Early Years and Civil War Service
Joseph Thomas Wilson was born free in Norfolk in January 1837. Few details of his early life survive, but existing documents suggest that his mother was a free woman of English and Native American descent and his father was enslaved. His father's name was Brister or Bristol, and his mother was Louisa Wilson. When he was about nine years old Wilson revealed to city authorities the identity of a white fugitive from the state penitentiary, which led to the convict's recapture but left Wilson vulnerable to reprisals. He was sent to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he attended public school until 1855 and then went to sea aboard a whaler bound for the South Pacific. Wilson was working on a railroad construction crew in Chile when he received word in 1862 that the Civil War had broken out. He returned as soon as possible to the United States, traveling first to New York and from there to New Orleans where he hoped to be reunited with his father who had been sold south years before.
In September 1864 Wilson returned to Norfolk and reportedly worked for the secret service of the United States along the James River. At the end of the war he was tending a government supply store that provided goods to freedpeople. On March 19, 1868, he married Elizabeth Hattie Smith. They had one son, one daughter, and a third child, all of whom died in childhood.
Journalism, Politics, and Civil Rights
Norfolk was a proving ground in which Southern blacks could define freedom in the presence of white allies such as Northern missionaries and the U.S. Army, which had been in the city since 1862. On April 4, 1865, a group of Norfolk men, Wilson among them, established the Colored Monitor Union Club, dedicated to obtaining the right of suffrage. Later that spring they attempted the bold experiment of casting ballots in a local election for members of the General Assembly. In their address on "Equal Suffrage" the men portrayed themselves as guardians of Virginia's future: "Give us the suffrage, and you may rely upon us … to keep the State forever in the Union."
In 1876 Conservatives in Virginia imposed a poll tax as a prerequisite for voting and disfranchised people convicted of petty theft in order to disfranchise African American men. Wilson was in the vanguard protesting the new measures, but the numbers of blacks elected to the General Assembly declined until late in the 1870s. In April 1879 he expressed support for the black "Exoduster" emigration movement to Kansas when he presided over a meeting of African Americans in Norfolk. Many black Virginians took heart from the emergence in 1879 of the Readjuster Party, a reform-minded biracial coalition of Republicans and Democrats led by former Confederate general William Mahone that proposed to repudiate part of the antebellum state debt and reduce the rate of interest on it in order to protect services like public schooling. Wilson, though, regarded the Readjuster movement with suspicion, as he believed that white Readjusters saw blacks as mere political pawns. He became a champion of the loyal Republican "straight-outs," who tried to offer an alternative to the Funder-Democrats and to the Readjusters.
The Black Phalanx
In 1885 Wilson moved from Norfolk to Richmond and threw himself into new projects— managing the nascent Galilean Fishermen's Relief Association, supporting the Knights of Labor, serving as secretary of the committee responsible for organizing the African American exhibitions at the 1888 Virginia Agricultural, Mechanical, and Tobacco Exposition, and in 1890 protesting the disfranchisement of black Virginians testimony before a congressional committee.
Later Years
Major Works
- Emancipation: Its Course and Progress from 1102 to 1875 (1881)
- Emancipation: Its Course and Progress from 1481 B.C. to 1875 A.D. (1882)
- Voice of a New Race (poems, 1882)
- The Black Phalanx; A History of the Negro Soldiers of the United States in the Wars of 1775–1812, 1861–'65 (1887)
Time Line
-
April–June 1865 - Joseph T. Wilson helps to organize the Colored Monitor Union Club and to write an equal suffrage address on behalf of black citizens of Norfolk.
-
January 1837 - Joseph T. Wilson is born in Norfolk, probably free.
-
ca. 1850 - Joseph T. Wilson is sent to New Bedford, Massachusetts, and attends public schools there.
-
1855 - Joseph T. Wilson signs on as steersman aboard a whaler for a three-year voyage in the South Pacific.
-
1862 - Joseph T. Wilson, learning of the outbreak of the Civil War while working in Chile, books passage back to the United States, first to New York and then to Union-occupied New Orleans.
-
September 19, 1862 - Joseph T. Wilson enlists as a private in Company G of 2nd Louisiana Native Guard (later designated the 74th USCT).
-
September 1, 1863 - Joseph T. Wilson is honorably discharged from his regiment, at Ship Island, Mississippi, after being hospitalized with chronic diarrhea, and returns to New Bedford, Massachusetts.
-
December 18, 1863 - Joseph T. Wilson enlists as private in Company C of the 54th Massachusetts in New Bedford.
-
February 20, 1864 - Joseph T. Wilson is wounded in action at the Battle of Olustee in Florida, and after hospitalization in Beaufort, South Carolina is sent back to Massachusetts to convalesce.
-
May 10, 1864 - Joseph T. Wilson honorably discharged in Boston, Massachusetts, after being wounded in battle.
-
September–December 1864 - Joseph T. Wilson returns to Norfolk and works as a boatman on a Union expedition to North Carolina and then with Union secret service around Hampton Roads and Richmond.
-
Spring 1866 - As editor of the Unionist newspaper the True Southerner, Joseph T. Wilson condemns President Andrew Johnson's policies and white vigilante violence in Norfolk.
-
April 17–18, 1867 - At the Republican Party state convention in Richmond, Joseph T. Wilson calls for confiscation of Confederate property and the impeachment of Andrew Johnson.
-
March 19, 1868 - Joseph T. Wilson and Elizabeth Hattie Smith, of Norfolk, marry.
-
1870 - Joseph T. Wilson works as Inspector in Customs Department in Norfolk.
-
May 1870 - Joseph T. Wilson is one of four blacks elected to the Norfolk City Council, and he argues for public school funding for blacks.
-
1872 - Joseph T. Wilson serves on the national board of directors of the Grand Army of the Republic.
-
August 19, 1875 - At a black labor convention in Richmond, Joseph T. Wilson calls for unity among African Americans.
-
September 1876 - Joseph T. Wilson is a candidate for presidential elector on the Rutherford B. Hayes ticket.
-
April 1879 - Joseph T. Wilson presides at a meeting of Norfolk blacks expressing support for the "Exoduster" emigration movement of blacks from the Deep South to Kansas.
-
June 1880 - Joseph T. Wilson establishes the Republican newspaper the American Sentinel, supporting the James A. Garfield ticket.
-
July 1881 - Joseph T. Wilson, in a widely published letter to Frederick Douglass, opposes the Republicans' alliance with the Readjusters.
-
August 1881 - Joseph T. Wilson is elected chairman of a breakaway "straight-out" Republican convention in Lynchburg and considered as nominee for governor but rejected.
-
November 1881 - Joseph T. Wilson is removed from office as an Inspector of Customs at the urging of Readjuster leader William Mahone.
-
Winter 1882 - Joseph T. Wilson is commissioned by the Grand Army of the Republic to write a history of black troops.
-
1885 - Joseph T. Wilson begins publishing newspaper the Right Way in Norfolk and is driven out of business by the city's mayor, whom he criticized.
-
1885 - Joseph T. Wilson moves to Richmond and later manages the Galilean Fishermen's Relief Association.
-
1886 - Joseph T. Wilson supports Knights of Labor Reform Party congressional candidate William Henry Mullen.
-
1887 - Joseph T. Wilson copyrights The Black Phalanx, published by American Publishing Company of Hartford, Connecticut.
-
1888 - Under the auspices of the Galilean Fishermen's organization, Joseph T. Wilson begins publishing Richmond monthly (later weekly) journal Industrial Day.
-
August 1888 - Joseph T. Wilson is elected a member of the committee organizing the African American exhibitions at the Virginia Agricultural, Mechanical and Tobacco Exposition.
-
January 1890 - Joseph T. Wilson is part of a black delegation to Congress to protest election fraud and disfranchisement.
-
April 1890 - Joseph T. Wilson presides at a Richmond meeting to promote black emigration from the South to the West.
-
September 25, 1891 - Joseph T. Wilson dies of heart disease, while visiting Norfolk. He is buried at Hampton National Cemetery, near Fort Monroe, with military honors.
References
Further Reading
External Links
Cite This Entry
- APA Citation:
Varon, E., & the Dictionary of Virginia Biography. Joseph T. Wilson (1837–1890). (2018, May 7). In Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved from http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Wilson_Joseph_T_1837-1890.
- MLA Citation:
Varon, Elizabeth and the Dictionary of Virginia Biography. "Joseph T. Wilson (1837–1890)." Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, 7 May. 2018. Web. READ_DATE.
First published: April 24, 2018 | Last modified: May 7, 2018