SCHLEY COUNTY, GA - BIOS Rev. Jesse Dinkins ***************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/gafiles.htm *********************** This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by: Clarence D. White http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00030.html#0007419 Rev. Jesse Dinkins African-American Politician and Methodist Minister from Schley County, Georgia By Clarence D. White Rev. Jesse Dinkins was born a slave around 1825 in Schley County. In October 1867 during Reconstruction and at age 43, he was elected as a Republican to represent the county at the Constitutional Convention, the mandate of which was to craft a new constitution for the state under provisions of the Reconstruction Acts passed by Congress in March 1867. The first and last African-American elected from Schley to the Georgia Legislature, Dinkins was one of 37 delegates of African-American heritage, all Republicans, elected to the convention. Perhaps the most illustrious member of this group and its acknowledged leader would be Rev. Henry McNeil Turner (1834-1915), then of Macon, who was further elected to serve in the state legislature after the convention and who was elected and consecrated bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1880. Like Turner and many other black convention delegates, Dinkins was a minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a denomination always noted for political activism and protest. He was the founding pastor of Union Hill African Methodist Episcopal Church in Ellaville. In a statement in the 1982 History of Schley County, Georgia, the late Ozie Shipp Walls Thompson reported that after the Civil War Rev. Dinkins led a movement to secure land on which to build a church. Initially, she said, services were held under a bush arbor. Dinkins and his flock purchased land for the church in 1867. AME Bishop Wesley John Gaines, in his book African Methodism in the South; or Twenty-Five Years of Freedom of 1890, listed Dinkins among nineteen men elected to deacon's orders at the February 1869 Annual Conference of the Georgia Conference held at Columbus. The census of 1870 enumerated Dinkins in the 961st Militia District (Ellaville) of Schley County. Although illiterate, he nevertheless had personal property valued at $300. His household included his wife Drucilla whose age is given, implausibly, as 28; a son Jesse, 22; son Jasper, 20; daughter Isabella, 19; son Charles, 14; daughter Molly, 13; daughter Jane, 12; daughter Ada, 11; daughter Eliza , 10; daughter Susan, 8; daughter Emma, 6; daughter Mary, 2; Jesse McCormick, 80; Malinda McCormick, 82; Eli McCormick, 8; and Benjamin Stewart, 85. By 1880 Jesse Dinkins could read and write, according to the census of that year, which gave his age as 62 and that of his wife Drucilla as 45. Other household members were son Jesse, 30; son Charles, 22, daughter Ada, 20; daughter Eliza, 19; daughter Emma, 13; daughter Mollie, 12; daughter Kallie, 11; daughter Lillie, 7; son Lucious?, 4; daughter Sopia, 3; daughter Eldora, 2; granddaughter Mary T., 3; granddaughter Artelia, 2; and nephew Eli McCormick, 18. When Rev. Dinkins arrived in Atlanta in December 1867 for the convention, he was a member of a five-man group of delegates from the 13th Election District, which included Macon, Schley and Sumter Counties, and one of 165 delegates elected to the convention. Other delegates from the 13th were Robert Lumpkin, an African-American from Macon County (Oglethorpe), later elected to the state House of Representatives; F.T. Snead from Macon County; John E. Hall of Sumter; and H.K. McCay of Sumter. The records of the proceedings of the Convention are gathered in the multi-volume Confederate Records of Georgia, compiled by Allen D. Candler. Professor Edmund L. Drago writing in his Black Politicians and Reconstruction in Georgia; A Splendid Failure, a book published in 1982, provides a vivid account of the political wrangling between Democrats and Republicans which resulted in a constitution that gave only limited rights to the ex- slaves. Blacks were denied the right to hold office or serve on juries, for example. In the elections of April 1868, the constitution was ratified, a Republican was elected governor, and the Republicans managed to achieve slight majorities in both houses, including a few blacks. Shortly after the legislative session got underway in July 1868, Democrats, joined by some white Republicans, challenged the right and eligibility of the black legislators to sit in the legislature, setting the stage for their eventual expulsion from the legislature and engendering a climate of hostility and violence against blacks. Henry McNeil Turner and his fellow black Republican legislators remained expelled until the Republican-dominated Congress passed the Congressional Reorganization Act of 1869, which reconvened the 1868 Georgia legislature, reseated the alienated blacks, and purged some Democrats under the Fourteenth Amendment. The time and place of Rev. Dinkins's demise are not known. He and his progeny seem to have moved away from Ellaville. Today a large contingent of Dinkinses are located in and around Macon, but it is not clear that they are descended from the Rev. Jesse Dinkins. Clarence D. White E-mail: http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00030.html#0007419 April 2004 http://files.usgwarchives.net/ga/schley/bios/dinkins.txt NOTE: Information on AME church http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/wright/wright.html Census provided by Saundra Brown saundra_b_2001@yahoo.com 1870 Census Schley County Georgia 345 Dinkins, Jessie 47 m b farmer Drucilla 28 f b keeping house Jessie 22 m b farm laborer Jasper 20 m b " " Isabella 19 f b Charles 14 m b Milley 13 f b attending school Jane 12 f b Eliza 10 f b (born in Alabama) Susan 8 f b Emma 6 f b Mary 2 f B McCormick, Jesse 80 m b no occupation Malinda 82 f b Eli 8 m b Stewart, Benjamin 85 m b no occupation (next door is Dinkins, John 24 m b and his family) 1880 Schley County Georgia 325 Dinkins,Jesse b m 62 Siller b f 45 wife Aran b f 20 dau Emma b f 13 dau Mollie b f 12 dau Kally b f 11 dau Lillie b f 7 dau Eugene? b m 4 son Sophia f b 3 dau Eldon b f 2 dau Eliza b f 19 dau works on farm Mary T b f 3 dau Arlelia b f 2 dau Jesse Jr b m 30 son Charles b m 23