ment as
magistrate, General Sickles having conferred the office upon
him to punish the citizens of Columbia for an assault made
by two intoxicated young men on a itinerant radical speaker
and his traveling companion while in that town"

"Q" in _New York Times_--March 23, 1868.

The above would indicate that Senator W. Beverly Nash was the
first Negro to exercise judicial power in the United States.

Concerning Associate Justice J. J. Wright I would add that he
graduated from the Lancaster, Pa., High School--studied law at
Montrose, Pa.,--admitted to the Bar in Susquehanna county, being
the first Negro to practice law in Pennsylvania--four years
before going to South Carolina.

Very respectfully,
HENRY A. WALLACE.

WASHINGTON, D. C., May 9, 1920.

_Dear Mr. Woodson:_

_The Journal of Negro History_ is among the most valuable
periodicals that it is my privilege to receive. I make it a rule
to read all the articles of a _purely historical_ nature.

Your recent effort to gather and print a list of the Negro
officeholders of the reconstructive period is highly commendable,
and should be aided by all persons possessing accurate or
approximate facts on the subjects. There were numerous such
holders of small offices, national, state, county and municipal,
in the Southern states in that period. As a boy, I knew two such
in the town and county in which I lived. Doubtless many other
persons of 50 years or less know of several.

Mr. John W. Cromwell's articles in the April number, "The
Aftermath of Nat Turner's Insurrection," is not only scholarly
and interesting but a very valuable contribution to history.

There is a vast amount of _fact_ reposing only in the memories of
elderly people now living that should be rescued and recorded
while they live, lest it is lost forever. Perhaps the record of
it will not be _history_ proper but only _annals_, or a record of
events. It is none the less important to secure it. It is of
minor importance whether it be written in polished literary form.
It will constitute source matter for the future historian. For
some time to come we shall be in less need of dissertations that