page_title: Robert James Harlan
section_title: Birthplace and paternity
hierarchical_section_title: Robert James Harlan / Early life / Birthplace and paternity
caption_attribution_description: English: Judge John Marshall Harlan, Supreme Court
context_page_description: Robert James Harlan was a civil rights activist and politician in Cincinnati, Ohio in the 1870s-1890s. He was born a slave but was allowed free movement and employment on the plantation of Kentucky politician James Harlan, who raised him and may have been his father or half-brother. He became interested in horse racing as a young man and moved to California during the 1849 Gold Rush where he was very successful. In 1859 he moved to England to import racehorses from America and race them in England. He returned to the United States in 1869 during reconstruction. He became friends with Ulysses S. Grant and became involved in Republican politics. For the rest of his life, he was involved in city, state, and national African-American civil rights and political movements. In 1870 he became colonel of the Second Ohio Militia Battalion, a black state militia battalion in Cincinnati. In 1886, he became a member of the Ohio House of Representatives.
context_section_description: It is suggested that Robert's father was his Kentucky master, James Harlan, contradicting the story that his father died during Robert's trip with his mother to Cincinnati. Gordon (2000) traces this theory to a short biography of Robert in Dictionary of American Negro Biography by Paul McStallworth published in 1983, which is based on a biography of Robert in the Cincinnati Union on December 13, 1934, 37 years after Robert's death and places Robert's birth in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, then home of James Harlan. Newspaper articles during and immediately after Harlan's life as well as biography written about him during his life state that Robert was born in Virginia and James Harlan did not become Robert's master until later. However, Loren Beth proposes in a biography of John Marshall Harlan that if Robert was born in Virginia, it may have been John Marshall Harlan's grandfather, also named James, who fathered Robert.
caption: Supreme Court Judge John Marshall Harlan
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