While the influential white supremacist historian of Reconstruction William Dunning often presented African Americans in the South as the ignorant tools of Northern whites, in many cases blacks began organizing politically on their own almost as soon as they felt it was safe to do so.
According to the Encyclopedia of Reconstruction:
Georgia blacks, including Henry Turner and others, organized a black Republican Party in May 1867 that focused on forming alliances with white Republicans. The black-white Republican alliance in Georgia was instrumental in organizing mass meetings of blacks in rallies to support the registration of black voters and encourage celebrations of the congressional Reconstruction Acts. p. 287
Henry Turner is an interesting figure who does not get enough attention in the history books. He was often derided as a “Negro Carpetbagger” by the white Southern press, but he was a native Southerner who was born in Newberry Courthouse, South Carolina, to Sarah Greer and Hardy Turner.
Turner was not a slave. In fact his grandmother was believed to be a white plantation owner, a form of miscegenation rarely talked about then or now. Turner struggled to educate himself and, while a janitor at an Abbeville, South Carolina law firm he received instruction from lawyers there. In 1853 Turner received a license to preach as an African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) minister and he travelled to black communities throughout the Deep South preaching. Georgia was a particular locus of his religious work.
After he married and had children, Turner moved away from the Deep South in 1858 because of legislation that would have made it easier to enslave free blacks. He preached mostly in Washington and Baltimore where he met with prominent Republicans like Charles Sumner and Thad Stevens. When Lincoln allowed for the recruitment of black troops, he served as a chaplain with the First United States Colored Troops. After the war he became an A.M.E. missionary in Georgia.
According to the Georgia Encyclopedia:
