Caesar Antoine

Caesar Carpentier Antoine
Caesar Carpentier Antoine
13th Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana
	In office; May 22, 1873 – April 24, 1877
Governor	William P. Kellogg; Stephen B. Packard
Preceded by	P.B.S. Pinchback
Succeeded by	Louis A. Wiltz
Louisiana State Senator from Caddo Parish
	In office; 1868–1872
Personal details
Born	c. 1836; New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.
Died	1921 (aged 84–85); Shreveport, Louisiana, U.S.
Resting place	New Bethlehem Baptist Church Cemetery
Political party	Republican
Relations	Felix C. Antoine (brother)
Residences	(1) Shreveport, Louisiana; (2) New Orleans, Louisiana;
Occupation	Barber, Editor, Businessman
Military service
Allegiance	United States of America
Branch/service	Union Army
Rank	Captain
Unit	7th Louisiana (Colored) Infantry Regiment
Battles/wars	American Civil War

Caesar Carpentier Antoine (c. 1836–1921) was a soldier, businessman, editor, and African-American Republican politician in Louisiana during the Reconstruction era.^[1]

Biography

He was born as a free man of color in New Orleans.^[1] His brother was Felix C. Antoine.^[1]^[2]

During the Civil War, he served as Captain in the 7th Louisiana Regiment Infantry and 10th U.S. Colored Heavy Artillery Regiment.^[3] After the war, he moved to Shreveport, Louisiana. He was a member of St. Paul's Colored Methodist Episcopal Church and lived in the Allendale neighborhood.^[1]

He was elected as a state senator for Caddo Parish in 1868, partaking in the Louisiana Constitutional Convention.^[1] He served until 1872 when he was elected to serve as Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana, the third man of color to hold that position.^[1]^[2] He co-founded a newspaper with P. B. S. Pinchback, his immediate predecessor.

He became a Worshipful Master in Freemasonry in 1884. Shreveport's Freemason Lodge Number 185 of the Prince Hall Masons is named in his honor.^[1]

In 1887, he co-founded Comité des Citoyens, which fought the case that became Plessy v. Ferguson, and became its vice-president.^[1]

In 2008, C. C. Antoine Celebration was established as an annual event during Black History Month in Shreveport.^[4]
A tombstone was dedicated at Antoine's gravesite on Memorial Day, 31 May 1999.^[1]^[5]
In 1984, a Shreveport park was named for Antoine and a sculpture of him was installed in it.^[1]
Antoine's house in Shreveport was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 20, 1999.^[1]^[6] It was destroyed by fire in May 2022.^[6]

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k Brock, Eric J (2003). "Louisiana Political Pioneer" (PDF). Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-02-23.
^ ^a ^b Foner, Eric (1996). Freedom's Lawmakers. LSU Press. p. 9. ISBN 978-0807120828.
^ "Antoine, Caesar C." Soldier Details - The Civil War (U.S. National Park Service). Retrieved 2023-05-19.
^ C.C. Antoine Celebration Archived 2014-02-23 at the Wayback Machine website, accessed 7 February 2014
^ John Andrew Prime, "Cities to declare Confederate History Month next week" Archived 2011-07-14 at the Wayback Machine, Shreveport Times, n.d., hosted at North Star website, accessed 7 February 2014
^ ^a ^b "Historic Shreveport house 1 of 2 destroyed in early morning fire". KTAL-TV. May 13, 2022. Retrieved May 19, 2023.

"Caesar Carpentier Antoine". A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography, Vol. 1 (1988), p. 16
John W. Blassingame, Black New Orleans, 1860-1880 (1973)
Dorothea Olga McCants, ed., Our People and Our History (1973)
Charles Vincent, Black Legislators in Louisiana during Reconstruction (1976)
Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston, eds., Dictionary of American Negro Biography (1982)