Ezekiel Gillespie

Ezekiel Gillespie (May 31, 1818 – March 31, 1892) was an African-American civil rights and community leader who won a landmark case securing voting rights in Wisconsin.

He traveled to Indiana, and soon moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he sold groceries and then worked as a railroad porter.

He operated a local branch of the Underground Railroad,[1] pushed Richard Allen to open Wisconsin's first African-American church, and also played a role in the Joshua Glover controversy.

[2] In 1865, at the insistence of Sherman Booth, Gillespie attempted to vote.

The justices of the court sided with Gillespie, in his argument that Wisconsin voters had voted in favor of male African American suffrage in an 1849 referendum.