User:Eddie891/James H. Hayes

James H. Hayes (

Biography
He taught at the Navy Hill School, receiving promotion to principal in 1882 at the Valley School. The following year Hayes was one of the first reporters to work at the Richmond Planet. Hayes was also a respected orator, criticizing Booker T. Washington's accommodationism. He left the school in 1884, to enter the Howard University School of Law. graduating in 1885, at the top of his class. The following year he earned a seat on the Richmond City Council, which he held for four years, leaving in 1890. He protested Virginia's 1902 institution of a discriminatory poll tax and literacy test. He campaigned on the behalf of John Mercer Langston in the 1890 election.

Hayes was at one point a lawyer in DC, advocating for the establishment of a "National Negro Congress" in 1914.