PRINCE WILLIAM COUNTY — The first black man to be elected to public office in Prince William County has died.
The Prince William Chapter of the NAACP announced the death of John Harper, 83, on Monday.
“He was generous with his time and freely dispensed wisdom to us as he regaled us with stories of his experiences in a Prince William County that was far different from the minority-majority community of today,” Prince William County NAACP Chapter President Cozy Bailey told Potomac Local. “He was a trailblazer and one of the celebrated ‘firsts,’ meaning that he was the first African-American to achieve what the successors to his legacy have achieved; Lillie Jessie, Loree Williams, and Diane Raulston [all Prince William County School Board members] being the most recent.”
Harper won a seat on the Prince William County School Board in 1995. Not only was he the first-ever elected black official in the county, but it was also the first year School Board members were elected and not appointed by the Board of Supervisors.
Harper worked as a department head at the Prince William County sanitary department from 1987 to 1997, where he was also the first black department head in county government.
Covington-Harper Elementary School, which opened in 2017, is named for him and former School Board member and Principal Betty Covington. The two attended an opening ceremony for the school where both were honored.
Harper, a North Carolina-native, enlisted in the Army while he was attending college. He waited tables for a restaurant in Downtown Washington, D.C. After college, After college, he married his high school sweetheart Beulah “BJ” Harper on June 6, 1959, the anniversary of D-Day.
“I thought it was an important date,” he said during an interview with Potomac Local in August 2017.
Friends may visit during the wake Feb. 14, 2019, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at First Mount Zion Baptist Church (FMZBC), 16622 Dumfries Rd., Dumfries, VA 22025; visitation Friday, Feb. 15, 2019, beginning at 10 a.m.; funeral service beginning at 11 a.m.
