to seat Hunt was 41 in favor to 137 against. Following this was a vote to send the matter back to the Committee on Elections so that it might take testimony on the validity of the election. Before the vote occurred, members amended the resolution so as to seat Menard until the outcome of the investigation. The vote in Menard's favor, to send it back for further investigation and to seat him in the meantime, failed 57 to 130, which meant that the House was not going to continue to investigate. Though the claim circulates that Congressman and future president James A. Garfield purportedly suggested it was too early for an African American to be admitted to Congress, he did not make such a statement to the House when Menard gave his presentation and the roll call shows that he voted to seat Menard. Neither man was seated for the remainder of the final days of the 40th Congress. Menard moved to Jacksonville, Florida, where he was appointed to the Florida House of Representatives in 1874. He lost the next election, at a time when there was widespread intimidation of voters at elections and white Democratic efforts to suppress black voting. That same year and again in 1877, Menard was elected as a Duval County justice of the peace. Menard was a poet, the author of Lays in Summer Lands (1879). Menard was also the editor of the Florida News and the Southern Leader from 1882 to 1888. Menard died in the District of Columbia and was buried at Graceland Cemetery in Washington, D.C. When Graceland closed in 1894, his remains were moved to nearby Woodlawn Cemetery. His daughter, Alice Menard, married Thomas Van Renssalaer Gibbs, the son of Jonathan Clarkson Gibbs. See also List of African-American United States representatives References Bibliography "John Willis Menard", John B. Cade Library at Southern University. Canter Brown, Jr. Florida's Black Public Officials, 1867–1924. Tuscaloosa and London: The University of Alabama Press, 1998. Menard, E. "John Willis Menard: First Negro Elected to U.S. Congress." Negro History Bulletin. 28 (December 1964), 53–54. Menard, John Willis. (2006), Encyclopædia Britannica, Retrieved October 19, 2006, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9051962 1838 births 1893 deaths 19th-century American journalists 19th-century American judges 19th-century American politicians 19th-century male writers African-American members of the United States House of Representatives African-American politicians during the Reconstruction Era African-American state legislators in Florida American colonization