Caesar Antoine Caesar Carpetier Antoine ( 1836 – 1921 ) was one of three African - American Republicans who served as the Lieutenant Governor of the U . S . state of Louisiana during the era of Reconstruction . When Antoine left office in 1877 , he was the last Republican to hold the lieutenant governorship until 1988 , when Paul Jude Hardy , a former Louisiana Secretary of State and a former Democrat , assumed the office . Antoine was also a soldier , businessman , and editor . Biography . Antoine was born in New Orleans , the son of a veteran of the Battle of New Orleans , fought on January 8 , 1815 , two weeks after the conclusion of the War of 1812 . His mother was a native of the West Indies and the daughter of an African chief . Antoine attended private schools in New Orleans and was fluent in French and English . On reaching adulthood , he first worked as a barber . After national troops occupied the Louisiana capital city of Baton Rouge in 1862 , Antoine organized Company I , Seventh Louisiana Colored Regiment . As captain of the company , he engaged in minor engagements until the war ended in 1865 . After the fighting , Antoine moved to the northwestern Louisiana city of Shreveport , the seat of Caddo Parish , where he established a family grocery business . He soon entered politics and became a delegate to the Louisiana constitutional convention of 1867 - 1868 . At the convention , he advocated tax reforms , an extensive bill of rights , and application to the United States Congress for extension of the Freedmen ' s Bureau , which was established in 1865 and abolished in 1872 . Antoine served as a member of the Louisiana State Senate from Caddo Parish from 1868 to 1872 and was assigned to committees on Commerce and Manufacturers and on Education . He was a strong proponent of emerging public education . In 1875 , he served by appointment on the Caddo Parish School Board . Antoine was elected lieutenant governor in 1872 on the Republican ticket headed by William Pitt Kellogg , considered a Carpetbagger . Two other blacks , Oscar J . Dunn and P . B . S . Pinchback , respectively , preceded Antoine as lieutenant governor . The Republicans renominated Antoine for a second term in 1876 on a ticket headed by Stephen B . Packard as the gubernatorial choice . Packard and Antoine , however , were defeated by the Democrat " Redeemer " ticket headed by former Confederate States of America Brigadier General Francis T . Nicholls . Antoine invested in railroad and lottery stocks and raised racehorses . In 1880 , he became president of the Cosmopolitan Life Insurance Company . He also joined P . B . S . Pinchback as a copartner in a cotton factorage . He edited the semiweekly " New Orleans Louisianan " from 1870 to 1872 . Little is known about Antoine after 1887 . He was vice president of the New Orleans group called the Comité des Citoyens ( Citizens ' Committee ) , which was formed in 1890 to wage a legal battle against racial discrimination . The committee collected more than $ 2 , 000 to challenge the constitutionality of the 1890 Jim Crow compulsory segregation law . The committee engaged Homer Plessy to test the public accommodations provision of the Louisiana law . Plessy ' s action ultimately led to the " Plessy v . Ferguson " decision by the United States Supreme Court , which affirmed the legality of " separate - but - equal " facilities . Antoine ' s committee also failed in an attempt to have the state law forbidding racial intermarriage declared unconstitutional . Antoine purchased a small plantation in Caddo Parish and owned several city lots . He died in Shreveport and is interred there .