After the Civil War, political, social, and economic turmoil in Texas and the South led to the Reconstruction Act of March 2, 1867, the removal of many local and state officials, and a constitutional convention in 1868 in which ten African Americans were elected to serve. The 12th Legislature of 1870-1871 included fourteen elected African-American members, and despite struggles and violence, African-American legislators continued to serve Texas. Among them was Jacob E. Freeman, a representative from Waller, Fort Bend, and Wharton counties. Born enslaved in Alabama around 1841, he came to Texas when he was eleven, assisted his master in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, and by 1873 was a mechanic in the Hempstead area who had served on a Waller County grand jury. In July 1873 he served on the Colored Men’s Convention, where attendees discussed the political, civic, and economic rights of minorities. A Republican, Freeman won a seat in the Texas House of Representatives in 1874 for the 14th Legislature, where he served on the penitentiary committee, and he was again elected to the 16th Legislature in 1879. In 1878 he campaigned for the Greenback Party candidate for Governor, unsuccessfully ran for the legislature as a People’s Party candidate in 1886, and campaigned for a gubernatorial candidate in 1892. Freeman and other nineteenth-century African-American legislators helped safeguard the rights of Texas and its black citizens against tremendous odds and a sometimes hostile political climate.