Hello. If you received this email, you are either a friend, subscriber to my other newsletter, or someone who may have interest in the life of Jonathan Jasper Wright (1840?-1885), the first Black state supreme court justice in the U.S. I have been researching his life for the past 15 months and now it’s time to begin to share what I’ve learned. The plan is for weekly posts to start. Next week I’ll give a short overview of Justice Wright’s life, and we’ll be off from there.
Sharing the research achieves several objectives for me - it allows me to begin to organize the material and collect fragments, ideas and themes into something complete; and to continue to find more about Wright’s life. There are gaps I’d love to fill, especially about his early life, and perhaps someone out there can suggest a place to look that I haven’t seen yet.
I hope, as well, that this serves as an introduction to this period of American history, especially the Reconstruction period, a period of great hope and ultimately great disappointment for the Black community; or teaches you something about that period you didn’t already know.
If you would rather not subscribe to this, please click the unsubscribe button at the bottom, and you won’t see any more from me on this subject.
Thanks and regards, John