Henry Plummer Cheatham

Congressman Henry Cheatham represented North Carolina in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1889 to 1893 (51st-52nd Congresses) and was a member of the House Expenditures on Public Buildings and Agriculture committees. Born into slavery, Cheatham attended public schools and earned a master’s degree from Shaw University in 1887. That same year he helped found the North Carolina Colored Orphanage at Oxford, where he later served as superintendent from 1907 until his death. An advocate for recognizing Black contributions to American life, Cheatham requested Congress appropriate money for an exhibit of Black arts, crafts, and industrial and agricultural products and establish a bi-racial panel to assess Black American education, financial, and social progress. The House failed to adopt both proposals. Cheatham was also unsuccessful in securing funding to reimburse depositors of the Freedmen’s Bank and honor Robert Smalls and the crew of the Planter, a steamship, for their service during the Civil War. He was a delegate to the Republican National Conventions in 1892 and 1900. In 1892, Cheatham lost his re-election bid and two years later lost the nomination to his brother-in-law, George H. White. He also served as the President of the Negro Association of North Carolina.