Just afterthe Civil War, Ezekiel Gillespie, born into slavery in the South in 1818 as theson of a slave owner, successfully sued the state to affirm the right ofWisconsin’s black citizens to vote. Gillespie had been turned away from thepolls when he attempted to register to vote in Milwaukee’s Seventh Ward in1865. But Gillespie argued that it was his right to do so. After all, Wisconsinvoters had approved a referendum in 1849, just a year after becoming a state,to allow black men in Wisconsin to vote.
Thatreferendum wasn’t seen as being valid, however, so black suffrage was put onhold until Gillespie challenged it with the support of local abolitionistsSherman Booth and Byron Paine.
The stateSupreme Court agreed with Gillespie’s challenge in 1866, and African-Americanmen over the age of 21 were allowed to cast ballots, a few years before thatright was conferred nationwide. Black women had to wait until 1920 to be ableto vote legally.
But thatwasn’t Gillespie’s only lasting contribution to the community. A few yearsafter he cast his historic ballot, he helped to found the firstAfrican-American church in the state, St. Mark African Methodist Episcopal(AME) Church, in downtown Milwaukee.
“Ezekiel’sachievements affect even the young people in the congregation today,” saidPatricia Chisom, public relations director of St. Mark AME Church. “They showthat if you take action, things can happen.”
AForward-Thinker
EzekielGillespie was born into slavery in 1818, and purchased his freedom from hisfather, a slave owner, for “several hundred dollars,” Chisom learned during herextensive research on Gillespie. Once freed, Gillespie peddled small goods inIndiana, then came to Milwaukee in 1854 and sold groceries on the corner ofMason and Main. He later became a messenger for the Milwaukee and St. PaulRailway Co. and prospered, becoming a well-respected member of Milwaukee’sAfrican-American community. He was married twice and had children.
Chisom foundthat Gillespie had a social conscience in addition to business acumen. He was aleader of the Underground Railroad in Milwaukee and got involved in the JoshuaGlover controversy, in which the runaway slave sought asylum in Racine in 1854.
Gillespie’sinvolvement in the Underground Railroad “was a very dangerous thing to do,”Chisom said. “At that time not everyone was anti-slavery.”
WhenGillespie and his friends realized that no black churches existed in the stateof Wisconsin, they petitioned Bishop Richard Allen to start an AfricanMethodist Church in Milwaukee. After getting approval, in 1869 they founded thechurch on Fourth Street and Kilbourn Avenue, now the site of the Hyatt RegencyHotel. (A marker on the site notes the church’s history. The church iscurrently located at 1616 W. Atkinson Ave.) Chisom said the congregation is“forward thinking.”
“St. Mark’shas always been a kind of politically active church,” Chisom said. “A lot ofthe black leaders of the city were also members of the church and they werealways active in what was going on in the community.”
Lettingthe People Decide
Gillespie’sinvolvement in the abolition movement in Milwaukee seems to have influenced hisdesire to vote in an election almost 20 years after Wisconsin became a state.
According toattorney and adjunct professor of law at Marquette University, Joseph A.Ranney, African-American suffrage was the subject of much debate during theWisconsin constitutional conventions prior to statehood in 1848. The state wasquite welcoming to European immigrants, and even allowed white, noncitizens tovote in elections, as long as they had lived in Wisconsin for one year anddeclared their intention to become U.S. citizens.
ButAfrican-American voters were another matter. At the time, only a handful ofstates in New England allowed blacks to vote.
“In theWisconsin constitutional conventions, there was a debate between some of thedelegates who were abolitionists, and some of them actually did get it thatrights for black Americans should extend to suffrage,” Ranney said. “But therewere also a lot of delegates, particularly from the western part of the state,where there were more people who had originally come from the South. Onedelegate said that if you put the black suffrage provision in the stateConstitution, it will not get more than a handful of votes west of the RockRiver.”
As acompromise, delegates opted to let the people decide.
In theNovember 1849 general election, a referendum was held on extending the right ofsuffrage to “persons of African descent.” And, in fact, the question wasapproved by a vote of 5,265 to 4,075.
But, Ranneyexplains, it was thought at the time that a majority of all voters in theelectionnot just the majority of voters who weighed in on the referendumquestionwas required for approval. The question was put back on the ballot in1857 and 1865, but failed to win a majority both times.
ThenGillespie attempted to register to vote, was turned away by the electionsinspectors, and sued. A year later, the state Supreme Court agreed with him.And in 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment was adopted, granting black men nationwidethe right to vote.
“At the time[of Gillespie’s suit] Wisconsin was one of the earliest states to enact blacksuffrage,” Ranney said.
Gillespiedied in 1892 in Chicago, but he was so well regarded in Milwaukee that his bodywas brought back to this city. Chisom said that newspaper accounts from thattime indicate that there were many whites at his funeral, which was unusual. He’sburied in Forest Home Cemetery along with other prominent Milwaukeeans.
