David A. Strother walked into the polling place in El Paso on April 4, 1870, just days after the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted blacks the right to vote. The town's affable black barber was going to vote with El Paso Mayor James H. Wathen by his side.

Strother was turned away at first. Unaware of the new law, a reluctant election judge had to be shown a copy of the amendment before he let Strother cast his ballot. Strother's brother voted later that same day.

Because the village held elections a day earlier than other places in the state and, as it turned out, most other towns in the country that year, El Paso officials assumed Strother was the first black to vote in the United States after the amendment was passed.

The editor of the local newspaper telegraphed the news to the nation, and for years afterward, El Paso proudly claimed the honor of having the first black citizen to vote in U.S. history.

A book published about the time the town celebrated its centennial in 1954 retold the Strother story, leading to the local American Legion post placing a headstone on Strother's grave to identify him as the first black American voter. That was a year before Martin Luther King Jr. led the bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., that ignited the modern civil rights movement, which swept away the final barriers to black voting like poll taxes and literacy tests.

But by the 1970s, historians determined Strother probably was not the first black voter. Thomas Mundy Peterson, a school custodian, went to the polls in Perth Amboy, N.J., on March 31, 1870, a day after the amendment became law. Another New Jersey man also was mentioned as possibly the first black to vote.

Whether Strother was first, second or third doesn't seem to matter much to El Paso history buffs during Black History Month 2007.

The fact that their town was among the very first in the United States to see blacks vote is a source of pride all by itself.

"This area was known as having many forward-thinking people. It seems to me we are talking about the leading edge in the change in how society handled racial and gender and other differences. Woodford County was heard from early in those areas," said Jim Fyke, president of the Woodford County Historical Society.

"Even if he was the third (in the United States), jiminy Christmas, that's important to a town this size," added Marilyn Swanson, who became intrigued by Strother's story while volunteering at the El Paso Public Library.

Fyke and others also point out that Strother likely still holds the honor of being the first black to vote in Illinois.

"Most of our folks have come to that conclusion," Fyke said.

"We've never found anything different on that," agreed El Paso City Clerk David Fever, a member of the county's historical society.

Son of slaves

Strother was born Aug. 18, 1843, in Lexington, Mo., according to the book, "The El Paso Story." His parents were slaves who bought their freedom. He told the story of how his mother paid for hers by pledging $50 a year to her owner over several years.

His mother moved the family to Peoria after his father died. As a youth, Strother took work as a cook on a steamboat on the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. Later, during the Civil War, he was a civilian cook for an Illinois infantry regiment that included several soldiers from the El Paso area.

At their urging, Strother moved to the town and became a barber. His shop was located at 11 East Front St. at the rear of a grocery in a corner of an insurance office that doubled as the office of the justice of the peace.

He moved the business to the Eagle Block Building, a three-story commercial structure that later burned. Strother, whose brother had joined him in the business, moved to the basement of the First National Bank Building.

Strother never attended school, but he was an avid reader and his library included both classic and modern literature, according to the town's history.

"He was a veritable encyclopedia of information regarding past events and dates," according to his obituary.

He also played the violin.

But nothing was written about what Strother thought about his vote.

Still, his obituary tells of his kindness.

"He always had an especial fondness for children, and they for him," states the obituary, which also describes how he cared for his blind, aging mother until she died of tuberculosis in 1894. His brother, Charles, died of the same disease three years later.

That same year, Strother married his housekeeper, Elizabeth Gaines, who had helped nurse the ailing Charles. She died in 1901, also of tuberculosis.

"With all whom he held most dear gone from him, David pursued a quiet, unassuming existence. Finding much comfort amongst the books of his considerable library in which he took great pride," the obituary reads.

The town turned out for Strother's funeral when he died of a heart attack in 1905.

"The rooms were entirely filled, many being unable to get in. The pastor took for his lesson Job 26:12-28, the last verse, 'and unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.'"

Left behind only his legacy

A stickler for detail, the obituary writer listed what Strother left behind.

"Mr. Strother's characteristic generosity and helpfulness toward others accounts for the fact that he leaves little or no property excepting his household goods, the barber shop furniture, a very fine gold watch, his library and two valuable violins. What little there is left after the funeral expenses are paid will no doubt go to his only known near relative, James Cheek, living in Eureka."

The obituary includes a tribute.

"Many residents of considerable pretensions have passed away in this city but very few of them with the general regret on the part of the entire public as in the case of this honest, courteous, unassuming, gentlemanly colored man, and if our people see to it that his last resting place is fittingly marked with a shaft of pure white stone it will be no more than is his due."

But the final words written about Strother nearly 102 years ago by someone who knew him provide the best hint at the gulf that still existed along racial lines 40 years after the end of the Civil War and 35 years after he cast his vote. His obituary ends this way

"Though dark of skin his heart was white as was ever made."

---

15th Amendment

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Notes: Blacks who had been slaves became citizens under the terms of the 14th Amendment. The 15th Amendment does not specifically say that all blacks must be allowed to vote. The states are free to set qualifications for voters. But a voter cannot be denied the ballot because of race. Attempts by some states to do this indirectly have been struck down by Supreme Court decisions, federal and state laws, and the 24th Amendment.

SOURCE: U.S. Constitution