Samuel F. Kelso (ca. 1825-1880)

Q-6-60

Samuel Kelso, born into slavery, became one of Lynchburg's first African American teachers after the Civil War. He taught at a freedmen’s school on 12th Street and was later a trustee of the all-Black Polk Street School. Kelso was elected to represent Campbell County, including Lynchburg, at Virginia’s Constitutional Convention of 1867-68. There he voted with radical reformers and introduced a resolution calling for free public education open to all on an equal basis. In 1869 he was a delegate to the National Convention of the Colored Men of America, which protested the exclusion of Black Americans from civil rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. He was later a postal agent in Lynchburg.

Department of Historic Resources, 2021

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Virginia, vol. 1 (Richmond, 1868). Proceedings of the National Convention of the Colored Men of America (Washington, D.C., 1869). U.S. Census, 1870, 1880. Chataigne’s Lynchburg City Directory, 1875-1876. Richmond Dispatch, 17 April 1867, 23 March 1871. Brent Tarter, “Kelso, Samuel F. (ca. 1825–1880)” Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, (12 Feb. 2021): https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/kelso-samuel-f-ca-1825-1880/ James M. Elson, Lynchburg, Virginia: The First Two Hundred Years, 1786-1986 (Lynchburg: Warwick House Publishers, 2004). Gene W. Tomlin, The First Decade of the Lynchburg, Virginia, Free Public Schools, 1871-1882 (Lynchburg: Warwick House Publishers, 2011). Richard Andrew Meade, “A History of the Constitutional Provisions for Education in Virginia,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1941).