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Jesse M. H. Graham, 8 February 1869 - 25 July 1930

Jesse M. H. Graham
from the Louisville Courier Journal,
November 15, 1896.

A Republican newspaper editor, elected to represent Montgomery County in the 50th Tennessee General Assembly, 1897-1898

A challenge of his eligibility to hold the office was successful, and the House of Representatives declared his seat vacant on 20 January 1897.

Jesse M. H. Graham attended public schools in Montgomery and Davidson counties. In 1881 he won a Peabody Scholarship to attend Fisk University, where he took courses in English and education. After teaching school in Kentucky for a time, he worked as a postal clerk in Louisville, Kentucky, and Clarksville, Tennessee. In 1895 he was named editor of the Clarksville Enterprise, an African American newspaper.

In 1896 he became the first black legislator elected in ten years, but an opponent filed a protest regarding Graham's eligibility to hold the seat because of periods of absence from his home county. He was provisionally seated on January 4, 1897, while the Committee on Elections debated the issue. When the committee declared both Graham and his opponent ineligible, the General Assembly passed a resolution declaring the seat vacant.

During the first World War the U.S. Army commissioned more than 1,200 African American officers. The only training camp set up exclusively for black officers was in Fort Des Moines, Iowa. Jesse Graham was one of the 638 officers who graduated from officers training in that program. Commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army on October 15, 1917, Graham was assigned to the 317th Engineers. Honorably discharged at war's end, he returned to Tennessee.

Making his home once again in Clarksville, Graham served as an officer of St. Peter's African Methodist Episcopal Church there and helped to found American Legion Post No. 143.

In later years he took a position as a clerk in the U.S. Bureau of Audit. He spent some time working in the Philippines and then moved to Washington, D.C., where he was residing at the time of the 1930 Census.