Robert A. Pelham was an American politician, journalist, and government official. He was also an editor.
Background
Robert A. Pelham was born on January 4, 1859 in Petersburg, Virginia, United States. He was the second son and fifth of seven children of free black parents, Robert A. and Frances (Butcher) Pelham. Soon after his birth, the family left the South and, after living briefly in Columbus, Ohio, and Philadelphia, settled around 1862 in Detroit, Michigan. There Pelham's father worked as a plasterer, mason, and independent contractor. After 1870, when Negroes were enfranchised, he became active in Republican politics, serving regularly in city, county, and state conventions. He was also a trustee of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Detroit.
Education
Young Robert A. Pelham attended the public schools of Detroit, which were segregated until 1872. While still in school, he began work in 1871 as a newsboy for the Detroit Post, the city's leading Republican daily newspaper. Following his graduation from high school in 1877, he joined the paper full time, and eventually ran its subscription department. While working for the Census Bureau, Pelham also attended Howard University, and in 1904 was awarded the LL. B. degree.
Career
From 1884 to 1891 Robert A. Pelham and a younger brother, Benjamin, who later became a distinguished civil servant in Michigan, distributed the Post as independent contractors. They also published and edited two black weeklies: the Venture (1879), a short-lived amateur newspaper, and, in association with others, the Plaindealer (1883 - 1893). The latter, which Robert Pelham managed for eight years, soon became the leading Negro newspaper in the Midwest and made Pelham, while still in his twenties, nationally prominent as an editor and race leader. In 1884 he represented Detroit at the National Colored Men's Convention in Pittsburgh, and in 1888 he served as temporary chairman of a similar statewide convention.
Robert A. Pelham was also a founder in 1889 of the Afro-American League, of which the militant Plaindealer became the Michigan organ. Pelham, like his father before him, was active in Republican politics. He was a founder in 1884 of the nearly all-white political-social Michigan Club, and a member of the Young Men's League, which he represented at the National League of Republican Clubs. In 1884 he clerked in the office of the Collector of Internal Revenue for Detroit, and in 1887 he was appointed state deputy oil inspector for Detroit. A delegate to the 1888 Republican National Convention in Chicago, Pelham lobbied among blacks for the nomination of Michigan's favorite-son candidate, Gen. Russell A. Alger. At the 1896 convention, Pelham, having declined nomination as a delegate, served with his older brother Joseph as a sergeant-at-arms.
As the leading Negro Republican in Michigan in the 1880's and '90's, Robert helped weld the black community to the G. O. P. Pelham left the Plaindealer in 1891 to serve as special agent of the United States General Land Office, a position that took him to northern Michigan and Minnesota. Returning to Detroit in 1893, he became an inspector for the Detroit Water Department. Then, with the return of the Republicans to the White House, he was named again in 1898 a special agent of the Land Office. Two years later he was appointed a clerk in the Census Bureau and moved to Washington, D. C. , his home for the rest of his life. At the Census Bureau, where he served until his retirement in 1937, Pelham made significant contributions as an inventor and statistician.
In 1905 Robert A. Pelham devised the first tabulating machines used in the census of manufactures and, in 1913, a tallying machine used in the population division. Pelham worked in the agricultural division of the Census Bureau and on Negro statistics. He compiled the "mortality" and "home ownership" sections of the Bureau's monumental demographic volume, Negro Population, 1790 - 1915 (1918). After retiring from public service at the age of seventy-eight, Pelham headed a Negro news service and edited the Washington Tribune, a Negro newspaper. Pelham died at his home in Washington at the age of eighty-four of a coronary occlusion on June 12, 1943.
Achievements
Membership
Robert A. Pelham was a member of the Afro-American bureau of the Republican National Committee, the National Afro-American League, the American Negro Academy, the Spingarn Medal Commission.
Personality
Robert A. Pelham was a dynamic and hardworking editor and politician. He was a handsome man and, like other members of his family, had light skin and deep-set eyes with dark eyebrows. As a young man, Pelham grew a moustache, possibly to deemphasize his political precociousness, and in his later years, as his moustache whitened and his closely cropped hair grayed at the temples, he had a distinguished appearance.
Connections
On April 5, 1893, Robert A. Pelham had married Gabrielle S. Lewis of Adrian, Michigan. They had four children: Dorothy, Sarah, Benjamin, and Frederick. Mrs. Pelham, an accomplished pianist and a graduate of Adrian College, served on the executive committee of the Michigan State Music Teachers' Association, was director of music at Howard University (1905 - 1906), and later operated a school of music.