Robert Brown Elliott Delivers Landmark Civil Rights Speech in Congress

Robert Brown Elliott, Black congressman from South Carolina, delivered a powerful speech on the House floor on January 6, 1874 in support of the Civil Rights Act, directly rebutting the arguments of former Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens. Elliott's eloquent defense of Black citizenship rights was widely reprinted and celebrated as one of the great speeches of the Reconstruction era, and his portrait hung in Black homes across the South for decades.