"John Roy Lynch" [September 10,1847-November 2,1939]

Was an American politician,attorney,writer and military officer,who was elected as the first African-American Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1873.He was among the first generation African Americans elected to the house of Representatives during reconstruction,the period in the U.S. history after the Civil War.In his 50s he studied law and was admitted to the Mississippi bar in 1896,but he returned to Washington,DC to practice law,and later moved to Chicago,Illinois,where he lived for more than two decades.John served in the U.S.Army during the Spanish America War and for a decade in the early 1900s,achieving the rank of major.He was active in law and real estate in Chicago after his military service.John was born into slavery near Vidalia,Concordia Parish,Louisiana,as his mother Cathrine White,was a slave of mixed European and African ancestry,his father Patrick Lynch,was an immigrant from Dublin,Ireland,who became a planter and was their master.After John was born,his father planned to moved the family to New Orleans and free Cathrine & John.Patrick died of  an illness before carrying out his plan.Promising to free Cathrine &John,a friend had taken title of Cathrine &John from Patrick before he died.The friend sold the two to a planter in Natchez, Mississippi.Cathrine &John were held in slavery until 1863,after the Union Army arrived in Mississippi and President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation.After the Civil War ended in 1865,John learned the photography trade and managed a successful business in Natchez.The total of his formal education until then was only four months in night school,he educated himself by reading books and newspapers.In addition,John eavesdropped on class lessons in a white school.His leadership abilities were recognized in post-war political opportunities.In 1869 he was appointed by the governor as a justice of the Peace,and later that year was elected to the Mississippi State House.He was re-elected for several terms,serving until 1873;in his last term.he was elected as Speaker of the Mississippi House,the first African American to achieve that position.At the age of of 26,in 1873,he was elected to the US Congress,as part of the first generation African-American Congressmen.He introduced many bills and argued on their behalf.Perhaps his greatest effort was in the long debate supporting the Civil Rights Acts of 1875 to ban discrimination in public accommodations.One of his speeches included the following:  They were faithful and true to you then;they are no less so today.And yet they ask no special favors as a class;they ask no special protection as a race.They feel that they purchased their inheritance,when upon the battlefields of this country,they watered the tree liberty with the precious blood that flowed from their loyal veins.They ask no favors,they desire;and must have;and equal chance in the race of life. In 1876 the Democratic Party of Mississippi contested John's third-term election,at a prticucularly contentious time in the South.Since 1874,the Red Shirts,a white paramilitary groups,had worked openly to intimidate and suppress African American voting on behalf of the Democratic Party.John was not allowed to take his seat.In 1877 the federal government withdrew its troops from the South as part of a national compromise and Reconstruction was considered ended.In 1880 John,ran against the Democrat James Ronald Chalmers,and contested the Democrats' declaration of victory.John fought for a year before gaining the seat in 1882.The next election was close,leaving him little time to campaign.John lost re-election in 1882 by 600 votes,at a time when white insurgents practiced intimidation to reduce the African American vote.He served as a member of the Republican National Committee for Mississippi from 1884-1889.In 1884,future President Theodore Roosevelt made moving speech by which he nominated John as Temporary Chairman of the 1884 Republican National Convention  in Chicago,Illinois.John became the first African American to chair the Convention.In 1884 he married Ella Sommerville.They had a daughter before their divorce.In 1911 he married again,Cora Williams.They moved to Chicago,where he lived for the remainder of his years.John was appointed as Treasury Auditor of the Department of Navy (1889-1893).During the Spanish America War,he was appointed in 1898 as a major and paymaster in the Army by President William Mckinley.In 1901,he entered the Regular Army as a captain gaining promotions to major and serving tours of duty in the U.S., Cuba,and the Philippines.After John retired from the Army in 1911,he married again and moved to Chicago in 1912,where he practiced law.He also became involved in real estate,as that city became a destination of tens of thousands of African Americans in the Great Migration and was expanding rapidly under the influence of European immigration.John wasburied with military honors in Arlington National Cemetary.He was entitled this as a Congressman &Veteran.