"John Francis Wheaton"(January 15,1921-August 2,1991)

Was a late 19th Century lawyer and politician.John ran for elective office in three states and was the first African American to serve in the Minnesota House of Represantatives.
He was born to Jacob & Emily Wheaton in Hagerstown,Maryland.He graduated from the high school division of Stoner College in Harpers Ferry,West Virginia in 1882.During the decade after his graduation John worked as a public school teacher,then attended Dixion Business College in Illinois,and later moved to Washington D.C.,where he worked as a clerk for the United States Congress until 1892.In 1889,John married Ella Chambers and the couple had two sons Layton J. & Frank P.Wheaton.
John graduated from Howard's Law Department in May 1892 and set up practice in Hagerstown.He was only the fourth African American to pass the bar and practice law in Maryland and the first outside Baltimore.
In 1893,he moved to Minneapolis,Minnesota where he worked as a clerk in the state legislature and also as a deputy clerk in the Minneapolis municipal courts.The following year he became the first African American to graduate from the University of Minnesota Law School.
John had a lifelong affinity for politics.In 1885 at the age of nineteen he gave his first political "stump speech." By twenty-one,he was an unsuccessful candidate for a seat in the Maryland State Legislature.He served as a delegate in 1887,1889,and 1891 to the Maryland's State Republician Convention and was elected temporary chairman of the 1889 convention.At age twenty-two John attended the 1888 Republician National Convention in Chicago as an alternate.He was of the youngest delegates at the convention and among a handful of African American delegates.
After moving to Minneapolis,John quickly became involved in Minneapolis politics.He was elected to served as alternate delegate to the 1896 Republician National Convention in St.Louis.Two years later on November 8,1898,John was elected John was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives to represent the 42nd District While holding his own elective office,John was instrumental in passing the 1899 civil rights statute that ended discrimination in public accommodations and and transportation.He also lobbied for permitting African American soldiers to fight in the Spanish-American War.John again represented Minnesota at the Republican National Convention when it met in Philadelphia in 1900.He did not win reelection to the legislature in 1900 and instead practiced law briefly in Minneapolis before moving to Chicago to work for an insurance company.He relocated again in 1906 to New York City and switched to the Democratic Party.John practiced law in the city until his death.He worked for the New York City District Attroney's office from January-May of 1920.His final foray into politics came in 1919,when he ran unsuccessfully for the New York State Assembly.John died in his home in Harlem.He was survived by his second wife (Dora) sons (Layton and Frank) and a stepson (Richard Weston).