Harry Jheopart Capehart Sr. (May 2, 1881 – May 15, 1955) was an American lawyer, politician, and businessperson in the U.S. state of West Virginia. Capehart served as a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates, representing McDowell County for three consecutive terms, from 1919 to 1925. He also served as an assessor, city councilperson, and city attorney for Keystone, West Virginia.
Capehart was born in 1881 in Charleston, West Virginia. He was educated in Charleston's public schools, attended Fairview Normal College in Proctorville, Ohio, and earned his Bachelor of Laws degree (LL.B.) with honors from Howard University School of Law in 1913. Within one week of his graduation from Howard, Capehart was admitted to practice law before the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. The same year, he opened a law office in Keystone.
Capehart was active in the West Virginia Republican Party and became a party leader in McDowell County. After serving as Keystone's city assessor and as a city councilperson, Capehart was elected to three consecutive terms in the West Virginia House of Delegates representing McDowell County. As a house member, Capehart accomplished several significant legislative achievements. In 1919, he introduced House Bill (H.B.) 15, which established a state institution for West Virginia's African-American deaf and blind students under the management of the state's Board of Control. And in 1921, Capehart introduced H.B. 270, which established penalties for lynchings and became known as the Capehart Anti-Lynch Law.
Following his tenure in the West Virginia House of Delegates, Capehart was appointed an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia in 1932, and in 1934, he was appointed a conciliation commissioner for the Farm Credit Administration during the Great Depression. Capehart continued to be active in the Republican Party at the national, state, and local levels. He served as the director of the Colored Division of the West Virginia Republican Party Headquarters, and he chaired the Republican National Committee (RNC) Eastern Colored Division Planning Board for the Wendell Willkie campaign leading up to the 1940 United States presidential election. In 1937, the National Bar Association appointed Capehart as its regional director for Virginia and West Virginia. He died in 1955 in Bluefield, West Virginia.
Early life and education
Harry Jheopart Capehart was born in Charleston, West Virginia, on May 2, 1881, the son of merchant Joseph Capehart and his wife Maggie Woodyard Capehart. Capehart's maternal grandparents had been enslaved people in North Carolina; they were manumitted prior to the Emancipation Proclamation and provided with farmland in present-day Logan County, West Virginia, where they engaged in farming and logging.
Capehart received his early education in Charleston's public schools. He then graduated from Fairview Normal College in Proctorville, Ohio, in 1901. However, Capehart was forced to delay further post-secondary education to earn money to assist his widowed mother in raising his four siblings. Before attending law school, he worked as a tailor, merchant, and schoolteacher. Capehart matriculated at Howard University School of Law, where he earned his Bachelor of Laws degree (LL.B.), graduating with the highest honors in 1913.
Law and business careers
Within a week of graduating from Howard, Capehart was admitted to practice law before the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia. He argued his first case before the State Supreme Court a year later in 1914. In 1913, Capehart began practicing law and established a successful law office in Keystone. He was one of only 23 African-American lawyers in West Virginia by 1920, and one of only 20 by 1930. He relocated from Keystone to Welch, West Virginia, in the 1920s. In Welch, Capehart established the law firm Froe and Capehart with Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia, Arthur G. Froe. By 1930, Leon P. Miller, assistant prosecuting attorney for McDowell County, joined Froe and Capehart, forming Froe, Capehart, and Miller, and by 1937, Capehart was the senior partner of the firm, which had become Capehart and Miller. His son, Harry J. Capehart Jr., joined the firm, after which it became known as Capehart, Miller, and Capehart. Throughout his entire career in law, Capehart's services were highly sought after by both African-American and white clients.
After five years of practicing law, in 1918 Capehart became active in the real estate industry. By 1923, he had developed a successful real estate business with offices in both Welch and Bluefield, West Virginia.