Thomas P. Detter (1826 - )

Thomas P. Detter was an African American journalist, short story writer, minister, and politician.

While details of Detter's early life are sketchy, it appears he was born in Maryland and educated in Washington, D.C. public schools. According to his father's will, he was to have been apprenticed as a shoemaker until his twenty-first birthday. Detter emigrated to San Francisco, California, in 1852, one of many African Americans lured by the economic prospects of gold and silver mining and the greater freedom of the western frontier. He quickly established himself as a community leader, becoming the Sacramento County delegate to the first Colored Citizens of the State of California Convention; serving on the State Executive Committee of that and other civil rights organizations; and campaigning in California, Nevada, Washington, and the Idaho Territory for public education, voting rights, and the admission of testimony by African Americans in court cases. Along with poet James Monroe Whitfield, Detter was one of the first African Americans to serve on a jury in Nevada. By 1864, Thomas Detter was known as “one of the old wheelhorses” of the western civil rights movement.