At the age of 24, John Roy Lynch born on September 10, 1847

At the age of 24, John Roy Lynch born on September 10, 1847 became the first African American speaker of the Mississippi state house in 1872. He served as the only Black Representative in the U.S House from Mississippi for over a century. Lynch was an outspoken advocate for the Civil Rights Bill of 1875 and an active Republican throughout his long life. Politician, military officer, lawyer, businessman, photographer and author, Lynch was born into enslavement on a Louisiana plantation and later moved to Mississippi with his mother, and became free under the Emancipation Proclamation. 

His father was an Irish immigrant and his parents had a common-law marriage. After serving for several years in the state legislature, in 1873 Lynch was elected as Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives serving from 1873 to 1877 and again in the 1880s. Faced with increasing restrictions in Mississippi, Lynch studied law, passed the bar, and returned to Washington, DC to set up a practice. In 1884 Lynch became the first Black person to deliver the keynote address at the Republican National Convention.

He served in the United States Army during the Spanish–American War and for a decade into the early 1900s, achieving the rank of major. After retiring, Lynch moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he lived for more than two decades. After his military service, Lynch was active in law and real estate in Chicago. Beginning in 1877, when Reconstruction ended with the federal government withdrawing its troops from the South, Lynch wrote and published 2 books analyzing the political situation in the South during and after Reconstruction.

Before he died at age 92, Lynch published two more books and several articles, his  autobiography, Reminiscences of an Active Life and The Facts of Reconstruction (1913). It is available online at the Gutenberg Project. In it, he argued against the prevailing view of the Dunning School, conservative white historians who downplayed Black contributions and the achievements of the Reconstruction era. Lynch emphasized how significant was the ratification of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution, which granted full citizenship to all persons without restriction of race or color, and suffrage to minority males.

Lynch was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C., and his autobiography was finally published in 1970, edited by noted historian John Hope Franklin. Mississippi would not elect another Black Representative until Mike Espy, who was elected in November 1986, over 100 years later.  #JohnRoyLynch died on November 2, 1939.