Dr. J. T. White, another preacher of the Reconstruction period, attained much distinction in this field. Fortunate in having acquired a fundamental education in Indianapolis prior to the war, he easily made an impression at the Consolidated Baptist Convention in St. Louis in 1865 when he received a call to a small Baptist Church of Helena, Arkansas. Among these communicants he toiled successfully without concern as to other affairs until 1868, when the reconstruction of the State was begun. He was induced to present himself as a candidate for delegate to the constitutional convention and was elected. He figured conspicuously in framing the constitution and canvassed the State to secure its ratification. He then became a part of the restored State government, serving his fellow citizens as a member of the House of Delegates, to which he was twice re-elected. He was chosen to serve one term in the State Senate, after which he was appointed by the Governor, Commissioner of Public Works and Internal Improvements. During this same period, however, he was doing his best work in building and edifying churches at Helena and Little Rock, and extending Baptist influence throughout the State and nation. G. W. Gayles, a Mississippian of this type, acquired before his emancipation enough education to read intelligently. Having an inclination to study the Bible, he aspired to the ministry, for which he was set apart by a council of reputable Baptist ministers of Greenville in 1867. Going to Bolivar county to find a more inviting field, he became the pastor of the Kindling Altar Church in which he made an honorable record. He soon became involved in public affairs, however, as is evidenced by his appointment as member of the Board of Police for a district in Bolivar County by Governor A. Ames. The following year he was appointed Justice of the Peace in that county by Governor J. L. Alcorn, but later in that same month he was made a supervisor of another district in that county. He was then elected a member of the Mississippi Legislature, serving a term of two years in the lower house and then as State Senator from the 28th district, beginning 1877 and continuing into the eighties, when there had been no other Negro in that body since 1875. In spite of his political activities, however, Gayles did not abandon religious work. Beginning in 1872, he served for many years as missionary for the counties of Bolivar and Sunflower and then in that capacity for Coahoma. Appreciating his worth, the Baptist State Missionary Convention made him its corresponding secretary in 1874 and president in 1876, with the power to edit a denominational organ known as _The Baptist Signal_, by which he showed himself a national as well as a State character.