George Boyer Vashon

George Boyer Vashon
Born (1824-07-25)July 25, 1824
Carlisle, Pennsylvania
Died October 5, 1878(1878-10-05) (aged 54)
Mississippi
Cause of death Yellow Fever[1]
Nationality American

George Boyer Vashon (July 25, 1824 – October 5, 1878) was an American scholar, poet and abolitionist. He was the first African-American graduate of Oberlin College in Ohio.[2] He was the first practicing African-American lawyer in the state of New York and was posthumously admitted to the Pennsylvania Bar in 2010,[3] 163 years after being denied the right to practice in the state due to his race, first in 1847 and again in 1868.[1] In 1853, he was a prominent attendee of the radical abolitionist National African American Convention in Rochester, New York. His was one of 5 names attached to the address of the convention to the people of the United States published under the title, The Claims of Our Common Cause, along with Frederick Douglass, James Monroe Whitfield, Henry O. Wagoner, and Amos Noë Freeman.[4] In the 1870s he lived and worked for a time in Washington, DC where he also taught young African-Americans at a night school there.[5]

Vashon High School in St. Louis, Missouri is named for Vashon and his son, John Boyer Vashon.

References

  1. 1 2 Blue, Christopher T. "Vashon, George B. (1824-1878)". BlackPast.org. Retrieved 16 April 2016.
  2. ↑ Baumann, Roland M. (2010). Constructing Black Education at Oberlin College. Ohio University Press. ISBN 978-0821418871.
  3. ↑ "After 163 Years, African-American Legal Scholar and Abolitionist George B. Vashon to Be Admitted to Pennsylvania Bar". Duane Morris. 13 October 2010. Retrieved 16 April 2016.
  4. ↑ Douglass, Frederick. Frederick Douglass: Selected speeches and writings. Chicago Review Press, 2000. p260-271
  5. ↑ Simmons, William J., and Henry McNeal Turner. Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising. GM Rewell & Company, 1887. p474-480


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