Robert James Harlan (December 12, 1816 – September 21, 1897) 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.
Early life
Birth and move to Kentucky
Robert James Harlan was born on December 12, 1816, probably in Mecklenburg County, Virginia. His father was the slave owner of his mother, Mary Harlan, and himself. His mother was also of mixed-race, and Robert was not easily identifiable as black. Early in his life, perhaps at the age of eight, or three Robert and his mother were sent to Cincinnati. The trip was made on foot, before the advent of railroad connections, and when they reached Danville, Kentucky, they received word that Robert's father had died and they were seized as parts of his property to be sold. Robert was purchased by James Harlan of Danville and his mother was sold South. James Harlan worked in dry goods, and became a lawyer and politician, serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from Kentucky from 1835 to 1839. His son, John Marshall Harlan, born in 1833, served as a US Supreme Court Justice from 1877 to 1911 and was known as the "Great Dissenter" for his support of civil rights against the segregationist majority court. The role of Robert Harlan in John Marshall's ideas is discussed in detail in Gordon (2000). It was then that Robert took the name Harlan.
Birthplace and paternity
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.
Education and training
When Robert reached schooling age, James sent him to the village school at Harrodsburg along with his own sons. Robert was special in this regard while his master was ambivalent about slavery, he did not routinely educate his slaves. A black janitor notified the school that Robert was black, and Robert was discharged from the school, an occurrence which led Robert to joke later in life that he had only "a half a day's schooling." Robert was close to James' older sons, Richard and James, and when the children came home from school, Robert would study the same lessons as the other children, and thus became educated. Robert made money hunting and selling coonskins, and moved to Louisville where he learned to be a barber. At 16, Robert opened a store at Harrodsburg, where the Harlan's had moved in the early 1820s. At 19 he had saved enough money to buy a race horse. From this point, Harlan began racing and gambling on horses throughout the South and Southwest with good success.
Although not formally freed, by 1840, Robert moved to Lexington, Kentucky where he appears in records as a "free man of color". That year James Harlan moved to Frankfort, Kentucky to become Kentucky's Secretary of State.