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.
Marker is at the intersection of Route 29 and Cemetery Street, on the right when traveling north on Route 29.
Courtesy hmdb.org
