{{Short description|American civil rights activist}} {{Use American English|date=February 2026}} {{Use mdy dates|date=February 2026}} '''Henry Adams''' (1843–?) was a formerly enslaved man who led what has been considered Louisiana's first civil rights campaign, which promoted voting rights for former slaves and advocated for African Americans to migrate from the South.
==Biography== Adams was born into slavery as Henry Houston in Newton County, Georgia, on March 16, 1843.<ref name="Wong">{{cite web |last1=Wong |first1=Tabitha |title=Henry Adams [Louisiana] (1843-?) |url=https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/adams-henry-1843/ |website=Blackpast |date=24 June 2008 |access-date=28 June 2025}}</ref> In 1850, Adams' owner moved his plantation to DeSoto Parish, Louisiana. Adams and his family were freed by their owner on May 26, 1865, when Shreveport, Louisiana, surrendered to Union forces.<ref name="Brock">{{cite web |last1=Brock |first1=Eric J. |title=Henry Adams |url=https://64parishes.org/entry/henry-adams |website=64 Parishes |access-date=28 June 2025}}</ref> After the Civil War ended, Adams worked as a drayman in Shreveport and also served in the army from 1866–1869.<ref name="Brock"/>
In 1870, Adams organized a group of African American veterans from Shreveport, calling the group the Committee, with about 150 men travelling across the South to encourage African Americans to vote.<ref name="Brock"/> In 1874, Adams' organization became part of the Colonization Council, a secret fraternal society. The council's objectives were to improve conditions for African Americans in the South; failing that, to petition the President of the United States for genuine protection of African Americans; then, to request land to establish an African American majority state; and finally, as a last resort, to have African Americans leave the United States.<ref name="Wong"/> Realizing that conditions in the South would not improve, Adams advocated for migration from the South, first publicly announcing this in a speech to council members in 1877.<ref name="Brock"/><ref name="Wong"/> A petition with more than 98,000 signatures was subsequently sent to President Rutherford B. Hayes, but the request for federal funding for the migration was denied.<ref name="Wong"/><ref>{{cite book|last=Painter|first=Nell Irvin|title=Exodusters|date=1976|publisher=W. W. Norton|location=New York|page=87}}</ref> Support for these objectives began to decrease and after receiving threats from Whites, Adams moved to New Orleans in December 1878.<ref name="Brock"/><ref name="Wong"/>
In 1879, Adams changed the focus of the Colonization Council to support Exodusters, African Americans who were migrating from the South to Kansas, becoming a prominent supporter of the movement.<ref name="Brock"/> Around 30,000 African Americans moved to Kansas, but many faced economic hardships due to the fact that very little good farmland was available for purchase. Those that escaped poverty primarily worked in trades or as domestic workers in cities.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hickey |first1=Joseph V. |title="Pap" Singleton's Dunlap Colony: Relief Agencies and the Failure of a Black Settlement in Eastern Kansas |journal=Great Plains Quarterly |date=Winter 1991 |volume=11 |issue=1 |url=http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/636/ |publisher=Center for Great Plains Studies |location=University of Nebraska-Lincoln}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Quintard|first1=Taylor|title=In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528-1990|date=1998|publisher=W. W. Norton|location=New York}}</ref> In 1880, Adams travelled to Washington, D.C. to testify before a Senate special committee investigating "Negro Exodus from the Southern States", blaming the causes of the African American exodus from the South on anti-Black terror.<ref name="Brock"/><ref name="Wong"/> Adams told the committee about "the nightmarish violence and insidious economic exploitation inflicted upon the freedpeople of the south by the very men who held us slaves."<ref>{{cite web |title=Forthcoming: Spring 2026 |url=https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/forthcoming-spring-2026/ |website=Library of America |access-date=29 June 2025 |date=25 June 2025}}</ref> After the disappointing results of the migration to Kansas, Adams began supporting emigration to Liberia, which had been founded in 1824 by the American Colonization Society. Nothing is known of Adams after 1884 when the Colonization Council largely ceased to exist, although it is possible that Adams travelled to Liberia.<ref name="Wong"/>
== References == {{reflist}}
== Further reading == * {{cite book |last1=Adams |first1=Henry |title=The Testimony of Henry Adams, Freedman: Hope, Terror, and Exodus in the Post–Civil War South |date=2026 |publisher=Library of America |location=New York |isbn=978-1-59853-836-6}} Presents the complete transcripts of Adams' 1880 testimony to the Senate and the texts of the documents that he prepared for the committee.
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Adams, Henry}} Category:1843 births Category:Year of death unknown Category:People enslaved in Louisiana Category:Civil rights activists from Louisiana Category:People enslaved in Georgia (U.S. state) Category:People from Newton County, Georgia Category:People from DeSoto Parish, Louisiana