William G. Allen

rdf:langString William G. Allen

rdf:langString William Gustavus Allen

rdf:langString William Gustavus Allen

rdf:langString London, England

rdf:langString ca. 1820

rdf:langString Seven

rdf:langString Languages, rhetoric

rdf:langString Undergraduate degree, 1843

rdf:langString First Black man to marry white woman in U.S.

rdf:langString Abolition of slavery; African civilization

rdf:langString American

rdf:langString Professor, lecturer

rdf:langString Mary King

rdf:langString William Gustavus Allen (ca. 1820–1 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.