MACON B. ALLEN, FIRST BLACK AMERICAN LAWYER

MACON B. ALLEN, POWER "M" Macon Bolling Allen was the first black lawyer in the United States. He was admitted in Maine in 1844. He was also admitted in to the bar of Massachusetts, whence he had migrated in search of better money making opportunities, than Maine had afforded him. Boston was not appreciably better, evidently. Allen complained that the law business usually flowed by family linkages and established tradition, neither of which "appendages" he enjoyed. However, Macon B. Allen made it clear that his profession in no way estranged nor insulated him from the fate of millions enslaved blacks. Howard University Law Professor, the late J. Clay Smith, SJD, writes in his magisterial law compendium, EMANCIPATION THE MAKING OF THE BLACK LAWYER 1844-1944 (1993), in the chapter , "New England: The Genesis of the Black Lawyer," the following: "Allen 's woes were further magnified when he was publicly insulted by an abolitionist at the Boston Town Meeting during the heated debates against the U.S. expansionist policies during the Mexican War . Fearing that war with Mexico would expand slavery and enhance the power of recently annexed Texas, abolitionists in 1846 asked New Englanders to pledge not to support the government's war efforts. Allen voiced outrage at the abolitionists ' 'indecorous' conduct toward him when he refused to sign the pledge 'not to sustain the government in any event, in the present war with Mexico.' One abolitionist accused him of being unconcerned about the slave conditions existing in the South. Allen wrote to William Lloyd Garrison ['Liberator' editor]: "'Though not in the habit of declaring what sentiments I entertain, deeming it of little consequence , I trust it will not seem presumptuous if I embrace the occasion...to say, that I sympathize as strongly with my brethren in bonds--with whom I am identified in almost every particular, as my nature, not a cold one, enables me to do so, and accordingly to the right that is in me, and my humble ability, am ever ready to do all I can for their melioration. The cause of the Colored man, in whatever section of our country, expressly is really my own cause; and it would be monstrous indeed if I did not so regard it.'" P. 95. Macon Bolling Allen sounds very much like other eloquent warriors whose names include "M": Martin, Mandela, Malcolm , and Medgar. After the Civil War, Allen relocated to Charleston, South Carolina to practice law. He died there in 1894.