Born on St. Kitts, R. C. O. (Robert Charles O'Hara) Benjamin attended Trinity College in Oxford, Virginia, became a U. S. citizen in the 1870s, taught school in Kentucky, was a lawyer and may have been admitted to the bar in 12 states, was a journalist, author, and poet, a civil rights activist and a public speaker. He attained many other achievements. He may have been the first person of African descent to pass the bar in California. He was murdered in 1900 in Lexington while helping blacks to register to vote. Studio portrait of R. C. O. Benjamin (right) seated in a draped chair holding papers as he looks ahead, and Dr. Monroe Majors seated in a bent wood chair looking down at a book, bedside table holding books and top hats, and in front of a painted landscape backdrop. Typescript on back of duplicate photo b33_f14_005: Atty. R.C.O. Benjamin & Dr. Monroe A. Majors. California's first Negro attorney, Richard Charles O'Hara Benjamin(right) and first Negro physician, Dr. Monroe A. Majors (left) arrived in Los Angeles about 1888. Educated at Trinity College, Oxford, England and admitted to the bar in Tennessee, Atty. Benjamin was associated in Los Angeles with a prominent white law firm and was city editor of a white newspaper, the Los Angeles Daily Sun. Dr. Majors had an illustrious medical career in Texas, California & Illinois. His first stay in Los Angeles was brief but he spent his last 27 years here and died at age 96.
Type
image
Identifier
uclalsc_1889_b06_f10_001.tif ark:/21198/z1bp1ksm
Subject
African American poets African American authors African American businesspeople African American lawyers Majors, Monroe A. (Monroe Alphus), 1864- Benjamin, Robert C. O., 1855-
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