M W Gibbs

Shadow and light M W Gibbs

Mifflin Wistar Gibbs (17 April 1823 - 11 July 1915) was an African-American attorney, judge, diplomat and banker. Born in Philadelphia, he moved to California as a young man during the California Gold Rush. Angered by discriminatory laws passed in 1858, he and several hundred American blacks moved that year to Victoria, British Columbia. Gibbs lived and worked there for ten years. After the American Civil War, Gibbs and many of the other black settlers returned to the United States. In the late 1860s, he settled in Little Rock, Arkansas, the capital of the state, and became an attorney. He was active in Reconstruction politics, and in 1873 Gibbs was elected as a city judge, the first black judge elected in the US. In 1897 he was appointed as American consul to Madagascar.