THOMAS L. JENNINGS

Thomas L. Jennings , a free black man in antebellum New York City, not only invented “dry cleaning,” in 1827, not only founded historic Abyssinian Baptist Church, (Adam Clayton Powells’ pastorate), Thomas Jennings, additionally, founded the Legal Rights Association (our first legal rights association ( that filed law suits for equal black public accommodations (50 years before the NAACP was founded ) with two other prominent free black men—Dr. James McCune Smith, the first African American college-trained doctor, and Rev James W. C. Pennington ) —Thomas Jennings was a wise, black, wealthy, freedom fighter, like James Forten and Robert Purvis of Philadelphia.