Alonzo J. Ransier - Wikipedia

Alonzo Jacob Ransier (January 3, 1834 – August 17, 1882) was an American politician in South Carolina. He was the state's first black Lieutenant Governor and later was a Republican United States Congressman from 1873 until 1875.

Ransier was born a free person of color in Charleston, South Carolina, possibly to parents from Haiti, of mulatto-French background, with visible European ancestry.[1][2] He worked as a shipping clerk until he was appointed after the Civil War as state registrar of elections in 1865.

In the late 1860s he was hired by AME bishop and fellow future congressman Richard H. Cain to be an associate editor of the paper, the South Carolina Leader (renamed the Missionary Record in 1868), along with another future congressman, Robert B. Elliott.[3]

He was elected in 1868 to the South Carolina House of Representatives serving to 1869, and also was a member of the state constitutional convention in 1868. It authorized a public school system for the first time, as well as charitable institutions.

In 1870 Ransier was elected the 54th Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina. He was elected to the Forty-third United States Congress from South Carolina's 2nd Congressional District.

In Congress he fought for the Civil Rights Act of 1875. He also backed high tariffs and opposed a federal salary increase. He campaigned for President Ulysses S. Grant and advocated a six-year presidential term.

After leaving Congress in 1875, Ransier was appointed by Republicans as a collector for the Internal Revenue Service. At his death in 1882, he was working as a Charleston street cleaner.[4]