John Roy Lynch ( September 10, 1847 , Parish of Concodia , Louisiana , USA - November 2, 1939 , Chicago , Illinois , USA) - the first African American politician in the United States after the Civil War during the Reconstruction of the South , elected to the legislative the Mississippi State Assembly and the United States House of Representatives , a prominent GOP activist in the 1870s - 1880s .
Lynch was freed from slavery during the Civil War and settled in Natchez ( Mississippi ), where he took photographs and graduated from evening school, and in 1869 engaged in public activities as a district judge.
In November 1869 he was elected to the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi, in 1871 he was re-elected, in 1872 he became the speaker of the House. In the same year he was elected to Congress and re-elected in 1874, but was not elected for a third term. In 1880, he was elected again and declared a loser, but challenged the decision and eventually returned to Congress.
Lynch returned to his plantation in Adams County (Mississippi) in 1883. In 1889, he returned to public service when President Benjamin Harrison appointed him the fourth auditor of the US Treasury for the maritime department . Always an active member of the Republican Party, Lynch was a delegate to the national congresses of Republicans in 1872, 1884, 1888, 1892 and 1900. He was interim chairman in 1884, the first black man to chair the national congress of the then main political party in the United States.
In his book Facts of Reconstruction (1913), Lynch attempted to dispel the erroneous belief that the governments of the southern states after the Civil War were controlled by blacks.