‘A Trailblazer All His Life’: NY’s First Black Attorney, Admitted 175 Years Ago, Fought for Freedom, All the Way to the U.S. Supreme Court
Written by Black Hot Fire Network on February 24, 2023
New York’s first Black lawyer, a man of many talents, was an abolitionist twice spurned by a bar association in his home state of Pennsylvania, on grounds of his race.
George Boyer Vashon was admitted to the New York Bar in January 1848, according to the Historical Society of the New York Courts, the African American Registry, various press accounts and Duane Morris
