Robert Brown Elliott

Born: August 11, 1842 in Liverpool, England

Died: August 09, 1884 in New Orleans, Louisiana

United States Representative, 1871–1874

Republican from South Carolina

• Twice elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, Robert Brown Elliott is best known as a militant defender of equal rights for Black people and his reputation as an eloquent orator and charismatic leader.
• Elliott’s early life is a bit of a mystery but recent scholars believe he was born in Liverpool, England, of unknown West Indian parents. At some point right after the Civil War, it’s believed he jumped ship in the Boston Harbor. What is known for certain is that by March 1867 Elliott was associate editor of the South Carolina Leader, a Black-owned Republican newspaper in Charleston. 
• As a leader of the Republican Party and a state official in South Carolina, he fought discrimination against Blacks in the courts, voting practices, schools, and public accommodations, and sought federal aid for schools. 
• He died penniless in New Orleans of malarial fever just shy of his 42nd birthday. 
• Frederick Douglass, who knew Elliott, wrote about his death to the editor of the New York Globe (September 6, 1884), “...I, with thousands who knew the ability of young Elliott, was hoping and waiting to see him emerge from his late comparative obscurity, and take his place again in the halls of Congress. But alas! He is gone, and we can only hope that the same power that gave us one Elliott, will give us another in the near future. Frederick Douglass, Washington, D.C. Aug 30.”

Robert Brown Elliott

1890

Print Collection

Photographs and Prints Division

NYPL Digital Collection: Hon. Robert B. Elliott, Rep. from South Carolina.