Philip Joiner was a delegate to the 1867 constitutional convention in Georgia and an elected representative to the

Georgia Assembly The Georgia General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is bicameral, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Each of the General Assembly's 236 members serve two-year terms and are directly el ...

in 1868. He and other African Americans were prohibited from taking office by their colleagues in the Georgia Assembly. Federal intervention in 1870 overruled the discriminatory exclusion, and Joiner would win re-election to a second term in office. A month after being barred from taking office he was a leader of a march from Albany, Georgia to

Camilla, Georgia Camilla is a city in Mitchell County, Georgia, United States, and is its county seat. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 5,187. History The city was incorporated in 1858. The name Camilla was chosen in honor of the granddaugh ...

. Participants were shot at and attacked at the

Republican Republican can refer to: Political ideology * An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law. ** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...

campaign rally in Camilla, including by the sheriff. Joiner submitted his testimony on the event to the

Freedmen Bureau The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was an agency of early Reconstruction, assisting freedmen in the South. It was established on March 3, 1865, and operated briefly as a ...

's O.H. Howard. Many were killed and wounded in the attack on

freedmen A freedman or freedwoman is a formerly enslaved person who has been released from slavery, usually by legal means. Historically, enslaved people were freed by manumission (granted freedom by their captor-owners), abolitionism, emancipation (gra ...

. It was commemorated 100 years after it happened as the

Camilla massacre The Camilla massacre took place in Camilla, Georgia, on Saturday, September 19, 1868. African Americans had been given the right to vote in Georgia's 1868 state constitution, which had passed in April, and in the months that followed, whites acros ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Joiner, Philip African-American politicians during the Reconstruction Era African-American state legislators in Georgia (U.S. state) Original 33 Georgia (U.S. state) Republicans