Wentworth Cheswell first served in an elective office in 1776 as a local school board member in Newmarket, New Hampshire, and later as a justice of the peace (making him the first African American to serve as a judge). He would serve in elective office until his death in 1817.
Alexander Lucius Twilight was an American educator, politician, and minister. He was the first African American to earn a college degree from an American College at Middlebury College in 1823. He is the first African American elected to serve in a state legislature, the Vermont House of Representatives in 1836. Twilight was also a minister and secondary school principal, building Athenian Hall at the Orleans County Grammar Schools.