Tennessee was the first Southern state to grant citizenship suffrage to former slaves, the first to return to the Union, and the first to have its government reclaimed by former confederates. Exercising endangered rights, freedmen flocked to the polls, sending Tennessee's first black statesmen to Nashville. First Black Statesmen tells the story of those 14 men who defied the odds to become state legislators in the era immediately following the Civil War. Eleven of the men had been born slaves and all faced the rampant racial animosity endured by freedmen after the war.