James W.C. Pennington

Who was James W.C. Pennington?

James William Charles Pennington was an African-American orator, minister, writer and abolitionist active in Brooklyn, New York. He escaped at the age of 19 from slavery in western Maryland. After working in Brooklyn and gaining some education, he was admitted to Yale University as its first black student. He completed studies and was ordained as a minister in the Congregational Church, later also serving in Presbyterian churches, for congregations in Hartford, Connecticut; New York, and, after the Civil War, in Natchez, Mississippi; Portland, Maine; and Jacksonville, Florida. In the antebellum period, Pennington was an abolitionist, an American delegate to the Second World Conference on Slavery. In 1850 he returned to the British Isles, lecturing to raise funds for abolition, while friends worked to buy his freedom from his former master.

He wrote what is considered the first history of blacks in the United States, The Origin and History of the Colored People. His memoir, The Fugitive Blacksmith, was first published in 1849 in London.