A Measure of Success:  The Brief Political Career of Thomas A. Sykes

by Kathy Lauder

Thomas A. Sykes represented Nashville in the 42nd General Assembly, but few Tennesseans would recognize his name today. His story is a microcosm of African American life in the 19th century – he rose from slavery to political power in a few short years, only to disappear from view as Southern legislatures once again stripped black citizens of their freedoms.

Sykes was born a slave in North Carolina in 1835, but by 35 he was a member of the state legislature there. Although the 1870 census from Elizabeth City, Pasquotank County, North Carolina, says he could not read or write, later information indicates that he was undeniably literate. The same census lists his occupation as “Representative” and his net worth as “$1,000,” a considerable sum for that period.

In 1872 Sykes came to Tennessee “with high revenue officials” to work as an Internal Revenue collector. His job title was “gauger,” a revenue officer who inspects the contents of casks or bulk goods in order to determine duty. Any position working with scales and instruments during that period was considered high-level work, so Sykes must have been well-educated in order to have obtained the job. Nashville City Directories listed him as an Assistant Assessor for the Internal Revenue Service in 1873; as a dealer in house furnishing goods (Bosley & Sykes) in 1878; and as a gauger again from 1877 to 1881. Sykes, along with former legislator Sampson W. Keeble, Tennessee’s first black legislator (1873), held the post of Davidson County magistrate from 1876-1878. In September 1877 Sykes was one of the prominent African Americans who took part in a reception for Rutherford B. Hayes during the visit in which the President laid the cornerstone of the U.S. Customs House in Nashville.

During the 1870s and 1880s, Thomas Sykes was involved in a reform movement against Thomas A. Kercheval’s Republican political machine. (Kercheval was mayor of Nashville from 1871-1874, from 1875-1883, and again from 1886-1888.) Sykes and other black leaders, including city councilman James C. Napier, minister George W. Bryant, and attorney William H. Young, allied themselves with white reformers to elect a slate of candidates to office and break the grip of the Kercheval organization on local politics. The coalition made significant progress, seeing many of their number elected to office and increasing the number of African American workers in city jobs ranging from fire captains to construction workers.

In 1880 Sykes was elected to the 42nd General Assembly, representing Davidson County. He was the only African American elected that term from a county in which the white population exceeded the black. However, the fact that he received many fewer votes than other Republicans on the ballot indicated that many voters switched parties rather than vote for him. An editorial in the Banner took these voters to task: “Colored men would do well to note the fact that Sykes, one of the representatives-elect on the Republican ticket, fell behind over one hundred votes. Sykes has been for many years a gauger under governmental appointment, bears an excellent character, is a fluent speaker, and gentlemanly in his bearing, but the few white Republicans scratched him. They could never get into power except by Negro votes, but cannot condescend to vote for the colored man. Will the colored race ever open their eyes to the hypocrisy practiced upon them?”

During the 42nd legislative session, Sykes introduced five important bills. His effort to repeal Chapter 130 of the Acts of 1875 was the first of four attempts by black legislators that term to overturn a law allowing discrimination by hotels, railroads, and theaters. The bill failed. Sykes’ second bill, recommending that the state build a penitentiary in West Tennessee, was amended to the point of becoming unrecognizable. When this bungled bill passed its third reading by a vote of 41-20, Sykes himself asked (unsuccessfully) for the vote to be reconsidered. His third bill, admitting black students into the School for the Blind in Nashville and the School for the Deaf and Dumb in Knoxville, to be housed in segregated facilities, passed 59-1, even though the Civil Rights Act of 1875, still in force, made such segregation illegal. Two other bills, to require impartial jury selection and to admit black students to the University of Tennessee, were never brought to a vote.

Sykes did not pursue a second term in the General Assembly, and his career from that point may be viewed as an unsettling illustration of the effects of “Jim Crow” laws on the lives of Southern blacks. The 46th General Assembly, the first in eight years with no African American representatives, passed four disfranchising laws that effectively silenced black political voices in Tennessee. In 1890, ten years after being elected to office, former State Representative Thomas Sykes was working as an elevator operator in the same Federal Customs House where he had once held an administrative position.

Biographical Directory, Tennessee General Assembly, Volume II (1861-1901). Nashville: Tennessee Historical Commission, 1979.

Cartwright, Joseph H. The Triumph of Jim Crow: Tennessee Race Relations in the 1880s. Knoxville: UT Press, 1976.

“Disfranchising Laws.” Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press, 1998.

Nashville Banner, November 4, 1880.

Scott, Mingo Jr. The Negro in Tennessee Politics and Governmental Affairs, 1865-1965: “The Hundred Years Story.” Nashville: Rich Printing Company, 1964.

Work, Monroe N. “Some Negro Members of the Tennessee Legislature During Reconstruction Period and After.” Journal of Negro History, Vol. V, January 1920, 114-115.

Photograph of Thomas A. Sykes from a composite photo of the 42nd Tennessee General Assembly, 1881.

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