21 August 2015 THE AMAZING AGE OF JOHN ROY LYNCH by Chris Barton and Don Tate, ill., Eerdmans, April 2015, 48p., ISBN: 978-0-8028-5379-0

“It is claimed that in States, districts, and counties, in which the colored people are in the majority, the suppression of the colored vote is necessary to prevent ‘Negro Domination’--to prevent the ascendancy of the blacks over the whites in the administration of the State and local governments.”

--John Roy Lynch, from his book, The Facts of Reconstruction, available online through Project Gutenberg

“Yes, ‘n’ how many deaths will it take ‘till he knows

That too many people have died?”

--Bob Dylan (1962)

“U.S. Congressman or not, a black man could still find himself barred from certain hotels. But that wasn’t the worst of it -- not by far. Back home, terrorists burned black schools and black churches. They armed themselves on Election Day to keep blacks away. They even committed murder.

In a way, the Civil War wasn’t really over. The battling had not stopped. But white Northerners had grown weary, and the U.S. government wavered. Hard, hungry times came to the North, overshadowing injustice in the South. The decent people of Mississippi were not outnumbered, but they were outgunned and on their own.”

Burning black churches and trying to keep blacks from voting? There seems to be an uncomfortable degree of similarity between the South in the 1870s, the 1960s, and today.

Much of what I know of Mississippi during Reconstruction comes from one of my all-time favorite novels, the award-winning The Land by Mildred Taylor. Now I know more about Reconstruction, thanks to THE AMAZING AGE OF JOHN ROY LYNCH.

In the South, after the Civil War ended, blacks were afforded little sense of freedom or racial equality: “Mississippi whites passed laws to make Mississippi blacks into slaves under different names: ‘Apprentices.’ ‘Vagrants.’ ‘Convicts.’”

In the midst of this oppression and terrorism, John Roy Lynch achieved fame at a relatively young age.

Born to a white overseer and a black slave, John Roy’s daddy purchased his wife and kids from their owner, supposedly intending to free them. But then John Roy’s daddy died young and left his estate to a friend. That friend sold John Roy off to another owner. John Roy didn’t become free until the Civil War.

After that, in the course of a decade, Lynch went from being an illiterate field slave to a photographer, a land-owning Justice of the Peace, and Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives. Then, in 1872, John Roy Lynch was elected to the United States House of Representatives, as one of a small group of blacks from former Confederate states who served in Congress during Reconstruction. Eventually, racism and terrorism put an end to Southern blacks in Congress. The author’s Historical Note points out that between 1902 and 1972, there wasn’t a single black member of Congress from the former Confederate states.

As we learn from the timeline that’s included, John Roy Lynch lived to be 92. After his stint in Congress, Lynch eventually left the South for Chicago, served in the Spanish American War, and became a published author.

Illustrator Don Tate characterizes his pen and gouache illustrations, as whimsical. I find them also expressive and powerful.

For all that we focus on the Civil War in American history, there is far too little attention paid to what happened in the South following the Emancipation Proclamation, the end of the War, and the ratification of the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution. THE AMAZING AGE OF JOHN ROY LYNCH is a great introduction to Reconstruction and to one of the first African-American members of Congress.

Richie Partington, MLIS

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