Macon Bolling Allen

Born in Indiana as A. Macon Bolling, he moved to New England at some point in the early 1840s and changed his name to Macon Bolling Allen in Boston in January 1844.[1] Soon after, Allen moved to Portland, Maine and studied law, working as an apprentice to General Samuel Fessenden, a local abolitionist and attorney. The Portland District Court rejected Fessenden’s first motion to admit Allen to the bar in April 1844, concluding Allen did not meet the state’s citizenship requirement.[1][2] Allen tried again, pursuing admission by examination, a method that did not require citizenship. He faced a hostile examination committee, which Fessenden thought did not want Allen admitted.[1][3] Nevertheless, Fessenden said, “his qualifications were not denied.”[3] Allen was granted his license to practice law in Maine on July 3, 1844, becoming the nation's first African American lawyer.[4] He experienced difficulty finding legal work in Maine, likely because whites were unwilling to hire a black attorney and few blacks lived in Maine.[5]

Allen moved back to Boston, Massachusetts, and was admitted to the bar there in May 1845.[1] He conducted a jury trial in October 1845 that is believed to be the first time an African American lawyer argued before a jury in the United States.[1] The case was a contract dispute. Allen’s client, the defendant, lost, although the jury awarded lower damages than the plaintiff had requested.

Allen encountered difficulties in Boston. Racial prejudice made it difficult for him to earn a living; in 1845, he wrote a letter to John Jay Jr. (the grandson of the country’s first Chief Justice) discussing the difficulty of finding clients in Boston and wondering whether he would do better in New York City, with its larger African American population.[1] Four years later, Allen was attacked by four men in Boston, although their motivation is unclear.[1] In 1852, Allen’s landlord pressed charges against him for allegedly ripping out parts of his apartment to burn as firewood. A jury acquitted him.[1]

After passing a rigorous qualifying exam for Justice of the Peace for Middlesex County, Massachusetts in 1847, Allen became the first African American in the United States to hold a judicial position,[5][6] despite not being considered a U.S. citizen under the Constitution at the time.[6] As Justice of the Peace, Allen would have handled minor crimes and small claims.[1]

Allen moved to Charleston, South Carolina, following the Civil War and opened a law office with two other African American attorneys, William Whipper and Robert Elliott.[5] Their firm, Whipper, Elliott, and Allen, is the first known African American law firm in the country.[1][2] Among other cases, Allen represented several black defendants who were fighting death sentences.[1] The state legislature in 1873 elected Allen (choosing him instead of Whipper) to be a judge of Charleston County Criminal Court.[2] He served for three years. In 1876, he was elected as probate judge for Charleston County, South Carolina, defeating the white incumbent.[1][5]

Allen moved to Washington, D.C., at the end of Reconstruction. He continued to practice law and was employed as an attorney in 1873 for a firm called the Land and Improvement Association.[2][5]