Joseph R. Holmes was killed on the courthouse steps. Now, a Virginia county honors its first Black elected leader.
The small town surrounding the courthouse is itself a kind of historical marker, renamed Charlotte Court House to highlight the 198-year-old brick building, designed by Thomas Jefferson himself.
Formerly Confederate states were required to pass new state constitutions guaranteeing civil rights before they were allowed to be readmitted to the Union, and Holmes helped write Virginia’s. He reliably voted for the most radical reforms, and as a member of the Committee on Taxation and Finance, he probed and tried to stop corruption, earning him vocal enemies in White newspapers.In early 1869, Holmes was back in Charlotte County, working on getting schools built.
Three of the men were eventually indicted for Holmes’s murder, but none ever stood trial. They all fled, and authorities never looked too hard for them, Liston said.News of the killing made headlines throughout the country, and even reached Australia, Liston has found in her research, but most people she knows in Charlotte County had never heard of it.
Holmes died on the courthouse steps because he believed in American ideals like the rule of law, Henderson said. He was “working within the system” and was at the courthouse trying to obtain a warrant when he was killed, she noted.
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