George W. Albright
George W. Albright was an African-American farmer, educator, and politician, born a slave in the U.S. state of Mississippi. A Republican, Albright represented Marshall County in the Mississippi State Senate from 1874 to 1879 during the end of the Reconstruction Era. In 1873, Albright won his Senate seat by defeating the Democrat E. H. Crump, a leader in the Ku Klux Klan.
After he was emancipated from slavery, Albright worked as a field hand. His father, who was sold to an owner in Texas shortly before the American Civil War, joined the Union Army and was killed at the Battle of Vicksburg in Mississippi. During the War, Albright was a member of the Union League, which promoted loyalty to the Republican Party and spread news of the Emancipation Proclamation among still enslaved people. After the war, he attended a school run by Sheriff Nelson Gill, who was later killed by the Ku Klux Klan.
Albright married a white teacher and became a teacher himself. When he narrowly escaped with his life in a confrontation with Klansmen, Albright moved to Chicago, Kansas, and later Colorado. In 1937, in an interview with the communist Daily Worker newspaper, he hailed the Communist Party USA for nominating a black man, James W. Ford, for the vice-presidency in the 1936 presidential election.
