By any measure, George Boyer Vashon led an extraordinary life of firsts and other notable accomplishments.
Vashon, who grew up largely in Pittsburgh, was the first Black graduate of Oberlin College and the first Black lawyer in New York state.
With his father, the businessman John B. Vashon, he helped run a Pittsburgh stop on the Underground Railroad, assisting formerly enslaved people to freedom. Before the Civil War, he was a prominent abolitionist; after it, he continued campaigning for civil rights and advancing the cause of Black education locally and nationally.
He was also an accomplished poet.
But Vashon’s life was also defined partly by what he wasn’t permitted to do. Most notably, as a law student, he was denied admission to the Pennsylvania bar because of his race.
Both Vashon’s triumphs and the obstacles he overcame are highlighted in a new temporary exhibit in the lobby of Pittsburgh’s City-County Building marking the 200th anniversary of Vashon’s birth.
The exhibit, consisting of eight large placards with text and images, was created by the office of Mayor Ed Gainey working with Paul Thornell, Vashon’s great-great grandson.
Vashon was born in 1824, in Carlisle, and came to Pittsburgh with his family a few years later. John B. Vashon, a prosperous Downtown barber and bathhouse owner, was a founder of the Pittsburgh Anti-Slavery Society and helped start a school for Black children.
At age 16, George Vashon enrolled at Oberlin, where by some counts he became one of the first half-dozen Black Americans to earn a college degree. Back in Pittsburgh, he studied law with Walter Forward, a former Congressman and U.S. Treasury secretary. But in 1847, Vashon was denied admission to the Pennsylvania bar because he was of African descent.
“As many firsts as there were and accomplishments, he was really many times thwarted professionally because of his race,” said Thornell, who is partner in a government affairs consultancy in Washington, D.C.
Vashon decamped to New York, where he shortly was admitted to the bar. He then spent a few years writing and teaching in Haiti, which was celebrated for its successful overthrow of colonial rule. Back in Syracuse, New York, he became a leading abolitionist and a contributor to Frederick Douglass’s publication “The North Star.”
Thornell said his great-grandfather returned to Pittsburgh around 1857. He taught at a school for Black children where he met his future wife, Susan Paul Smith, and later served as president of Avery College, the city’s first for Black students.
Later, in Washington, D.C., he worked in the Freedman’s Bureau, where he was a colleague of O.O. Howard, the Union general who founded Howard University. Vashon became that school’s first Black professor. He was teaching at Alcorn College, in Mississippi, when he died in 1878, during a yellow fever epidemic.
In 2010, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court posthumously admitted Vashon to the Pennsylvania bar.
Mayor Gainey’s office held an unveiling ceremony for the exhibit Friday. Speakers included Allegheny County Bar Association president Regina C. Wilson.
“Mr. Vashon’s willingness to fight for his admission laid the groundwork for those that followed in his footsteps,” Wilson said.
The exhibit will remain on view through Fri., Oct. 18.
