John Roy Lynch (1847–1939) was elected chair of the Republican National Convention on September 19, 1884, the first black to be elected to that post. An eloquent speaker, he was also the first black to deliver the keynote address to the convention. In 1869, when Lynch was only twenty-two years old, he was elected as a member of the Mississippi State House of Representatives, and in 1871 he was elected Speaker of the House.