Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 5 February 1998 — Page 17

The Muncie Times, February 5,1998, Page 17 fHEY HAD A DREAM

Gibbs Fought Mifflin W. Gibbs was elected a municipal judge in the middle ofthe Deep South. He was elected to the town council of a Canadian city. He was appointed to federal posts by five different presidents, and wound up his varied career as U.S. consul to Madagascar. Through hard work, Gibbs fulfilled his destiny in myriad ways and in diverse places. He was a lawyer, judge, builder, business, merchant, politician and fighter for racial equality. Bom in 1832, Gibbs was the son of a Philadelphia minister who died when Gibbs was eight years old. To help the family, the youth was “put out to hold and drive’ doctor’s horse” for $3 a month, and he worked at similar menial jobs until he was 16. At that point in his fife, Gibbs was persuaded by his mother to take up a trade, he apprenticed himself to a carpenter and before long entered business for himself as a builder. Around that time, Philadelphia was a center of the abolitionist movement and Gibbs became associated with some of the leading advocates of racial equality- men such as Frederick Douglas. He joined a literary society, hoping to improve his education, became an active worker in the underground railroad over which slaves were helped to escape from the South- and in 1849joined Douglas on abolitionist lecture- tour in New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania Then gold was discovered in California and Gibbs moved west. Arriving broke in San Francisco in 1850, Gibbs worked briefly as a carpenter and boot- black but saved his money and soon had enough to open a clothing store. He abandoned that in 1852 to open Lester and Gibbs, a fine men’s bootery. Gibbs became a successful merchant and a

for Equality leader in California’s Negro community. He fought discriminatory laws in the state and helped found the first Negro newspaper in California, “The Miner of the Times.” In 1858, a new gold strike in British Columbia lured Gibbs north. He settled in the city of Victoria on Vancouver Island, opened another store and invested in real estate. In 1866, he was elected to Victoria’s Common Council. He began reading law under an English banister. When deposits of anthracite coal were found on a nearby island, Gibbs invested in a mining company and helped develop the strike. He built a railroad to move the coal from the mine to an island harbor. Then he became mine superintendent. Gibbs returned to the United States and in 1870 studied law at Oberlin College. Moving to Little Rock, Ark., he was admitted to the bar and a year laterbecame Pulaski County attorney. In 1873, he was elected city judge. A repubhcan, he took an active role in party affairs as secretary of the party’s state executive committee and as a national delegate to Republican national conventions. Rutherford B. Hayes, elected President in 1876, appointed Gibbs register of the U.S. Land Office in Little Rock. He was reappointed by Presidents James A. Garfield and Chester A. Arthur. President B enj amin Harrison appointed him receiver of public monies. In 1897, President William McKinley appointed Gibbs consul to Madagascar, a post he filled until 1901. Gibbs died in 1918 at the age of 95.

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