Statesmen, Scoundrels, and Eccentrics: A Gallery of Amazing Arkansans

Mifflin W. Gibbs

Mifflin W. Gibbs Arkansas was the home to the first elected black municipal judge in the United States, M. W. Gibbs. In  Mifflin Wistar Gibbs was elected Little Rock police judge, a post the Republican held for two years before being defeated in , when Reconstruction came to an end and Democrats recaptured political power in the state. Though for the remainder of his life Gibbs would be referred to by both blacks and whites as “Judge,” his tenure as an elected official was actually a minor part of a long life of varied interests and accomplishments. Born in  of free parents, Gibbs grew up in the expanding black sections of Philadelphia. His formal education ended after only one year when his father, a Methodist cleric, died. Gibbs apprenticed as a carpenter, and he worked on a number of large buildings, including Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church—“Mother Bethel,” as it is known to AME members everywhere. When not plying his trade, young Gibbs spent his free time reading in the libraries of the local black literary societies. In , after having accompanied Frederick Douglass on an antislavery lecture tour,Gibbs joined the gold rush to California.He found San Francisco a “chaos of board cabins and tents,” but before long he opened a clothing store. He also helped establish the first black newspaper west of the Mississippi River, the Mirror of the Times, which he served as both publisher and occasional contributor. California proved to be as racist as the states back east, and after being told to withdraw their children from public schools, some eight hundred San Francisco blacks migrated toVictoria, British Columbia, in . Victoria was not free of racial conflict, but it was a paradise compared to California. Among Gibbs’s early acts after he immigrated to British Columbia was registering to vote, a right long denied American blacks. In  he won election to the Victoria City Council and was the first black person to hold the office.  In Victoria, Gibbs again went into the retail trade, opening the Boot and Shoe Emporium; he also diversified into real estate and construction . In a breathtaking undertaking that was filled with risk and challenge, Gibbs made his fortune in the coal mining business, opening the first coal mine on rugged Queen Charlotte’s Island north of Victoria and building the railroad to serve it.In May ,Gibbs sailed to Victoria, taking with him the first shipment of anthracite coal ever mined on the Pacific coast. He was received as a local hero, and he could justifiably claim to have fulfilled his goal of going west and “doing some great thing.” With his business success and growing political power, the thirtysix -year-old Gibbs must have felt ready to begin a family. He married Maria Alexander,a native of Kentucky and a student at Oberlin College in Ohio. She was certainly a suitable mate for the prominent and successful businessman.In quick succession the Gibbses had five children. His finances secure, Gibbs returned to the United States in  without warning, settling in Oberlin, Ohio, where his wife had gone to school and where his daughters were studying. He apparently read law while living there. It is not clear exactly why the middle-aged Gibbs decided to relocate to Arkansas, but he left his family in Ohio and settled in Little Rock in .His brother,Jonathan,was already serving as Florida secretary of state, and Gibbs probably saw the post–Civil War South as a new frontier of opportunities. Gibbs never lived with Maria again, though they apparently never divorced. He did keep up with his children , and in  Gibbs purchased a building in Washington, D.C., to serve as a musical conservatory for his daughter Harriet. For the next forty-four years Gibbs was the premier black leader and businessman in Arkansas.After his service as municipal judge, he practiced law, but most of his considerable energies were spent on Republican politics. He was a delegate to every Republican national convention but one from  to . From  to , Gibbs was secretary of the Arkansas Republican Central Committee. Gibbs was an ally of Powell Clayton, the former Union army general and Reconstruction governor who ran the state GOP from its founding in  until late in life, when he turned it over to his lieutenant , Harmon L. Remmel. Gibbs received several presidential  THE LAW appointments, including registrar of public lands in Little Rock...