Thomas Whitmarsh Cardozo (December 19, 1838[1] – April 13, 1881[2]) was an American educator, journalist, writer, and public official during the Reconstruction Era in the United States.

[1][3] He adopted the name Civis as a nom de plume and wrote as a correspondent for the New National Era, founded by Frederick Douglass.

His father, Isaac Nunez Cardozo, was part of a well-known Sephardic Jewish family[5] and was a weigher in the U.S. Customs House of Charleston for 24 years, until his death in 1855.

In June 1858, his mother, sisters, and brother Henry left Charleston on the steamship Nashville for New York;[16] by 1860 they had settled in Cleveland, Ohio.

A few years later in April 1865 at the end of the war, Thomas and his family moved from Flushing, New York, to his home town of Charleston, South Carolina.

[12] In Charleston, in the challenging turmoil of the weeks following the end of the Civil War, he supervised the educational activities of the American Missionary Association (AMA).

[19] A few months after he began work in Charleston, the AMA became aware of a previous affair that the married Thomas Cardozo had with a female student of his in New York.

Francis reported back that Thomas had the affair through "weakness", had “not been deliberately wicked”, and didn't misappropriate any AMA funds.

There, with the help of Samuel Joseph May, he raised funds for teaching in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, in a program of the New York Freedmen's Union Commission.

[24][31] Since the large majority of voters in Mississippi were black with too few educated enough to provide political leadership, public office for Cardozo was a good possibility after satisfying the six-month residency requirement in July 1871.

[34] He wrote accounts of his experiences in Mississippi, including descriptions of his fellow Republican politicians, for the New National Era under the pseudonym "Civis".

[25][note 5] In August 1874, conservative whites took over the Vicksburg city government and Cardozo was charged with crimes while he was circuit court clerk in 1872.

On July 4, 1875 in Vicksburg, a white mob attacked a meeting where Cardozo was to speak, followed by street violence where several blacks were killed or injured.

[42][43][note 7] Leaving the politics, an upcoming trial in Jackson in July 1876, and the dangerous situation in Mississippi, Cardozo moved to Newton, Massachusetts.