Tunis Campbell was one of the most successful black politicians in the Reconstruction Era.  Born the eighth of 10 children to free black parents, John Campbell, a blacksmith and his wife (name unknown) in Middlebrook, New Jersey on April 1, 1812, Campbell trained for missionary work at an all-white Episcopal school in Babylon, New York.  He initially worked for the American Colonization Society but eventually rejected their efforts to shore up U.S. slavery by sending only free blacks to Liberia.  He then became an anti-colonization and abolitionist lecturer. Campbell eventually became a minister and missionary in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church where he organized churches in the slums of Brooklyn, New York and Jersey City, New Jersey. He continued his abolitionist work and often joined fellow abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, on speaking tours. Between 1832 and 1845, while preaching against the evils of slavery, Campbell earned a living as a hotel steward in New York City and Boston, Massachusetts.  In 1848 he published an action plan for waiters and other hotel management tips in “Hotel Keepers, Head Waiters, and Housekeepers’ Guide,” hailed as the first book of its kind published in the United States. During his years in Boston, he … Continue reading Tunis Gulic Campbell (1812–1891)