By William “Skip” Deegans
One-hundred years ago, this month, Monroe County native, Christopher Harrison Payne, died at St. Croix, Virginia Islands. The son of emancipated slaves, Payne was born circa 1855 in Red Sulphur Springs. His father died when he was very young, and his mother taught him to read and write. Although a free man, Payne was forced to serve the Confederate Army during the Civil War.
Payne attended night school in Charleston and afterwards taught at schools in Monroe, Mercer, and Summers counties. Wanting to enter the ministry, he studied at the Richmond Theological Institute (now Virginia Union University), and pastored Baptist churches in Monroe, Greenbrier, Fayette, and Cabell counties. From Fayette County, he was the first African American to be elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1888.
In response to his election, The Clarksburg Telegram, wrote, “Fayette County has already left a black splotch on its history by electing one Christopher Columbus (sic) Payne to the House of Delegates. Every man whose heart beats a sympathetic throb for humanity is opposed to cruelty to animals. But there is a line beyond which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. Such hypocritical and semi-idiotic ‘recognition’ of the negro is like doctoring a pimple and leaving the cancer untouched, or watering exotic in the parlor and neglected the weeds In the garden. The negro should be given his rights, but to send him to our capitol as a lawmaker is like sending a skunk to a hymeneal feast. The sixty-five million blue eyed Saxons of the United States are the ones who by nature and ability should make our laws and their common sense will decree that the black hands of no negro shall lay hold of the helm of the ship of State, and as a Solon he must forever be content with a back seat.”
Payne founded and edited three newspapers, began studying law in the 1890s, and was one of the first African American lawyers in West Virginia. He was the first African American to represent West Virginia at a Republican National Convention.
In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt selected Payne to become the U. S. Consul to the Danish West Indies. The United States took possession of the islands in 1917, and Payne became police chief and prosecuting attorney of St. Thomas and St. Croix. He died at St. Thomas, and the St. Croix Axis newspaper summarized his life succinctly: “He lived respected and died regretted.”
Sources: The West Virginia News, The Daily Telegram, University of Chicago, The Clarksburg Telegram, PBS, St. Croix Avis.
