James Bradby
James Nemo Bradby (October 4, 1929 – March 24, 1968) was an American law enforcement officer. In 1967, he was elected as the first African-American sheriff in the state of Virginia since the Reconstruction Era. He died by suicide fewer than three months later. Bradby was born in Charles City, Virginia, shortly before the onset of the Great Depression. He was the third-born child and second son of Samuel Bradby, a farmhand, and Arnella Cotman, who had at least six children. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed a number of devices that segregationist Southern state governments had used since the Jim Crow Era to disenfranchise African Americans. For the first time since Reconstruction, African Americans were able to visit the polls in large numbers, giving their own candidates a chance at office. Charles City County was 75% African American, and on November 7, 1967, the county elected an African American sheriff (Bradby) and county clerk (Iona W. Adkins) for the first time in Virginia's modern history. Bradby ran as an independent and defeated M.D. Lampkin, a Democrat who had served as sheriff for 43 years, longer than Bradby's own lifetime. Bradby and Adkins took office on January 1, 1968.