John Roy Lynch was an American politician, attorney, writer and military officer, who was elected as the first African-American Speaker of the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1873. He was among the first generation of African Americans elected to the U.S House of Representatives during Reconstruction, the period in United States history after the Civil War. In his 50s he studied law and was admitted to the Mississippi bar in 1896, but he returned to Washington, DC to practice law, and later moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he lived for more than two decades. He served in the United States Army during the Spanish American War and for a decade in the early 1900s, achieving the rank of major. He was active in law and real estate in Chicago after his military service.