{"id":47,"featured":0,"modified":"2025-01-24 21:14:14","latitude":32.7884791999999976042090565897524356842041015625,"longitude":-79.944800299999997150734998285770416259765625,"title":"Thomas E. Miller House, 156 Smith Street","address":"156 Smith Street, Charleston, SC 29403","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/642fe7171b68f81a8b7d5620ccfdc431.jpg","creator":["Jenn Curtis"],"description":"

Thomas Miller was born on June 17, 1849 to free Black parents in Ferrebeeville, South Carolina. His family moved to Charleston in 1852 where he went to Black schools before moving to Hudson, New York. He attended Lincoln University (PA.) on scholarship and graduated in 1872, continuing on to get a law degree from the University of South Carolina. Between 1874 and 1880, Miller served South Carolina\u2019s general assembly as a member of the state\u2019s Republican Party. He acted on the state party\u2019s executive committee between 1878 and 1880 and would later serve as the party\u2019s chairman in 1884.<\/span><\/p>\n

The tensions between Black Republicans and white Democrats during Reconstruction can be seen throughout Miller\u2019s political career, especially in matters of election fraud. Thomas Miller ran against Democrat William Elliot in the race for Congressman for the Seventh District in 1888. The results showed that Elliot won, but Miller countered the results by arguing that most of the registered Black voters had not been allowed to vote. After reviewing the case, the House Committee on Elections announced Miller as the actual winner. He ran for re-election and faced off against Elliot again as well as the white Republican candidate, E.M. Brayton. The ballots for Miller were thrown out for minor discrepancies like the color of the paper or the wording on the ballot, and, because of this, Miller lost to Elliot. Miller protested the outcome, but the state Supreme Court ruled in favor of Elliot. The Democratic majority in the Congressional Committee on Elections also ruled that Elliot had won the election fairly when Miller brought the dispute to Congress\u2019s attention. However, the Republican minority on the committee found that Miller should have actually won by over 3,000 votes.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1891, Miller spoke to the House of Representatives to support Representative Henry Cabot Lodge\u2019s bill that let the federal government observe all federal elections and defend voters from any kind of violence or coercion directed towards them. He did this even at the expense of future re-elections into Congress, rejecting the Democrats\u2019 claims that this was just a bill to let \u201cincompetent and corrupt blacks\u201d vote. Miller also went head-to-head with Georgia Senator Alfred H. Colquitt who propagated the lie that Blacks were the ones at fault for the South\u2019s failure to recover from the recent economic downturn. Miller responded by saying that the whites in the South were the ones at fault by refusing Blacks their civil rights. He served as a state representative from 1894 to 1896.<\/span><\/p>\n

Miller also was involved with the Constitutional Convention of 1895 of South Carolina that senator and former governor, Ben Tillman, organized to strip African American men of their right to vote. Miller, being a member of the delegation of nine Black lawyers and politicians during the Convention, protested against Tillman\u2019s proposal to rewrite the state constitution that had been written during Reconstruction. Despite Miller\u2019s efforts, as well as those of Representative Robert Smalls and Congressman George Washington Murray, the delegation was not able to prevent the implementation of the new constitution that made it harder for Black men to register to vote.<\/span><\/p>\n

Miller later helped found the Colored Normal Industrial Agricultural and Mechanical College, in Orangeburg, South Carolina and served as its first president in 1896. While there, Miller advocated for the hiring of Black teachers for Black schools. The state governor, Coleman L. Blease forced Miller to resign in 1911 after Miller contested him in the 1910 election. <\/span>In 1954, the institution was renamed South Carolina State University; and in 1965 it became one of the institutions of higher education that was designated Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).<\/span><\/p>\n

After resigning from the College, Miller retired from politics and education, moving to Philadelphia in 1923. He returned to Charleston in 1934 and died there four years later. Miller\u2019s descendants continued to live in the house at 156 Smith Street until 1950. The house was restored in 1987 and is still used as a residential home today.<\/span><\/p>","sponsor":null,"subtitle":null,"accessinfo":null,"lede":"Thomas Miller was born on June 17, 1849 to free Black parents in Ferrebeeville, South Carolina. His family moved to Charleston in 1852 where he went to Black schools before moving to Hudson, New York.","website":null,"related_resources":["Alfred D. Moore and Christian K. Anderson. \u201cArticle 5 A Thorn in the Side of Segregation: The Short Life, Long Odds, and Legacy of the Law School at South Carolina State College.\u201d American Educational History Journal<\/i> Vol. 45 (2018).


<\/span>","\u201cArchive Record: 154 Smith Street\/78 Radcliffe Street (Easement property) and 156 Smith Street (Thomas E. Miller House),\u201d Historic Charleston Foundation<\/i>.
<\/span>","Bruce A. Ragsdale and Joel D. Treese (Office of the Historian, U.S. House of Representatives). <\/span>Black Americans in Congress, 1870-1989.<\/span><\/i> Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1990.
<\/span>","Jonathan H. Poston for Historic Charleston Foundation. <\/span>The Buildings of Charleston: A Guide to the City\u2019s Architecture. <\/span><\/i>(Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1997).<\/span>","William Lewis Burke, All for Civil Rights: African American Lawyers in South Carolina, 1868-1968. Southern Legal Studies.<\/i> (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2017).
<\/span>"],"factoids":[],"files":{"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/642fe7171b68f81a8b7d5620ccfdc431.jpg":{"id":252,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","title":"154 Smith Street and 78 Radcliffe Street","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/642fe7171b68f81a8b7d5620ccfdc431.jpg","description":"This is the house on 154 Smith Street\/78 Radcliffe Street. This was built on an easement property of 156 Smith Street, where politician Thomas E. Miller lived. Photograph courtesy of the author."},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/3af9c9ea402c7cb2b1f678147fa2e133.jpg":{"id":253,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","title":"Thomas E. Miller","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/3af9c9ea402c7cb2b1f678147fa2e133.jpg","description":"Thomas E. Miller, former congressman and state representative and president of South Carolina State. Courtesy of the Biogrpahical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774-present."},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/11e04d4f0953ffbde519cd5ce425d5d8.jpg":{"id":407,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","title":""Radical Members of the First Legislation After the War"","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/11e04d4f0953ffbde519cd5ce425d5d8.jpg","description":"In this ca. 1868 montage of \u201cradical\u201d Republican members of the South Carolina legislature, Thomas E. Miller is pictured on the third row from the top, far right. Opponents of Reconstruction distributed flyers like this to incite white supremacists in overturning the civil rights African Americans gained during the Reconstruction era<\/a>. Courtesy of South Carolina Historical Society. "},"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/fullsize\/34b1e951114761535968f6d19ab5c982.jpg":{"id":444,"mime-type":"image\/jpeg","title":"1919 Portrait of Thomas E. Miller","thumbnail":"https:\/\/discovering.cofc.edu\/redirect\/files\/square_thumbnails\/34b1e951114761535968f6d19ab5c982.jpg","description":"This is a framed, 1919 oil portrait of Thomas Miller, painted by Edwin Harleston. Courtesy of the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture."}}}