Robert James Harlan

Reading time: 3 – 4 minutes Robert James Harlan was an entrepreneur, businessman and army officer who devoted the second half of his life to political and civic service. Among his many accomplishments, in an 1879 speech before Congress titled “Migration is the Only Remedy for Our Wrongs,” Harlan argued for the right of blacks to migrate wherever they chose within the United States.  Within the next year, 6,000 black “Exodusters” would leave Mississippi and ...