bank of Mississippi. Master of the fraternal organization Order of Jacobs.

Listed on the 1880, 1900, 1910, and 1920 censuses in Hinds County with his wife, Maggie Beatrice Welborne (sister of Eugene B. Welborne), and their children: Hyrticana B., Louis Kossuth, Maggie I., Welborn S., and William F.

“Born in Willcox County, Ala., in 1851, he was sold on the block as a slave when 18 months’ old. His mother bought him for $300, and moved with him to Ohio.”
(D. W. Woodard, Negro Progress in a Mississippi Town, 1909)

Suggested Further Reading:
Emancipation: The Making of the Black Lawyer, J. Clay Smith, Jr., 1999

Links:
Memorial on Find A Grave

Biography in Multum in Parvo, 1912
The Comet, August 23, 1879
New Mississippian, Feb 4, 1884
State Ledger, March 14, 1884
Cleveland Gazette, August 9, 1884
The Clarion, November 17, 1886
Clarion Ledger, March 9, 1895
Clarion Ledger, December 4, 1895
Clarion Ledger, July 3, 1896
Clarion Ledger, December 18, 1896
Weekly Clarion Ledger, February 2, 1899
Greenwood Common-wealth, Mar 10, 1899
Clarion-Ledger, April 27, 1900
Clarion-Ledger, April 27, 1900
Clarion-Ledger, March 15, 1907
Jackson Daily News, March 15, 1907
Jackson Daily News, March 15, 1907
The Freeman, February 22, 1908
Jackson Daily News, March 3, 1908
Jackson Daily News, September 2, 1908
Jackson Daily News, August 31, 1911
Clarion Ledger, August 17, 1912
Vicksburg Evening Post, August 20, 1913
Jackson Daily News, December 15, 1915
Biographical profile, 1919
Clarion Ledger, January 13, 1929
Headstone of L.K. Atwood
L. K. Atwood’s headstone, 2021