John Patterson Green

John Patterson Green. , John Patterson Green (2 April 1845 - 1 September 1940) is known as the "Father of Labor Day" due to legislation he proposed in 1890 as an Ohio state legislator to observe the first Monday in September as Labor Day. Labor Day became a national holiday in 1894., John' was born into a free black family living in New Bern, North Carolina. His father, John Rice Green, was a tailor, while his mother, Temperance, was a seamstress. His father died when John was five leading Temperance to move the family to Cleveland in 1857 to take advantage of the integrated educational opportunities for her three children. Poverty led to John, as the only son, leaving school to help support the family. He published essays on miscellaneous subjects by a self-educated colored youth (1866) and returned to school to graduate in 1869 from Central High School, the first public high school in Cleveland. He graduated in 1870 from Union Law School, moved to South Carolina and passed the bar to practice law for two years., Worsening race relations in the south brought Green back to Cleveland to a political career. In 1873, he became the first black elected to office in Cleveland as a justice of the peace (1873-1882). In 1880, he published recollections of the inhabitants, localities, superstitions and Ku Klux outrages of the Carolinas. In 1881, Green won election to the Ohio House of Representatives. As a legislator, he was reelected in 1889 and went on to propose the Labor Day legislation in 1890. He ran for the Ohio Senate in 1892 to become the Ohio Senate's first black member and the only black senator in the north until the 20th century. After elective office, Green held an appointment as U. S. Postage Stamp Agent and served as acting superintendent of finance in the post office department before returning to his criminal law practice in 1906., He married Annie Walker in 1869 and had six children: William Roscoe, John Rice, Truman Handy, Theodore Bliss, Jessie Bishop, and Clara. After his first wife died in 1912, Green married Lottie Mitchell Richardson, a widow, with whom he had two children. He was a founding member of St. Andrews Episcopal Church. His autobiography, Fact Stranger than Fiction, was published in 1920. In 1937, Cleveland's mayor and city council designated April 4th as John P. Green Day. At the age of 95, Green was hit by a car and died one day before his beloved Labor Day.