Samuel F. Kelso (ca. 1825-1880)

Samuel Kelso, born into slavery, became one of Lynchburg's first African American teachers after the Civil War. He taught at a freedmen’s school on 12th Street and was later a trustee of the all-Black Polk Street School. Kelso was elected to represent Campbell County, including Lynchburg, at Virginia’s Constitutional Convention of 1867-68. There he voted with radical reformers and introduced a resolution calling for free public education open to all on an equal basis. In 1869 he was a delegate to the National Convention of the Colored Men of America, which protested the exclusion of Black Americans from civil rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. He was later a postal agent in Lynchburg.

Department of Historic Resources, 2021