James W. C. Pennington (1807-1870) publishes The Origins and History of Colored People in 1841, the first history of Blacks in the country and argues that Thomas Jefferson was wrong to call Black people “inferior.” Pennington is born enslaved by the Tilghman family in Queen Anne’s County. He is moved with his family to Rockland Plantation, near Hagerstown, at 7 and escapes at 19 in 1827.
Largely self taught, he becomes the first Black to graduate from Yale Divinity School. As a minister, he is an active orator, writer and social organizer for abolitionist causes. In 1850 he publishes his biography, The Fugitive Blacksmith.
During the 1850s, Pennington gains international fame, raising funds and support for civil rights in the United Kingdom and Europe. During the Civil War, although a pacifist, he helps recruit Black troops. He leads a Mississippi Black church in 1865, then moves to Portland, ME and finally Jacksonville, FL where he dies in 1870.
