Osupa 16 February 2010 Education, Higher Learning, Lifestyle 2 Comments

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Posted February 16th 2010

GREEN, JOHN PATTERSON (2 Apr. 1845-1 Sept. 1940), the “Father of Labor Day,” was born the son of John R. and Temperance Green, free blacks of Newberne, N.C. His family moved to Cleveland in 1857. John left school in 1859 to support his family, studying on the side and publishing Essays on Miscellaneous Subjects by a Self-Educated Colored Youth in 1866. He attended CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL (1866-69), and in 1870 graduated from Union Law School, moved to South Carolina, and was admitted to the bar. Green returned to Cleveland in 1872 and was elected Republican justice of the peace, the first black elected to office in Cleveland. He held the post for 9 years (1873-82). In 1881 he won election to the Ohio House of Representatives. He was elected to the Ohio legislature in 1890, there introducing the bill that established Labor Day as a state holiday; the U.S. Congress made it a national holiday in 1894.

In 1892 Green was elected to the Ohio senate, that body’s first black member. During the 1890s he became closely acquainted with leading Ohio Republicans MARCUS A. HANNA† and GEO. A. MYERS†, and his campaigning for the national Republican ticket earned him appointment in 1897 to the newly created position of U.S. postage stamp agent (1897-1905). He served briefly as the acting superintendent of finance in the Post Office Dept. before leaving government service in 1906 and resuming his law practice in Cleveland. Green published several books and articles: Recollections of the Carolinas (1881); his autobiography, Fact Stranger Than Fiction (1920); and articles for Afro-American News Syndicate. Green was a founding member of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church. Green married Annie Walker in 1869; she died in 1912. In 1912 he married Mrs. Lottie Mitchell Richardson. Green had 4 children from his first marriage: William, Theodore, Jesse, and Clara. He died in Cleveland and was buried in WOODLAND CEMETERY.

The Father of Labor Day in Ohio

Cincinnati Change joins for the 4th year the Cleveland Chapter of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists in Commemoration of the Father of Labor Day, the Honorable John Patterson Green (1845-1940)

The Cleveland Chapter of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists which consists of members from seventy-seven international and national unions recognizes John Patterson Green’s legislative sponsorship of Labor Day in Ohio. House Bill 500 was passed on April 28, 1890 and consisted of one sentence:

Born in New Bern, North Carolina, John Patterson Green became Cleveland’s first black lawyer and first black elected official (Justice of the Peace) and was also the second African-American elected to serve in the Ohio House of Representatives in 1882.

John P. Green’s parents were African-Americans, but free. Too poor to attend school, he worked as a harness maker, a tailor, and a waiter before writing and self-publishing Miscellaneous Subjects by a Self-Educated Colored Youth when he was 21. After the book’s success, he attended high school and law school, and became one of the first black elected officials north of the Mason-Dixon line when he was elected Justice of the Peace in Cleveland, in 1873. In 1881 he was elected to the Ohio House, and in 1891 he was elected to the Ohio Senate.

In addition to Miscellaneous Subjects by a Self-Educated Colored Youth (1866) he wrote Recollections of the Inhabitants, Localities, Superstitions and KuKlux Outrages of the Carolinas (1880) and Fact Stranger than Fiction (1920, autobiography)

As a legislator, he sponsored 21 bills favorable to labor issues, including House Bill 500 in 1890, which established a state holiday honoring working men and women. Labor unions had staged annual parades and picnics since 1882, but Green’s bill made Labor Day an official holiday in Ohio, to be celebrated on the first Monday of September, effective in 1891. Three years later the US Congress followed suit, making Labor Day a national holiday. After leaving the State Assembly, Green worked for many years as a lawyer and postal official, and at the time of his death — struck by a streetcar at the age of 95 — he was the oldest attorney practicing in Ohio.