Milton Coates was a cotton weigher who served as a state legislator and post office clerk in Mississippi. He represented Warren County, Mississippi in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1882 to 1885. A Republican, he lived on south Farmer Street in Vicksburg.
He was a defendant in a lawsuit regarding the weighing of cotton by the city of Vicksburg. His appointment as a post office clerk in Vicksburg by Henry Roberts Pease elicited objections because Coates was African American.
See also African American officeholders from the end of the Civil War until before 1900
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