Mifflin Wistar Gibbs (April 17, 1823 – July 11, 1915), was an American-born Canadian politician, businessman, newspaper publisher, and advocate for Black rights. He moved to California as a young man during the Gold Rush and was an early Black pioneer in San Francisco. Gibbs published the first Black newspaper in California, and was an active leader in the early California State Convention of Colored Citizens. Angered by discriminatory laws passed in California in 1858, he led a migration of African Americans to emigrate that year to Victoria, British Columbia, Canada during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, where he worked for ten years. Gibbs became the first Black person elected to public office in British Columbia on November 16, 1866, upon winning a seat on the Victoria City Council. 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 the capital city of Little Rock, Arkansas, and became an attorney. He was active in Reconstruction politics. Gibbs was the first Black judge elected in the United States in 1873. In 1897, in the William McKinley administration, he was appointed as American consul to Madagascar. Early life Mifflin Wistar Gibbs was born on April 17, 1823 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Gibbs was the second of four siblings, the eldest being his brother Jonathan Clarkson Gibbs. Their father was a Methodist minister. As a young adult, Gibbs became active in the abolitionist movement and worked for Frederick Douglass. He was also involved in the Philomathean Society of Philadelphia, a literary organization which included Douglass, Charles Burleigh Purvis, William Whipper, and Izaiah Weir. Philadelphia had long had a flourishing free black community, as people had found work there even before the revolution and slavery was abolished after the American Revolutionary War. San Francisco, California Like tens of thousands of other men, Gibbs joined the California Gold Rush, having arrived in San Francisco in late 1850. He sought work as a carpenter, a trade that he had pursued in Philadelphia, but was discouraged by the racial discrimination that he faced. He then partnered with Nathan Pointer to sell clothes. In 1851, Gibbs in partnership with Peter Lester, opened the Emporium for Boot and Shoes store at 638 Clay Street in San Francisco selling imported shoes and boots. In Gibb's autobiography, "Shadow and Light" (1902), he mentions while living in San