George H. Clower

George H. Clower
Member of the Georgia House of Representatives
from the Monroe County district
In office
1868–?
Personal details
Political partyRepublican

George H. Clower was a state legislator and schoolteacher in Central Georgia during the Reconstruction era. He was one of two African-Americans elected from Central Georgia to Georgia's legislature during that period.[1][2]

Clower was a Republican Party organizer of "Grant clubs" in support of former Union Army commanding general Ulysses S. Grant in his presidential candidacy. Several of Clower's letters appealing for support for his African American Community from the Freedmen Bureau and appealing to Grant himself[3] survive.

Eric Foner lists him as George A. Flower in Freedom's Lawmakers and states that he was born in Virginia, attended the state black convention in Alabama in October 1866, was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives in 1868, was expelled along with other African American members the same year and reinstated along with the others in 1870 by order of the U.S. Congress.[4]

References

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  1. ^ Reidy, Joseph P. (9 November 2000). From Slavery to Agrarian Capitalism in the Cotton Plantation South: Central Georgia, 1800-1880. Univ of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9780807864067 – via Google Books.
  2. ^ Grant, Donald Lee (21 March 1993). The Way it was in the South: The Black Experience in Georgia. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 9780820323299 – via Google Books.
  3. ^ Grant, Ulysses Simpson (21 March 2018). The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant: February 1-December 31, 1872. SIU Press. ISBN 9780809322763 – via Google Books.
  4. ^ Freedom's Lawmakers by Eric Foner Louisiana State University Press 1996 page 47