The Congressman’s Appearance

The House Committee on Elections had an unusual speaker on the morning of February 27, 1869. Mr. John Willis Menard, newly elected Representative from Louisiana, was addressing Congress, the first African American ever to do so. And his argument was simple- since he had won the majority of votes, he should take his seat in Congress. Yet Congress had allowed his opponent to speak as well, and the President of the United States too made it clear where his sympathies lay. Regardless of the actual outcome of the vote, it became clear the Committee would not be swayed by Menard’s speech, no matter how impassioned, flecked with pain and strength, moving or well-reasoned. The President opined that election be damned, the country was not ready for a black man in Congress.

Dressed in his black suit and tie, tall and strongly built, Mr. Menard stood straight as he uttered the closing words of his Congressional address. Yet before the affirmation that all men are created equal could be uttered, the room shifted, and Mr. Menard saw a room of strangely dressed men — women too — and bright, glass-covered lights. He uttered his proclamation at the exact same time someone else in the room was opining about Russia, China, and the secret mysteries of Unidentified Flying Objects.

There were several fringe scientists in the room testifying on the UFO matter, and they were thrilled to investigate the man, who was so obviously a time traveler, dressed in formal wear styles more than 150 years old, who materialized under the lights like a holographic image.

So it was that Mr. Menard spoke to African American historians, psychologists, neurologists and physicists, took a polygraph, met former President Obama, and became a featured speaker at the Civil War Museum, an expert on the post-war Reconstruction period. He did all this a single year, for he had appeared on the summer solstice of 2021.

One day, the first day of summer in 2022, having just survived a COVID-19 resurgence, Mr. Menard reappeared in Congress to give a short and limited talk on time travel. There was hope it could be replicated but Mr. Menard knew nothing of how it happened in the first place. He only knew he wanted the pandemic to end, and with these words, he was transported back to 1869.

“I have been to the future,” he said, “and above all I have learned two things. One, not even 150 years and a black President will convince all Americans that all men and women are created equal. Two, we must never stop trying.”

The third thing, which he could not speak enough about, was the horrible role of infection and disease; he wished he knew more, that he could have brought some of the experts with him. Typhoid or COVID, there was always something, and sometimes washing of hands and wringing of hands was not enough.

For the rest of Menard’s 19th century life, capped in 1893, he continued in politics, wrote poetry and edited newspapers; and in his Will and Last Testament he asked to be buried in Graceland Cemetery. Privately, it reminded him of the famous dead man who showed up in the tabloid newspapers of the future: Mr. Elvis Presley.