Dr. James J. Spelman (Madison County)

State House: 1870-1875

Born: January 18, 1841 in Norwich, CT
Died: May 25, 1894 in Jackson, MS

Journalist. Appointed major in the Madison County militia in 1873. See Wikipedia entry for more extensive biography.

“Born in Norwich, Connecticut, Spelman was educated in public schools there and in New York City. On the eve of the Civil War, he worked as a correspondent for the Anglo-African in New York and contributed to other black newspapers… He came to Mississippi in 1868 as an employee of the Freedmen’s Bureau and a correspondent for the New York Tribune. With James D. Lynch, he published the Jackson Colored Citizen, around 1868-70.”
(Eric Foner, Freedom’s Lawmakers: A Directory of Black Officeholders during Reconstruction, 1993)

Links:
Wikipedia entry on James J. Spelman
National Convention of the Colored Men of America, 1869