The first black elected offical in US was Wentworth Cheswill, a justice
of the peace in New Hampshire in 1768.
Or if you prefer a state, Alexander L. Twilight was elected to the
Vermont Legislature in 1836.  He is also probably the first black in the
US to earn a college degree — Middlebury, 1823.  I have not found any
others, but there may be some out there.

Paul Finkelman
President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law
     and Public Policy
Albany Law School
80 New Scotland Avenue
Albany, New York   12208-3494

518-445-3386 
[log in to unmask]

>>> Paul Finkelman <[log in to unmask]> 6/9/2008 4:42 PM >>>


LOUISA, Va. -- Planted in the lawn at the courthouse on West Main
Street
here is a gray historical marker that draws little attention. It
proudly
proclaims that the country's first black elected official was native
son
John Mercer Langston, born in this central Virginia county, the son of
a
wealthy white planter and an emancipated slave of Indian and black
ancestry.

History seems to whisper more often than it shouts. Langston was one of
the
most extraordinary men of the 19th century, and yet his achievements
--
prominent abolitionist, first black congressman from Virginia, founder
of
what would become the Howard University law school -- have largely
been
forgotten. In the arc of American advancement toward black political
empowerment, Langston represents the symbolic beginning. Elected
township
clerk of Brownhelm, Ohio, on April 2, 1855, he became, by many
accounts, the
first "Negro" elevated to public office by popular vote.

It took 153 years to get from John Mercer Langston to Barack Hussein
Obama,
a journey that endured the dashed hopes of Reconstruction and the
oppression
of Jim Crow to arrive at a moment that has stunned even those
optimistic
about America's racial progress. An underdog black politician has
secured a
major party's presidential nomination in a country where less than 4
percent
of its elected officials are African Americans?

Posted on HNN - History News Network, Monday, June 9, 2008

-- 
Jon Kukla
www.JonKukla.com 

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J. K. Brandau
  Murder At Green Springs:
  The True Story of the Hall Case,
  Firestorm of Prejudices
  http://www.murderatgreensprings.com 


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