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Styles Hutchins

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Styles Linton Hutchins (November 1, 1852 – September 7, 1950) was an attorney, politician, and activist in South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee between 1877 (the end of Reconstruction) and 1906 (the height of Jim Crow). Hutchins was among the last African Americans to graduate from the University of South Carolina School of Law in the brief window during Reconstruction when the school was open to Black students and the first Black attorney admitted to practice in Georgia. He practiced law and participated in Georgia and Tennessee politics. He served a single term (1887-1888) in the Tennessee General Assembly as one of its last Black members before an era of entrenched white supremacist policies that lasted until 1965, and advocated for the interests of African Americans. He called for reparations and attempted to identify or create a separate homeland for Blacks. He was a member of the defense team in the 1906 appeal on civil rights grounds by Ed Johnson of a conviction of rape, a case which reached the Supreme Court before it was halted by Johnson's murder by lynching in Chattanooga, Tennessee.