John R. Lynch
| John Roy Lynch | |
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| Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Mississippi's 6th district |
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In office March 4, 1873 – March 4, 1877 and April 29, 1882 – March 3, 1883 |
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| Preceded by | James Ronald Chalmers |
| Succeeded by | Henry Smith Van Eaton |
| Member of the Mississippi House of Representatives | |
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In office 1869–1873 |
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| Personal details | |
| Born |
September 10, 1847 near Vidalia, Concordia Parish, Louisiana |
| Died | November 2, 1939 (aged 92) Chicago, Illinois |
| Political party | Republican |
John Roy Lynch (September 10, 1847 – November 2, 1939) was an American politician, writer, attorney and military officer. Born into slavery in Louisiana, he became free in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation. In 1873 he was elected as the first African-American Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives. During Reconstruction after the American Civil War, he was among the first generation of African Americans elected to the U.S House of Representatives, serving from 1873 to 1877 and again in the 1880s. Of mixed race, he was of majority European ancestry.
After Democrats regained power in the state legislature and Reconstruction ended, in his 50s Lynch studied law; he was admitted to the Mississippi bar in 1896. As the Democrat-dominated state legislature had disfranchised blacks in 1890 under its new constitution, Lynch left the state and returned to Washington, DC to practice law. He served in the United States Army during the Spanish American War and for a decade in the early 1900s, achieving the rank of major. After retiring, Lynch moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he lived for more than two decades. He was active in law and real estate in Chicago after his military service.
Beginning in 1877, Lynch wrote and published four books, analyzing the political situation in the South during and after Reconstruction. He is best known for his book, 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, white historians who downplayed African-American 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.
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