William_U._Saunders
William U. Saunders (1835 - ?) was a barber and lawyer who represented Gadsden County, Florida, in the Florida Legislature during the Reconstruction era.[1]
He was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He served in the United States Colored Infantry from 1863-1866.[2]
He was a delegate from Gadsden County to the 1868 Constitutional Convention of Florida despite having been in the county only a few days in his life, according to one account.[3] He had been a barber in Illinois[4] or Maryland.[5] He was described as an eloquent speaker.[5] In 1948 he was described as a Northern Radical Republican.[6]
He traveled the state rallying Black voters.[7]
Historian T. D. Allman wrote that racist revisionists tried to recast him as mulatto to deny his being a black man.[8]