James H. Harris (NC politician)
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- For the African-American Medal of Honor winner, see James H. Harris.
James Henry Harris (1832-1891) was an African American politician in North Carolina.
Harris was born into slavery in Granville County, North Carolina but became free about 1848. He left the state and attended Oberlin College in Ohio. After the outbreak of the American Civil War, Harris was commissioned as a recruiting officer to organize black troops in Indiana, including the 28th Regiment United States Colored Troops.
After the end of the war, Harris returned to North Carolina and became a political leader, helping to found the North Carolina Republican Party, serving as a Raleigh alderman, president of the State Equal Rights League and chairman of the 1866 Freedmen's Convention. He was elected as a delegate to the state’s 1868 constitutional convention, as a member of the North Carolina House of Representatives (1868-1870, and 1883) and of the North Carolina Senate (1872-1874). He was a member of the United States Electoral College in 1872, voting for Ulysses S. Grant. Harris was also a delegate to several Republican National Conventions, including in 1884, when he was a supporter of Chester A. Arthur's unsuccessful bid for renomination.[1] In 1888, he was elected as a delegate for James G. Blaine.[2]
Harris lost two races for the United States House of Representatives, the first by a slim margin in 1870 to Sion H. Rogers. In the second race (1878), his place on the ballot opposing another African-American Republican, James E. O'Hara, contributed to the victory of white Democrat William H. Kitchin.[3]
Harris died in 1891 in Washington, D.C. and was buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in Raleigh.
