Today marks the official Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, a day we set aside to honor the civil rights leader who was slain 53 years ago this spring. That seems an apt time on which to reflect on the life of a lesser-known civil rights figure and former Virginia office-holder who was murdered 152 years ago â and is just now getting his due from history. This is the story of Joseph R. Holmes. We must rewind to the years immediately following the Civil War, when Virginia was formally known as the First Military District as it awaited readmission to the Union. That required a new state constitution, and that a constitutional convention. In 1867, Virginia held elections to that body. Many former Confederates were barred from voting under congressional rules; others boycotted the elections. That led to Republicans â the abolitionist party â winning a majority in the convention. That convention, which assembled Dec. 3, 1867, was a multiracial body. Of the 104 delegates, at least 24 and possibly 25 were Black men, many of them former slaves who now were able to take part in writing the new fundamental law of the land.