Alonzo Jacob Ransier

Born: January 3, 1834 in Charleston, South Carolina

Died: August 17, 1882 in Charleston, South Carolina

United States Representative, 1873–1875

Republican from South Carolina

• South Carolina’s first Black lieutenant governor, Alonzo Ransier had a reputation for fighting corruption which helped him win election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1872.
• Ransier was born to freeborn Haitian immigrants in Charleston, South Carolina.
• Ransier had some education and by the age of sixteen was working as a shipping clerk for a local mercantile firm. 
• Two speeches survive that Ransier made on the House floor; both were in favor of the Civil Rights Bill of 1875, which guaranteed both free Blacks and recently freed slaves equal rights everywhere in the United States. A year later, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Civil Rights Bill of 1875. 
• In 1874 Ransier lost the Republican nomination to a white opponent and did not return to Congress. 
• Lapsing into poverty by 1880, Ransier died in obscurity on August 17, 1882, at age 48.

Alonzo Jacob Ransier

1875

Brady-Handy Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

Image courtesy of Library of Congress: Hon. Alonzo J. Ransier