Jonathan Jasper Wright
(1840-1885)

jurist, educator, politician, and lawyer

Died aged c. 45

Jonathan Jasper Wright (February 11, 1840 – February 18, 1885) was an African-American lawyer who served as a state senator and judge on the Supreme Court of the State of South Carolina during Reconstruction from 1870 to 1877.

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Jonathan Jasper Wright (1840-1885). Jurist, educator, politician. The son of runaway slaves, Wright became the first black lawyer in Pennsylvania. He supported Frederick Douglass in advocating suffrage and legal equality for blacks. During Reconstruction in 1870, he was appointed South Carolina State Supreme Court justice, the first African American United States Appellate Judge. Wright's boyhood home was here in Springville.

PA 29 & Cemetery St. (T361), Springville, PA, United States where they was