Ruby, George Thompson (1841-1882), was one of the most important Black politicians in Texas following the American Civil War (1861-1865). In 1869, he became one of the first African Americans elected to the Texas Senate. Ruby also worked as a teacher, a journalist, and an administrator within the Freedmen’s Bureau. The Freedmen’s Bureau was a federal agency that worked to help Black people who had been freed from slavery.
Ruby was born in 1841 in New York City. His family moved to Portland, Maine, when he was a boy. As a young man, Ruby went to Haiti, where he worked as a correspondent for an American newspaper.
In 1864, Ruby settled in Louisiana, where he worked as a schoolteacher. In Jackson, Louisiana, he was beaten by a white mob for attempting to establish a common school (public school) for Black students. Ruby soon moved to Galveston, Texas, where he joined the Freedmen’s Bureau as a school administrator.
In 1868, Ruby was elected president of the Texas chapter of the Union League. The league was an organization that supported many of the national government’s plans under Reconstruction. Also in 1868, Ruby served as Texas’s only African American delegate to the Republican National Convention. In 1868 and 1869, he served as a delegate to the Texas constitutional convention. Ruby also became deputy collector of customs at Galveston. In that role, he established relationships with prominent businessmen and politicians.
Ruby, competing as a Republican, won election to the state Senate in 1869. As a state senator, he won recognition for his willingness to work with both white and Black Texans. He sponsored bills concerning such issues as railroads, insurance companies, and agricultural surveys.
Democrats gained a majority in the state Senate in the early 1870’s, and Ruby chose not to seek reelection in 1873. He moved to New Orleans, where he worked for the city’s port and edited a newspaper aimed at African American readers. Ruby died of malaria on Oct. 31, 1882.
See also Freedmen’s Bureau.
