Pennington, James W. C.

By: Delano Greenidge-Copprue

Source:

 Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass

Pennington, James W. C.

(b. 1807; d. 22 October 1870),
abolitionist, writer, teacher, and Congregational minister.

James William Charles Pennington was born James Pembroke on one of James Tilghman's plantations, Queen Anne's County, Maryland. Pembroke was the second child of Nelly, one of Tilghman's slaves, and Brazil (or Bazil), a slave from a neighboring plantation. In 1809, with the death of Tilghman, Pembroke, along with his mother and older brother, was given to James Tilghman's eldest son, Frisby, who ran Rockland, a 189-acre plantation. At Rockland, Pembroke learned the blacksmith trade. Shortly after an unprovoked flogging in October 1827, he ran away from Rockland but was captured a few days later on the National Highway, four miles outside Reisterstown, Maryland. On the night of his return to Rockland he escaped again and gained freedom despite Tilghman's ads in papers offering two hundred dollars for his capture.

Pembroke reached freedom in Adams County, Pennsylvania, where he lived and worked with the Quakers William and Phoebe Wright, leaders of the Underground Railroad. William Wright, a retired schoolteacher, taught Pembroke reading, writing, and mathematics. About six months later Pembroke moved from Adams County to Chester County, Pennsylvania, and changed his name to Pennington to elude possible capture. Near the end of 1829, he settled in Brooklyn, New York, and attended school courses in the evenings and on Sundays.

From 1829 to 1834 he was a member of the General Convention for the Improvement of the Free Colored People, an organization instrumental in advancing the causes of free blacks in New York. He participated in the city's Underground Railroad and was a member of the New York Vigilance Committee. In the early 1830s Pennington taught at black schools in Newtown, New York, and New Haven, Connecticut. Beginning in 1831 he helped pioneer the Negro convention movement, serving as the Long Island delegate at the first black national convention in Philadelphia. An outspoken opponent of colonization, Pennington joined the American Anti-Slavery Society when it was organized in 1833.

In 1835 Pennington audited courses at the Yale Divinity School, although he was not allowed to enroll as a student, to participate in discussions, or to borrow books. Nevertheless, he returned to Brooklyn in 1837 proficient in Greek, Latin, and German and qualified for the ministry. As an ordained minister, one of his first duties was officiating at the marriage of the abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass and Anna Murray, on 15 September 1838, eleven days after Douglass's escape from slavery in Baltimore. Pennington's pastorates included the African Congregational Church in Newton, New York (1838–1840); the African Congregational Church in Hartford, Connecticut (1840–1847); and the Shiloh Presbyterian Church in New York City (1847–1855).

In 1841, when the Africans of the Amistad were freed, Pennington held a meeting at his Talcott Street Church in Hartford, Connecticut, to consider the obligation to Africa of Christians in America. Out of this meeting grew the Union Missionary Society (UMS), and Pennington served as its president until 1846, when the UMS merged with two other missionary societies to become the American Missionary Association (AMA). One of the founding members of the AMA, Pennington served on its executive committee.

In 1843 Pennington represented Connecticut at the World's Anti-Slavery Convention. As the American Peace Convention delegate at the World Peace Society, Pennington lectured against slavery throughout Europe and Great Britain. In 1850 he traveled to Frankfurt, Germany, to attend the World Peace Conference. During his visit to Germany he received an honorary doctor of divinity degree from the University of Heidelberg.

While he was celebrated abroad, trouble remained at home. The same year that he became a doctor of divinity, Pennington feared a return to the United States as a result of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. With the publication of his 1850 autobiography, Pennington made public that he was a fugitive slave, and thus he ran the risk of being returned to slavery in Maryland. During his exile from the United States, he served as a traveling lecturer for the Glasgow Female Anti-Slavery Society, and Scottish abolitionists raised $150 to purchase Pennington's freedom. In 1851 he returned home to Hartford a free man. In 1855 he helped organize the New York Legal Rights Association, which worked toward racial equality on public transportation.

Along with several sermons and addresses published as pamphlets and contributions published in the Anglo-African Magazine, Pennington authored A Text Book of the Origin and History … of Colored People (1841) and his own autobiography, The Fugitive Blacksmith; or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington, Pastor of a Presbyterian Church in New York, Formerly a Slave in the State of Maryland, United States (1850).

In 1869 or 1870, as a result of increasingly failing health brought on by alcoholism, Pennington moved to Jacksonville, Florida, where he founded a Presbyterian church shortly before his death in October 1870. Throughout his life, Pennington combined his deep belief in Christianity with his abolitionist work, showing how the institution of the black church offered spiritual edification and political action for African Americans.

See also American Anti-Slavery Society; American Missionary Association; Amistad; Antislavery Movement; Black Abolitionists; Black Church; Colonization; Douglass, Frederick; Fugitive Slave Law of 1850; Slave Narratives; and Underground Railroad.

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