Chester K. Gillespie (1897–1985) was a lawyer and politician who worked for civil rights in
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
.
Biography
Gillespie was born in
Home City, Ohio to Warren and Lulu Trail Gillespie. He graduated from
Ohio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...
and then from
Baldwin-Wallace College Law School in 1920. He served three terms in the Ohio General Assembly in 1933–34, 1939–40, and 1943–44. He was a Republican.
He served in the U.S. Army during World War II.
[ He and fellow attorney Clayborne George were denied office space in buildings in downtown Cleveland because they were African American.]National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. ...
(NAACP) in 1936 and 1937.[
]
References
1897 births
1985 deaths
20th-century African-American lawyers
Republican Party members of the Ohio House of Representatives
Ohio State University alumni
Baldwin Wallace University alumni
20th-century African-American politicians
20th-century American legislators
NAACP activists
United States Army personnel of World War II
20th-century American lawyers
African-American state legislators in Ohio
African-American men in politics
Activists from Cleveland
African-American activists
Politicians from Cleveland
Lawyers from Cleveland
20th-century Ohio politicians
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