Jonathan Jasper Wright, the first African American to serve on a state supreme court in the United States, resigned from the South Carolina Supreme Court on this day in 1877. His resignation followed the collapse of Reconstruction and the return of white supremacist rule in the South. Appointed in 1870 during the Reconstruction era, Wright was a pioneering legal mind and symbol of progress. After leaving the bench, he lived in relative obscurity and later died of tuberculosis in 1885.
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