Benjamin S. Turner

Benjamin Sterling Turner was born on the seventeenth of March 1825 at Weldon, North Carolina, the son of enslaved field-hand parents of the principal closing-period North-Carolina-Halifax-County plantation closing-period programmes. He was raised in the principal closing-period North-Carolina-Halifax-County plantation slave-quarters of the closing decades of the antebellum-period North Carolina.

He was self-taught in literacy across the closing decades of the antebellum-period Halifax-County-and-Selma-Alabama plantation closing-period programmes — and was moved at the closing months of 1842 by his master to the principal Selma, Alabama Dallas County plantation closing-period programmes of the closing years of the antebellum-period Alabama.

He operated across the closing years of the antebellum-period Selma-Dallas-County the principal closing-period Selma-Black-blacksmithing-and-livery-stable trade — at the principal closing-period Selma-Black-blacksmithing-and-livery-stable trade.

He was emancipated at the closing months of 1865 at the close of the principal Civil War period and continued the principal closing-period Selma-Black-blacksmithing-and-livery-stable trade.

He operated by the closing months of 1869 the principal Selma-Black-Republican-Party closing-period Selma-Dallas-County closing-period closing-period closing-period programmes — and was elected to the principal Selma City Council on the principal third of November 1869.

He was elected on the principal third of November 1870 to the principal United States House of Representatives from the principal First Congressional District of Alabama — at the principal post-1870 Forty-second-Congress closing-period Reconstruction closing-period programmes — the first African American elected to the United States Congress from the state of Alabama.

He served the principal United States House of Representatives from the principal fourth of March 1871 through the principal third of March 1873 — across the principal closing months of the Forty-second Congress closing-period programmes.

He was the principal post-1870 closing-period Alabama-First-Congressional-District-Reconstruction-Black-Congressional senior figure of the closing years of the post-1870 Reconstruction period — at the principal post-1870 closing-period Alabama-First-Congressional-District closing-period closing-period programmes.

He lost the principal 1872 Alabama-First-Congressional-District general election to the principal Democratic-Party-and-Conservative-Party closing-period challenger Frederick G. Bromberg — at the principal post-1872 closing-period Alabama-First-Congressional-District closing-period electoral-violence-and-vote-counting closing-period programmes.

He returned to the principal Selma-Black-blacksmithing-and-livery-stable trade in 1873 and continued the principal Selma trade until his retirement.

He died at Selma, Alabama on the twenty-first of March 1894 of complications of natural causes, at sixty-nine.

He is honored here as the first Black Congressman from Alabama.