Oscar J. Dunn stands proudly for this circa 1868 carte-de-visite photograph shortly after being elected Louisiana’s first Black lieutenant governor. He stares straight into the camera with the confidence of a man about to wade deep into Louisiana’s post-Civil War Reconstruction politics, an era filled with violence and eventually – lost hope.
In 1868 Dunn ran for lieutenant governor on the winning Republican ticket with the Illinois-born gubernatorial candidate Henry Clay Warmoth, a 24-year-old former Union Army officer, politician and later Louisiana sugar plantation owner. Warmoth and Dunn became the first elected administration during Reconstruction. It was an administration marked by reform, controversy and violence. Although the state legislature finally impeached Warmoth in December 1872, he remained active in Louisiana politics until his death in 1931. The Warmoth-Dunn honeymoon didn’t last long, however. Dunn broke with Warmoth when he vetoed a civil-rights bill that Dunn had favored.
Unfortunately, the lieutenant governor died suddenly in office in 1871. Some say suspiciously, though foul play was never proven. He did, however, have the honor to serve as Louisiana’s first “acting” governor for slightly more than a month when Warmoth left the state to recover from an injury. Nipping at Dunn’s heals was another ambitious Republican Black politician, former Union Army officer and state senator with the Dickensian name of P.B.S. Pinchback. The Georgia-born Pinchback became lieutenant governor after Dunn’s death. Like Dunn, Pinchback served slightly more than a month as temporary governor after Warmoth’s impeachment.
Dunn, unlike Warmoth and Pinchback, was a native New Orleanian born about 1822. His father, James, who had been emancipated in 1819, was a skilled carpenter and, by the designation of the day, a free man of color. His mother Maria, however, was still enslaved at the time of his birth. Therefore, by law, the children, Oscar and his sister Jane, were born into slavery. The story gets better, however. In the early 1830s, Dunn’s father purchased his wife and children’s freedom.
The young Oscar was as active member of the Freemasons, which laid the foundation and skills for his rapid rise in the Republican Party politics. He was elected to New Orleans City Council and championed civil rights legislation and universal, and integrated, public education for all children regardless of color. He was also active in the post-Civil War Freedmen’s Bureau that helped former enslaved people, and other working people, find fair, paid employment and financial assistance. Among many other civic and political causes, he served on the board of trustees for Straight University, a predominantly Black college on Canal Street. Through his leadership in Louisiana’s Republican Party, Dunn developed a strong connection with President Ulysses Grant, one that resulted in a visit to the White House in 1869. Dunn was at the pinnacle of his political career when he died in 1871.
As American historians well know, the raucous Warmoth-Dunn-Pinchback Reconstruction era in Louisiana continues to be fertile historical ground.
