JORDAN
NOBLE: THE VENERABLE SOLDIER-STATESMAN
Jordan Noble's story as a slave-turned-soldier and
a loved citizen of New Orleans has been somewhat thoroughly documented. Noble was able to use his status as a patriot
and soldier of four wars (Battle of New Orleans/War of 1812, Seminole War in
Florida, Mexican War, and as part of both the Confederate and Union forces during
the Civil War) to gain freedom and social status that very few of his skin color
had at that time. His accomplishments and
unique circumstances positioned him as a celebrated member of New Orleans
society and a political leader of the free black community.
Jordan Noble's efforts as a political leader began
far before President Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, far before the
Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in 1865, and far before the Fourteenth
Amendment offered a guarantee of civil rights in 1868. Noble's well-publicized notoriety
as Andrew Jackson's drummer and his voluntary service in multiple wars to help whites
forge the American republic positioned him to astutely negotiate through the
class-based society which surrounded him. His words and actions were public proof
that People of Color were model citizens, eloquent speakers with social grace,
and true patriots deserving freedom and every natural right. His words and
actions were tools that greatly advanced the fight for those rights and equality
throughout America.
Noble attended the 1854 National Emigration
Convention of Colored People in Cleveland, serving as an elected officer on its
National Board of Commissioners and a Louisiana delegate. The delegates of that
convention created what was advanced as the first platform "ever
established by the colored people in any Convention in the United States."
That groundbreaking platform made a series of declarations which outlined
specific civil rights grievances and, among other things, insisted that
"man is by nature free," that whatever interferes with the natural
rights of man should "be met with adequate resistance," and demanded
"every political right, privilege and position," while pledging to
use "all honorable means, to unite us as one people, on this
continent."1
In 1865, the first year that "free blacks and
mullatoes of Louisiana" could legally meet in convention, Noble attended the
Convention of Colored Men of Louisiana in New Orleans. He served as President
pro-tem and Vice President of the Convention, in addition to serving as
President of the Convention's Committee of Rules and Regulations and as an
officer on multiple other committees developed to "promote the moral,
educational, and economic development of the black community." Noble and the
other delegates quickly formed the Equal Rights League of Louisiana as an
outgrowth of the National Equal Rights League, which was founded just three
months prior, and endorsed their adopted "Declaration of Wrongs and
Rights." (The National Equal Rights League served as a forerunner to the
NAACP.) The published minutes and an editorial in the New Orleans Tribune specifically recognized Noble's high level of
leadership activity and important part at the Convention. His work alongside
other notable southern-black soldiers turned political leaders, such as James
H. Ingraham and Oscar J. Dunn, helped to ensure the Convention's success and initiate
a well-defined, unified Civil Rights Movement in the years that followed. 2,
3
1Proceedings
of the National Emigration Convention of Colored People Held at Cleveland,
Ohio, On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, The 24th, 25th, and 26th of August,
1854; A.A. Anderson Print, Pittsburg, 1854; ColoredConventions.org, 2016.
2“State Convention of the Colored People
of Louisiana, January 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th, 1865” (New
Orleans, LA); Foner, Philip S. and George E. Walker, eds.; The Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, 1840-1865. Volume
2, 1979; ColoredConventions.org, 2016.
3"Editorial: The State Convention
of the Colored People of Louisiana", The
New Orleans Tribune; January 10-15,
1865.
