Isaiah
Montgomery was born a slave at Hurricane, a large plantation on the
Mississippi River on 21st May, 1847. He was the property of Joseph
Davis, elder brother of Jefferson Davis.
His father, Benjamin Montgomery, was the plantation's business manager.
This enabled Isaiah to get a good education.
At
the age of sixteen Montgomery was employed as a cabin boy by Admiral
David D. Porter. He was also with General
Ulysses S. Grant when in 1863 he captured
Vicksburg
and
freed the Mississippi from the control of the Confederate
Army.
After
the American Civil War Montgomery returned
to Hurricane and with his father reopened their store as Montgomery
& Sons. With the help of his former master, Joseph Davis, they
vied with northern officials of the Freedmen's
Bureau for control of Hurricane. This eventually resulted in having
Samuel Thomas, head of the bureau in Mississippi, being removed from
office.
In
1866 Joseph Davis sold the plantation at Davis Bend to Benjamin Montgomery
and his sons. They turned this into a cooperative community of freed
slaves. In 1872 Isaiah
Montgomery
took full control of Hurricane, the largest cotton
plantation at Davis Bend. The village of Mound Bayou was established
and Montgomery became mayor.
Although Montgomery had
good management skills, the price of cotton, problems with floods
and insects, and worsening political conditions, meant that the venture
was not an economic success and he was forced to sell off some of
the land to Major George W. McGinnis, manager of the land office of
the new Memphis-to-Vicksburg Railroad.
As mayor of Mound Bayou,
Montgomery advocated the educational theories that had been promoted
by his friend, Booker T. Washington. This
included technical training and teaching the latest methods of scientific
agriculture. Girls were taught homemaking skills so they could provide
better care for their families.
Montgomery, a supporter
of the Temperance Movement, imposed
a ban on the sale of alcoholic beverage. He believed this was a major
factor in keeping the crime rate low in Mound Bayou. In the first
20 years of its existence only three persons were sent to the mayor's
court to the white circuit court for trail. Two of these offences
were committed by strangers to the village.
Montgomery lost the support
of many Civil Rights leaders when
in 1890 he became the only black delegate at the Constitutional Convention
in Mississippi by consenting to a scheme to guarantee white supremacy
by disfranchising black voters. He justified the "striking down
the rights and liberties of 123,000 freemen" by the argument
that he was trying to bridge the "chasm (between the races) that
has been widening and deepening for a generation... that threatens
destruction to you and yours, while it promises no enduring prosperity
to me and mine."
In 1900 Montgomery joined
with Booker T. Washington in Boston
to form the National Negro Business League. At the next meeting held
in Chicago Montgomery gave a talk on
"The Founding of a Negro City".
In 1902 Montgomery accepted
a federal appointment as receiver of public moneys for Mississippi.
However, the following year a special agent from New
Orleans and after ransacking his office, claimed he found evidence
that Montgomery had been depositing "moneys of a semi-official
character in an unauthorized bank". The agent's racism is revealed
in the following passage from his report when he argued that if Montgomery
was not sacked it "would result in an attack on the administration
for shielding and whitewashing a nigger."
Montgomery was indeed forced
to resign but when President Theodore
Roosevelt made a public gesture concerning his achievements by
making a special trip to Mound Bayou.
Isaiah
Montgomery
lived prosperously until his death on 6th March, 1924.
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