William Gustavus Allen ( – 1 May 1888) was an African-American academic, intellectual, and lecturer. For a time he co-edited The National Watchman, an abolitionist newspaper. While studying law in Boston he lectured widely on abolition, equality, and integration. He was then appointed a professor of rhetoric and Greek at New-York Central College, the second African-American college professor in the United States. (The first was his predecessor at Central College, Charles L. Reason.) He saw himself as an academic and intellectual.
Frederick Douglass described him as "a gentleman, a scholar, and a Christian. He is an ornament to society."
Meeting and falling in love with a white student, Mary King, the couple married in secret in 1853. This was one of the first legal marriages between a "colored" man and a Caucasian woman to take place in the United States. They immediately left the country, never to return, because of the violent prejudice against their relationship. While for a time he continued to lecture in both England and Ireland, and wrote an autobiographical account including his marriage, which sold well, he and his family eventually fell into obscurity and near-poverty.
Biography Early life Allen was born free around 1820 in Urbana, Virginia, to a free mixed-race mother and a Welsh American father, both of whom died early in Allen's life. As he himself noted, he was a quadroon: his ancestry was 75% white and 25% black. He was light skinned, and he rejected the label of "negro"; nevertheless, under Virginia law he was black ("colored"). Allen was adopted by a free black couple who owned "a flourishing business" at Fort Monroe, Virginia. Reprinted in The American Prejudice Against Color: William G. Allen, Mary King, Louisa May Alcott.
Allen was raised by his birth parents in Norfolk, where he attended a school for African-American children for two years. The school was closed down due as part of the reaction to Nat Turner's slave rebellion of 1831. There was no school for colored children in Fort Monroe, but he received some informal education from Federal soldiers, including some French and German. He had access to libraries and was to some degree self-educated, but took advantage of the few educational opportunities available to a black boy. A teacher recommended him to Gerrit Smith, a wealthy abolitionist and philanthropist, whose help, along with that of Lewis Tappan, made it possible for Allen to attend the Oneida Institute. Oneida was the first college in the country that accepted African Americans as a matter of policy; it was a hotbed of abolitionism.
College and career At Oneida, like most college students at the time, William received what in the 20th century would be called ministerial training: Hebrew, Biblical Greek, theology, and philosophy, with small amounts of science, algebra, and public speaking (declamation). During the summer of 1841 he "taught in a school for fugitive slaves in Canada" (see Hiram Wilson).
Allen had fond memories of Oneida, from which he graduated in 1844. He settled in Troy, New York, where he was active in a black suffrage organization. Together with Henry Highland Garnet, also an Oneida alumnus, he edited and published the abolitionist newspaper National Watchman, in which "the selections and editorials show that he [Allen] is a man of sense, education, and good temper". No surviving copies of the newspaper are known. When it ceased publication in 1847, Allen moved to Boston, studying under and working as a clerk for the abolitionist lawyer Ellis Gray Loring.
In Boston, Allen became well known as a lecturer (see below).
In 1850 Allen, who had begun to enjoy fame as a lecturer (see below), was appointed professor of Greek and Rhetoric at New-York Central College (NYCC) in McGraw, New York. (Reprinted from the Lynchburg Republican) (In 1853 he described himself as professor of "the Greek and German languages, and of Rhetoric and Belles-lettres".) Since his predecessor Charles L. Reason had departed earlier in 1852, he was in 1852 and 1853 "the only acting colored Professor in any college in the United States", in Frederick Douglass' words.
Allen voted (for Franklin Pierce) in the 1852 United States presidential election, since poll workers thought he was white.
Marriage to Mary King Before the Civil War, sexual union between white male and black female, usually forced, was common. (See Children of the plantation, Sally Hemings, and Lydia Hamilton Smith.) Sexual contact between black male and white female existed but was much less common; in slave states it was considered to always be rape—the white woman could never have consented—and resulted in the black man's immediate execution. While less serious relations were tolerated in some parts, and Massachusetts (only) had repealed its ban on interracial marriage in 1843, actual marriage between black and white was so unusual it was reported in the newspaper. (African Americans were not U.S. citizens and were generally believed to be genetically inferior to whites.) Zephaniah Kingsley, married outside the U.S. to an African woman he had purchased as a slave in Cuba, had to leave Florida after it became a U.S. territory in 1821. It was not until Frederick Douglass's marriage to Helen Pitts in 1884 that a married white–black couple could live openly in Washington, D.C., without violence, although they received much vituperation.
While visiting Fulton, New York, for a series of lectures in the spring of 1851, Allen spent an evening at the home of the abolitionist Reverend Lyndon King, who Allen called one of "earth's noble spirits". Here Allen met King's daughter Mary, who was beginning a term at New-York Central College. They quickly formed a relationship, which Allen described as "much more significant than that of teacher and pupil." In January 1853 the two became engaged. Her father "at once gave his consent", and her sister "warmly approved". Her brothers, of whom there were many, and Mary's stepmother were bitterly opposed. Rev. King felt himself obliged to bar Allen from the household, but he still drove Mary to meet Allen's arrival by train.
One supportive couple, the Porters, who had also been students at Central College, lived in nearby Phillipsville. While Allen and Mary were visiting, a mob of 600 formed around the Porters' house, seeking to lynch him. A group within the mob, hoping to calm the anger, negotiated with Allen, King, and the Porters. King was escorted to her parents' house. Allen, after being escorted to the village hotel, was able with difficulty to escape for Syracuse, where he stayed at the Globe Hotel for around a week; Mary took several days to elude her parents, and secretly met with Allen at a trusted friend's house.
Mary traveled to Pennsylvania, telling her parents she intended to teach school there, and wrote letters to Allen stating she intended to join him. By arrangement, they married in New York City on March 30, 1853, and immediately left for Boston, where they sailed to Liverpool, England, never to return. The episode was reported in many newspapers, along with derogatory remarks on the pair, especially Allen. Reprinted from the Utica Gazette. First published in the Syracuse Star, reprinted in The Liberator and with comment in the Cleveland Herald.
Porter lost his teaching job; "the schoolmaster got his walking papers on Monday, for harboring the 'nigger'." He lost his next job "when it was discovered that he was 'the Phillipsville School-Master'". Central College hired him.
According to a resolution passed in February, 1853, at a state convention of the Liberty Party in Syracuse, New York, "the recent outrage upon that accomplished and worthy man, Prof. Wm. G. Allen, and the general acquiescence, not to say general rejoicing, in this outrage, are among the fearful evidences that, on the subject of Slavery, the deeply corrupted heart of the American people is past cure."
Exile in England and Ireland Allen found in England an "absence of prejudice against color. Here the colored man feels himself among friends, and not among enemies". He and his wife were "happy" there. They attended the great anti-slavery meeting in Exeter Hall, at which Harriet Beecher Stowe and her husband Calvin Stowe spoke. A clipping of 1854 shows him lecturing to an anti-slavery meeting in Manchester, with other lectures in the vicinity on "'The origin, past history, and literature of the African race' which proved not to be true as racism later came to plague Allen's professional life as a teacher. 'The probable destiny of the African race', &c. &c." A letter from Lord Shaftesbury said he "sympathises most heartily with Professor Allen, and sincerely wishes him success in his undertaking. It will give Lord Shaftesbury great pleasure to assist in any way that he can a gentleman of the coloured race, who is a hundred times wiser, and better, than his white oppressors."
They traveled across the United Kingdom, moving to Dublin in 1856, where they had four children. In 1860, they moved back to England. He attempted to make a living through his lectures, but the couple was often close to poverty. In 1863, Allen became director of the New Caledonian Trading School in Islington, a school for the poor, the first African-American to direct an English school. However, in five years, finances and the "racism of his competitors" forced him out. Mary started a small school for girls, which failed. In 1871 they were living in Islington with six children; William's profession is listed as Professor of Music. By 1878, they were living in a boarding house in West London, where they survived largely on the charity of friends, especially Gerrit Smith.
William died at St Mary's Hospital, London on May 1, 1888. His death certificate gives his occupation as teacher of languages, and lists nephritis and enlarged prostate as the causes of death.
The relationship between Allen and Mary King was the basis of Louisa May Alcott's 1863 story M.L.
Allen's thought Allen was arguably the most learned African American of his day. First published in 1975 by the University of North Carolina Press. He was well read, including Greek and Latin classics. He was capable of comparing Demosthenes and Cicero at length, as he does in "Orators and oratory". Allen taught Greek, at a time when knowledge of classical Greek was the pinnacle of a humanistic education. He also taught German, the leading scholarly language at the time, and he read French. As put by Wm. Lloyd Garrison, discussing his lectures, Allen had a "cultivated mind", as well as "true refinement of manners".
Allen as lecturer Allen's primary vehicle for presenting his views was lectures. Numerous newspaper articles concur that he was an eloquent speaker. Reports a celebration at New York Central College He excelled as a lecturer, at a time when lectures were much more important than today (2020). "The lecture was one which would have done honor to the mind of the historian Bancroft, while the gentle and modest demeanor of the speaker, together with the gracefulness of his elocution and ready command of language, gave to the performance an additional interest," said the Essex County Freeman. Reprinted from the Essex County Freeman. The Syracuse Daily Standard called him "a colored gentleman, of brilliant talents, and education", and said that his lecture "was one of the best ever delivered in this city". Included in In sum,
That an African American was capable of such learning and eloquency filled his listeners with pleasant surprise (but no hostility). "One individual who had never been known to express any favorable feeling for the colored man and his cause, on leaving the lecture room the other evening confessed that the impression made on him by the subject as presented had given him new and exalted opinions of the class hitherto deemed so inferior."