Document of the Month Pages
Begun in April of 2012, Document of the Month highlights interesting documents, photographs, and other images from the holdings of the Louisiana State Archives. This page features documents for the current year. Below are links to the current year and previous archives.
2025 Documents
Oscar James Dunn
(2/1/25)
Born into slavery in 1826 and freed by his stepfather, Oscar James Dunn rose to become the first African American elected to an executive office in Louisiana. After the Civil War, he worked in various capacities to aid the newly freed laboring class of African Americans. Soon afterwards, he entered into politics and in 1868, he became a candidate for Lieutenant Governor, running on the ticket with gubernatorial candidate, Henry C. Warmoth. Warmoth and Dunn won the election based on the newly enfranchised Black voting bloc and the exclusion of former Confederates from the polls. When Warmoth became unable to discharge his duties as Governor, Dunn stepped in and performed admirably. Dunn's success put him on track to become Governor of Louisiana in the 1872 election. In November of 1871, however, Dunn became violently ill and died a few days later. Doctors who examined him determined his cause of death was "congestion of the brain." Some researchers claim he was poisoned. His death certificate, on file at the Louisiana State Archives, indicates he died at No. 332 Canal Street in New Orleans at the age 46 on 22 November 1871 (Orleans Deaths, 1871, vol. 53, p. 32). He was buried at St. Louis Cemetery No. 2. Dunn was married in 1866 to Ellen Marchand Boyd. The couple had no children, but Dunn adopted her three children from a previous marriage.
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May Thomas Leake Robinson
(1/1/25) May Edna Thomas Leake Robinson was one of only a few newspaper women in Louisiana in the 19th century. In 1892, she founded and edited the True Democrat in St. Francisville with her husband, W.W. Leake, Jr. A nearby newspaper described it as one of the state's "most ably edited and most influential newspapers as well as…one of the cleanest–mechanically and otherwise." After Leake's death in 1901, his widow served as the newspaper's sole editor until 1906 when she hired Elrie Robinson, a Texas printer, as associate editor and publisher. Robinson and Leake married two years later and ran the newspaper together until her death in 1925. At her death, the St. Francisville newspaper wrote, "Mr. Robinson had few if any superiors among Southern women writers in the field in which she labored. Her knowledge was deep and she handled many subjects." Although her death certificate indicates she was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. E.D. Thomas, her parents were William Thomas, a carpenter from Tennessee, and Lydia (or Mary Caroline) Odom from Catahoula Parish. She died 3 June 1925 of post operative anemia following an operation, with a contributory cause of breast cancer. She was buried in Grace Episcopal Church in St. Francisville. Her death certificate is on file at the Louisiana State Archives (Statewide Deaths, 1925, vol. 20, #8698).
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