author
active 1849-1853 William G. Allen
An early Black professor, abolitionist, and lecturer, he pushed for equality in classrooms and public life at a time when doing so came with real danger. His story also includes a remarkable transatlantic chapter after a racist backlash in the United States forced him into exile.
1 Audiobook
The American Prejudice Against Color An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily the Nation Got into an Uproar.
by active 1849-1853 William G. Allen
About the author
Born around 1820, William G. Allen was an African American academic, writer, and antislavery speaker. He studied at the Oneida Institute, later co-edited the abolitionist newspaper The National Watchman, and became known for lectures on slavery, equality, and racial integration.
Allen is especially remembered for his work at New-York Central College, where he taught subjects including Greek and rhetoric in one of the most openly integrated educational settings of its time. His engagement to a white student, Mary King, caused a violent public uproar in 1853, and the couple fled the United States for Britain.
In Britain, Allen continued to lecture and write against slavery and eventually lived there for the rest of his life. His career was brief in years but striking in impact, linking Black intellectual life, abolitionism, and the fight for integrated education in the years before the American Civil War.