CURTIS, STEPHEN (ca. 1806-?). Stephen Curtis, a black politician in the Reconstruction^qv era, was born into slavery^qv around 1806 in Virginia. He was skilled in carpentry. He was living in Brazos County in 1867, when he served as a delegate to the Republican state convention in Houston, where he was a member of the Platform and Resolutions Committee. He reportedly armed himself after a threat on his life. Curtis was elected to the Constitutional Convention of 1868-69^qv and served on the Committee on Immigration. He voted for the division of Texas into more than one state and unsuccessfully introduced a resolution to investigate Ku Klux Klan^qv activities. Curtis was one of five black delegates who signed the document produced by the convention. He also helped establish a special committee to investigate racial violence that occurred in 1868 at Millican in Brazos County. The 1870 national census reported that Curtis, who could neither read nor write, lived in a household in Brazos County with five other adults and four children, all named Curtis.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: J. Mason Brewer, Negro Legislators of Texas and Their Descendants (Dallas: Mathis, 1935; 2d ed., Austin: Jenkins, 1970). Merline Pitre, Through Many Dangers, Toils and Snares: The Black Leadership of Texas, 1868-1900 (Austin: Eakin, 1985). Vertical Files, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin.

Paul M. Lucko