Ulysses L. Houston was a pastor, was elected to the Georgia State Legislature in 1868, and was an influential community organizer in Savannah, Georgia's African-American community during the mid-19th century. Houston was one of the Original 33 African American legislators of the Reconstruction era in Georgia, expelled or forced to resign. He was also one of the 16 freedmen church leaders who met with Union General William Tecumseh Sherman in 1865.