Robert Burns Lindsay (July 4, 1824 – February 13, 1902) was a Scots-American politician, elected as the 22nd Governor of the U.S. state of Alabama during Reconstruction, and serving one term from 1870 to 1872.

[1] Robert B. Lindsay was born in Lochmaben, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, on July 4, 1824.

[3] A Democrat, Lindsay was elected governor in 1870, following a year of white terrorism against black people: violence, including murders, and intimidation of black and white Republicans and freedmen supporters.

For example, five Republicans, four black and one white, were lynched in Calhoun County; three black people (two who were Republican politicians) were murdered in Greene County, in March and October; the white Republican County Solicitor was murdered there in March; and on October 25, a Republican rally of 2,000 black people was disrupted by a mob of whites, who killed four black people and wounded 54 in the Eutaw riot.

[4] Black people were intimidated and stayed home from the polls, with Democratic white voters in Greene County and elsewhere taking the state for Lindsay.