NARRATOR
In the summer of 1868, Tunis Campbell entered the Georgia state legislature in Atlanta. With him came thirty-one other black members of the Republican party. The work of re-making the southern states had begun.

FONER
Suddenly you get hundreds of men elected to every office from member of Congress, the Senate, House of Representatives, member of state legislature, state positions, down to sheriff, justice of the peace, school board official, you name it.

NARRATOR
For Democrats, who had bitterly resisted the Republican Reconstruction plan, the very idea of blacks in political office was an aberration. "The Negro is unfit to rule the State," The Atlanta Constitution declared. "The Democratic party will protect him in every civil right. It is unwilling, however, to make him Congressman, Governor, and Judge. It will not consent to degrade its own race by elevating an inferior above it." In the Georgia legislature, blacks were outnumbered four to one. As soon as Tunis Campbell took his seat, he came under attack from whites on both sides of the aisle.

WALKER
What you have here is a very volatile moment in which alliances politically are shifting very rapidly, and from one day to the next, you don't know really what's going to happen.

NARRATOR
The few white Republicans who did support black legislators were branded as traitors to their race. Blacks "should quit dabbling in politics," argued one newspaper, "and go to work...to earn an honest subsistence." Most whites in the legislature maintained that the new Georgia Constitution only gave blacks the right to vote, not the right to hold office.

DUNCAN
The Georgia constitution did not specifically allow office holding by black Americans. Of course it didn't specifically authorize office holding by white Americans either...

NARRATOR
One legislator, Henry McNeal Turner, expressed the outrage of his black colleagues. He was entitled to his seat, he said and would not cringe or beg for it. Tunis Campbell also refused to be intimidated.

V/O Tunis Campbell
On behalf of nearly five hundred thousand loyal citizens of this State, we do enter our solemn protest against the illegal, unconstitutional and oppressive action of this body.

NARRATOR
White legislators made it clear that Campbell was not welcome in the chamber.

DUNCAN
Many of them put their hands on the butts of the pistols of the guns they wore into the chamber. They shuffled their feet. They banged on the desk. They talked about the "Congo senator's insolent harangue."

NARRATOR
Just two months after it had first convened, the Georgia legislature voted to expel its black members. "You may drive us out," Turner warned, "but you will light a torch never to be put out."