William Henry Grey
| William Henry Grey | |
|---|---|
| Arkansas State Representative for Phillips County | |
|
In office 1868–1869 |
|
| Personal details | |
| Born |
December 22, 1829 Washington, D.C. |
| Died | November 8, 1888 (aged 58) Helena, Arkansas |
| Nationality | African American |
| Political party | Republican |
William Henry Grey (December 22, 1829 in Washington, D.C. – November 8, 1888 in Helena, Arkansas) was an African-American storeowner, church leader, and Reconstruction politician in Arkansas. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture calls Grey "a tireless fighter for the rights of freedmen."
Grey was born into freedom in December 1829 in Washington, D.C., and moved with his family to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and then to Cincinnati, Ohio, in the 1840s. In 1852, as an adult, he moved to St. Louis, Missouri, and found work as a cook on Mississippi River steamboats. In 1854, he wed Henrietta Winslow, who became the mother of his eight children. A member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, he was called to the ministry and became an AME lay minister. At some point he moved his family south from Missouri to the Arkansas Delta, a region with which he would already have been familiar through his steamboat duties.
In 1865, the closing year of the American Civil War, Grey was living in Helena, Arkansas, as the operator and part-proprietor of a grocery and bakery. He participated in the Little Rock African-American convention in that year, a gathering called to discuss the community's response to the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment and the formal end of slavery in the United States. In 1868, Grey was elected as a representative from Phillips County to the 1868 Arkansas Constitutional Convention, in which he was one of eight African-American delegates.
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