J. R. Clifford

John Robert Clifford
Portrait of J.R. Clifford
Born	September 13, 1848 Williamsport, Virginia
Died	October 6, 1933 Martinsburg, West Virginia
Occupation	Attorney, Publisher, Editor, Writer, Teacher, Principal
Literary movement	African-American journalism, Niagara Movement, Civil Rights
Notable works	The Pioneer Press
Website
www.jrclifford.org

J.R. Clifford (September 13, 1848 – October 6, 1933) was West Virginia’s first African-American attorney. Clifford was also a newspaper publisher, editor and writer, schoolteacher, and principal. He was a Civil War veteran, grandfather, as well as a civil rights pioneer and founding member of the Niagara Movement (forerunner to the NAACP). Despite boundaries derived from racial discrimination, J. R. Clifford's accomplishments were great, reflecting his ability and determination.

John Robert ("J.R.") Clifford was born in 1848 in the small town of Williamsport, in what was then Hardy County, Virginia (now in Grant County), near present-day Moorefield. Clifford's parents and grandparents were "free blacks" and had lived in that region of Virginia for several generations. There were no schools for colored children in the area. Clifford's parents sent him to Chicago to attend school, sometime in the early 1860s to be educated by J. J. Healy.

In 1864, at the age of fifteen, Clifford enlisted in the United States Colored Troops, and served in Company F, 13th Regiment of Heavy Artillery, United States Colored Troops until 1865, having reached the rank of Corporal. At the end of the war he served as a nurse.

After the Civil War, Clifford learned the barber trade. He moved from Chicago to Zeno, Ohio where his uncle dwelt and attended writing school. In 1870 he went to Wheeling, West Virginia and operated a writing school, and from 1871 to 1873 he ran a similar school in Martin's Ferry, Ohio. In the early 1870s he enrolled in Harpers Ferry's newly formed Storer College, created to educate the region's African-American population. After earning his degree in 1878, Clifford became a teacher at, and then the principal of, a segregated public school for African Americans in Martinsburg, West Virginia. In Martinsburgh, he studied law under J. Nelson Wirner and was a successful lawyer.