"Frederick Madison Roberts"[September 14,1879-July 19,1952]

Was a newspaper owner and editor,educator,and business owner,Frederick became a politican,the first known man of African American descent elected to the California State Assembly.He serve there for 16  years and became known as "dean of the assembly."He has been honored as the first person of African-American descent to be elected to public office among the states on the West Coast...Frederick was a great-grandson of Sally Hemings of Monticello,and is widely believed to be a great-grandson of President Thomas Jefferson.
Frederick was born in Chillicote,Ohio,the son of Andrew Jackson Roberts (1852-1927),a graduate of Oberlin College,and Ellen Wayles Hemings (1856-1940),the daughter of Madison Hemings and Mary Hughes McCoy,a free woman of color.Ellen was 5"10 with blue eyes,the granddaughter of Sally Hemings & Thomas Jeffrson.
(When the Jefferson biographer Fawn Brodie saw a photo of Ellen,she said she could the strong resemblance to Thomas Jefferson).When Frederick was six,his family moved in 1885 to Los Angeles,where
his daddy established the first African-American owned mortuary in the city.
The Roberts had a second son,William Giles Roberts.The Roberts and their descendants became prominent in the Los Angeles area,with a strong tradition of college education,and working in public service.Frederick attended Los Angeles High School and became its first known African American graduate.
Frederick attended college at the University of Southern California (USC) where he majored in pre-law.Continued at Colordo College,where he graduated Frederick also attended the Barnes-Worsham School of Embalming and
Mortuary Science.
In 1908 Frederick started editing the "Colorado Springs Light."newspaper.
While in Colorado,he also served as deputy assessor for El Paso County.
He went to Mississippi where he serve some years as principal of Mound Bayou Normal and Industrial Institute,one of a number of schools founded for African Americans in the segregated state system.In 1912 Frederick return to Los Angeles,where he founded "The New Age Dispatch" newspaper (later called New Age),which he edited until 1948.
When Frderick partnered with his daddy  in the mortuary business,they named it A.J.Roberts & Sons.Eventually he took over.
As a newspaper editor and business owner,Frederick became a prominent leader in the growing African-American community of Los Angels.In the 20th century,people arrived in the Great migration of the South
to northern,midwestern,and western states.He belonged to a Methodist church.Frederick also became a member of the NAACP and the Urban League,
associations established in the early 20th century to work for political civil rights for
African Americans.
In 1921 Frederick married Pearl Hinds who had studied at the Boston Conservatory of Music.They had two daughters Gloria,who became a professional classical pianist and Patricia,who lived in Los Angeles.
In 1918 Frederick was elected to the California State Assembly from the 62nd District as a Republican in a hard-fought campaign,during which his chief rival made racial slurs against him.While in office,Frederick sponsored legislation to establish the University of California at Los Angeles and improve public education,proposed several civil rights anti-lynching measures.In June 1922,he welcomed Black Nationalist leader Marcus Garvey of the UNIA to Los Angeles and rode in his parade car.
Frederick was re-elected and served a continuous 16 years,becoming known as the "dean of the "assembly." He was a friend of Earl Warren,governor of California who became Chief Jostice of the United States.In the 1934 mid-term elections,after the election of Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt as president two years previously in the midst of the Great Depression,Frederick was defeated by a Democratic African American candidate,Augustus Freeman Hawkins.Following his 1934 California State Assembly defeat,Frederick ran unsuccessfully for the United States House of Representatives on two difference occasions.Until that time,no African American had yet been elected to represent California in the United States Congress.
Beginning in the late 1930s and early 1940s,the second wave of the Great Migration
brought tens of thousands of African American from the South to the Los Angeles area for jobs in the growing defense industries.In 1946 Frederick campaigned for the 14th Congressional District against incumbent Helen Gahagan Douglass but she kept her seat.A few years later,Helen lost hotly contested U.S.Senate race to Republican Richard Nixon.
On the evening of July 18,1952,a few days after attending the 1952 Republican National Convention,Frederick sustained serious injuries when the car he was driving
was struck by another vehicle near his Los Angeles home.He died the following afternoon at Los Angeles County General Hospital.He is interred at Evergreen Cemetery.He was survived by his wife & two daughters.