John Roy Lynch (September 10, 1847 – November 2, 1939) was an American writer, attorney, military officer, author, and Republican politician who served as Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives and represented Mississippi in the United States House of Representatives.

John R. Lynch (born Sept. 10, 1847, Concordia Parish, La., U.S.—died Nov. 2, 1939, Chicago, Ill.) was a Black politician after the American Civil War who served in the Mississippi state legislature and U.S. House of Representatives and was prominent in …

2019年8月8日 · While editing his autobiography, John R. Lynch, the last surviving black congressman of the Reconstruction era, died in Chicago on November 2, 1939 at the age of 92. His book was published posthumously in 1970.

John Roy Lynch was born on September 10, 1847, to an enslaved mother of mixed race on Tacony Plantation in Concordia Parish, Louisiana. His father, Patrick Lynch, was a white Irish plantation manager who died in 1849 before carrying out his plans to free his common-law wife, Catherine White, and her three children.

2016年2月8日 · John Roy Lynch was an American politician, writer, attorney, and military officer, who was born into slavery, gained freedom in 1863 and was subsequently elected to both the Mississippi House of Representatives and the U.S. House of Representatives.

2024年8月18日 · Born into slavery and freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, Lynch would become a Republican member of the US House of Representatives from Mississippi during Reconstruction.

At the age of 24, John Roy Lynch became the first African American speaker of the Mississippi state house in 1872. He served as the only Black Representatives in the U.S House from Mississippi for over a century.

In November 1869, Lynch was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives at the age of 22. Three years later, he was named Speaker of the House becoming the first African-American to hold this position.

Always active in the Republican Party, Lynch was a delegate to the national Republican Conventions of 1872, 1884, 1888, 1892, and 1900. He was temporary chairman in 1884, the first Black to preside over a national convention of a major U.S. political party.

2025年1月19日 · John R. Lynch arrived by train in St. Louis at three o’clock in the morning during the summer of 1873. Only twenty-five years old, he had been elected to the U.S. Congress the prior November.