Isaiah Montgomery

Isaiah Thornton Montgomery (May 21, 1847 – March 5, 1924) was an American community leader, politician, and the founder of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, an all-black community. He was a Republican delegate to the 1890 Mississippi Constitutional Convention, and served as the mayor of Mound Bayou.

Isaiah Thornton Montgomery
Mayor of Mound Bayou
In office 1888–1902
Personal details
Born	May 21, 1847 Davis Island, Mississippi, U.S.
Died	March 5, 1924 (aged 76) Mound Bayou, Mississippi, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Martha Robb
Relations	Ben Montgomery (father), William Montgomery (brother), Eugene P. Booze (son-in-law)
Children	11, including Mary Cordelia Montgomery Booze
Occupation	Community leader, politician, mayor, founder of city

He participated in the 1890 Mississippi constitutional convention as a delegate from Bolivar County and voted for the adoption of a state constitution that effectively disfranchised black voters for decades, using poll taxes and literacy tests to raise barriers to voter registration.^[1][2] Montgomery promoted an accommodationist position for African Americans. The I. T. Montgomery House in Mound Bayou is a National Landmark.

He has been described as "Mississippi's Booker T. Washington".^[3] He is also known as I. T. Montgomery, and Isaiah Montgomery.

Early life and education

Isaiah Thornton Montgomery was born on May 21, 1847, in Davis Island, Mississippi. He was born into slavery, the son of Mary Lewis Montgomery and Ben Montgomery, whom was enslaved by Joseph Emory Davis at Hurricane Plantation at Davis Bend.^[4] They had a second son, William Thornton Montgomery. His father Ben had been promoted to overseer of the property. The Montgomery children learned to read and write due to their father's influential position on the Hurricane Plantation at Davis Bend; and because Davis wanted to establish a more positive working environment for slaves and encouraged education.^[5]

Montgomery married Martha Robb; they had 11 children and their daughter Mary Cordelia Montgomery Booze was a political organizer.^[6]

Career

Following the end of the American Civil War, Montgomery began a business with his father. It lasted until his fathers death in 1877. His father had long dreamed of establishing an independent black colony; by the time of his death, the Reconstruction era had ended and African Americans struggled to maintain themselves against white supremacists.

After his father's death in 1877, Montgomery worked to realize his father's dream. With his cousin Benjamin T. Green, he bought property in 1887 in the northwest frontier of Mississippi Delta bottomlands to found Mound Bayou.^[4] Bolivar County was the largest in area in the Delta. As farmers cleared land, they started cultivating cotton.^[7]

Montgomery worked to gain freedmen protection of the law, and to keep their work and lives separate from supervision by whites.

Montgomery attended Mississippi's 1890 constitutional convention as its only black or Republican delegate. Convened in Jackson in August, the convention drafted a new constitution which was designed to secure white domination of state politics, including the adoption of an "understanding clause" which required any prospective voter to be able to read and interpret any section of the state constitution.^[8] With little ability to challenge it, Montgomery accepted the clause, arguing that while it was "apparently one of unfriendliness" to blacks it was in the public interest to prevent illiterates from voting.^[9]

In what the Washington Post termed "A Notable Address Delivered by the Colored Statesman," Frederick Douglass gave a speech in October 1890 before the Bethel Literary and Historical Society of Washington, D.C.'s Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church. He strongly condemned Montgomery's stance regarding suffrage in Mississippi. Douglass had spoken of Montgomery numerous times before and on the occasion cited his position as an act of "treason, to the cause of the colored people, not only of his own state, but of the United States," referring to the effect Montgomery's act would have in other states. He also lamented having heard in Montgomery "a groan of bitter anguish born of oppression and despair" and a voice of a "soul from which all hope had vanished."^[10][11]

Legacy

The I. T. Montgomery Elementary School of the North Bolivar Consolidated School District (formerly the Mound Bayou School District) is named after Montgomery.^[12]