Richard Simms was a state legislator who served in the

Louisiana House of Representatives The Louisiana House of Representatives (french: link=no, Chambre des Représentants de Louisiane) is the lower house in the Louisiana State Legislature, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Louisiana. This chamber is composed of 105 re ...

and the

Louisiana State Senate The Louisiana State Senate (french: Sénat de Louisiane) is the upper house of the state legislature of Louisiana. All senators serve four-year terms and are assigned to multiple committees. Composition The Louisiana State Senate is composed ...

during the Reconstruction era.

Biography

Simms was first elected to represent the

St. Landry Parish St. Landry Parish (french: Paroisse de Saint-Landry) is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2010 Census, the population was 83,384. The parish seat is Opelousas. The parish was established in 1807. St. Landry Parish com ...

in the

from 1872 until 1874. At the 1874 and 1876 Republican State Conventions he represented St. James Parish along with four other delegates from the parish. In 1876 he was working as sheriff for the Parish of St. James. He was elected again to the

to serve from 1876 until 1878, this time representing St. James Parish. Approaching the end of the session in October 1878 he again ran for the position of parish sheriff, but lost out coming second to Victor Miles. He was a member of the ''State Central Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Louisiana'' in 1879 when

P. B. S. Pinchback Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (May 10, 1837 – December 21, 1921) was an American publisher, politician, and Union Army officer. Pinchback was the second African American (after Oscar Dunn) to serve as governor and lieutenant governor of a ...

was president. Simms was nominated to run on the Republican ticket for State Senator in a long and "stormy session" at the Republican Senatorial Convention October 15, 1879. He was one of two nominations the other being ''G. H. Hill'' and the first fifty-three ballots were deadlocked and on the fifty-forth ballot he succeeded by eight to seven. Simms was then elected to serve in the

for three session from 1880 until 1892. He along with the other four black senators voted against a bill put forth by

Charles Parlange Charles Parlange (July 23, 1851 – February 4, 1907) was a Louisiana state senator, United States Attorney, Louisiana Lieutenant Governor serving under Governor Murphy J. Foster, Associate Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court, and United Sta ...

in 1884 to put convicts to work on levees and to break the current lease of the prison. Simms again returned to the

in 1892 representing St. James Parish and presumed to have served until 1894. In 1896 Simms was a delegate to the Eleventh Republican National Convention in

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

representing the central district.

Notes

* In some of the contemporary newspaper articles his name was given as Richard Simmes, including the reporting of his nomination on the Republican ticket for the senate.

References

African-American politicians during the Reconstruction Era Members of the Louisiana House of Representatives Louisiana state senators {{Louisiana-politician-stub

Biography

Notes

See also

References