Isaac Jenkins (1846 - 1911) was an American politician who served in the

Florida House of Representatives The Florida House of Representatives is the lower house of the Florida Legislature, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Florida, the Florida Senate being the upper house. Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution of Florida, adopted ...

in the 1880s. Jenkins was born on August 10, 1846, in

Leon County, Florida Leon County is a county in the Panhandle of the U.S. state of Florida. It was named after the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León. As of the 2020 census, the population was 292,198. The county seat is Tallahassee, which is also the state cap ...

. An

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

born into

slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

, Leon lived on the farm of his owner, General Robert Butler, until the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

broke out in 1861. He served as a cook in the

Confederate Army The Confederate States Army, also called the Confederate Army or the Southern Army, was the military land force of the Confederate States of America (commonly referred to as the Confederacy) during the American Civil War (1861–1865), fighting ...

until the

Emancipation Proclamation The Emancipation Proclamation, officially Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the Civil War. The Proclamation changed the legal sta ...

was issued in 1863. After being freed, he moved to

Tallahassee Tallahassee ( ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat and only incorporated municipality in Leon County. Tallahassee became the capital of Florida, then the Florida Territory, in 1824. In 2020, the population ...

. He worked as a tinner for two years, then as a store clerk. He married Mary Adkerson in 1860, and worked as a painter, clerk, and sexton of the city cemetery. Jenkins served as a Tallahassee councilman in 1876. He was elected to the

in 1880 and again in 1882, to serve in the 1881 and 1883 sessions representing Leon County. Charles Rollins and Wallace S. Weeks were his fellow Representatives from Leon County. Jenkins was a Baptist. He died on November 30, 1911, in Leon County, Florida.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jenkins, Isaac African-American state legislators in Florida African-American politicians during the Reconstruction Era Members of the Florida House of Representatives 1846 births 1911 deaths 20th-century African-American people