John Jacobus Flournoy (1808 – 1879), a graduate of the American School for the Deaf, is best remembered as an advocate for a deaf state and for his resistance to black abolition in the United States. John J. Flournoy was born in 1808, living near Athens, Georgia throughout his life. Besides being deaf himself, Flournoy also suffered from occasional bouts of mental instability, and was frequently institutionalized.