Monday Floyd (ca. 1803--?)

                               

                                                                           From the Georgia Official Register.

   A two-term member of the Georgia House of Representatives, Monday Floyd was a free black carpenter residing in Morgan County at the time of his election. Like Sancho Sanders (profiled back on February 19), Floyd's birth and death dates have been lost to history, and, like Sanders, he provided unsettling testimony as to Ku Klux Klan atrocities committed in his district during the early years of Reconstruction.

   Born in Georgia, Monday Floyd is recorded as a sixty-year-old in the 1870 U.S. Census, along with his wife, Dinah, aged fifty-eight. A Freedman's Bank record, dated May 1870, notes that Floyd had six children, three of whom were deceased. This document also records Floyd's parent's names, Burrill Neal and Sukey. An additional birthdate is given by Floyd himself during his 1872 congressional testimony, noting that he was born December 25, 1803, in Greene County, Georgia, and was raised in the neighboring county of Putnam. During this testimony, Floyd recounts that he was a slave prior to emancipation and after the war relocated to Morgan County, where he worked as a house carpenter.

  In 1868 Monday Floyd was among 33 black men elected to the Georgia House of Representatives and Senate. These 33 men were blocked from taking their seats in September of that year but were not to be denied in their quest for political representation. Through the efforts of legislator-elect Henry McNeal Turner and others, the case headed to the state supreme court, which ruled in the case of White v. Clements (1869) that blacks did have the constitutional right to hold office. By early 1870 the commander of the Third Military District, Gen. Alfred Howe Terry, had conducted a purge of ex-Confederates serving in the legislature and instated the previous election's Republican candidates, and the expelled black legislators.

  Now seated as a representative from Morgan County, Floyd, and his fellow legislators ratified the 15th amendment to the constitution in February 1870. Little is known of his time in the legislature until December 1870, when he was accosted by members of the Ku Klux Klan. In a detailed U.S. Senate document concerning the attack, Floyd was attacked at his home by two Klansmen, who, after leaving the premises, returned a few hours later and shot into the home. Subsequent testimony by Floyd's acquaintance, Andrew Rockafellow, detailed that Floyd was wounded in the attack, being struck at least twice, "in the side or hip, and another in the leg." Rockafellow was later shown these wounds by Floyd after the latter's escape to Atlanta. The Klansmen returned to Floyd's home several days later, but Floyd, having been tipped off to their presence, made good his escape by hiding in the woods, where he hid until making his way to Atlanta. Now fearful of returning to Morgan County, Floyd removed permanently to Atlanta and thereafter kept his visits to Morgan County to a minimum.

  Despite the attempts by the Klan to intimidate him, Floyd remained resolute and was elected to a second term in the state legislature in late 1870. During this term, he would provide testimony on Klan violence and intimidation that was later entered into the Congressional record in 1872. In his remarks, dated November 1871, Floyd makes no mention of the previous Klan attack on his life, but details threatening letters he had received. One, titled "Helltown, Georgia, At Night", requested that he resign his seat in the legislature immediately, and failure to comply would result in the letter's authors being "provoked to put a dire threat into execution." The letter in its entirety can be read at the following link.

  Monday Floyd's life after 1872 remains a mystery. Another Monday Floyd, born 1860 and recorded in 1880 U.S. Census, possibly is a son or grandson of the Monday Floyd profiled here. No records concerning Floyd could be found after 1872, but his memory lives on at the Georgia state capitol. In 1976 a bronze sculpture commemorating the first 33 black legislators was commissioned and two years later was unveiled on the grounds of the state capitol in Atlanta.

You Can Help!

  A burial location for Monday Floyd remains unknown at this time, as well as his exact dates of birth and death. The period of his life following his legislative service also remains a mystery. If you are a reader or possible descendant and have information that you'd like to contribute, please send along a message via the Facebook link shown at the upper right of this page!