America's first Black lawyer started in Maine. His only known portrait has been missing for decades.

Yahoo

28-02-2025

Feb. 28—The portrait arrived in Portland in 1873.
Its subject, Macon Bolling Allen, was admitted to the Maine bar decades earlier as the nation's first Black lawyer. His picture hung at City Hall for several years, according to retired U.S. District Judge D. Brock Hornby.
"Curiously, that fine oil painting of Macon Bolling Allen now is nowhere to be found," Hornby wrote in 2021. "What happened to it?"
Allen's portrait remains missing. Historians say it was the only known image of him to have ever existed. It might have been damaged during a serious leak at City Hall in 1893, or lost to the fire in 1908. Perhaps, Hornby wonders, it was destroyed by "Jim Crow attitudes" or the "resurgent 1920s influence of the Klan in Maine."
A century later, Allen's lost portrait is still catalogued as part of a collection of paintings that ended up with the Maine Historical Society.
Hornby said in a phone call this week that he published his piece in 2021 hoping someone knew what had happened to the image or had another picture of Bolling.
"It's frustrating," he said. "It's very frustrating — it would be such a wonderful thing to have."
Online tributes and biographies of Allen often incorrectly use pictures of other Black attorneys — most notoriously that of Robert Morris, of Boston, who was licensed shortly after Allen.
John Browning, a retired appellate judge in Texas who is writing a book about Allen, said he is constantly trying to correct this. Browning has even conducted some limited genealogical searches to try and find Allen's descendants.
"You don't know the lengths I've gone to," said Browning, who now teaches at Faulkner University's law school in Alabama. "It's very odd and disappointing to me that we can't find even one image."
Even Allen's late 19th century career was often misreported at the time, with journalists and editors misattributing his accomplishments to other Black lawyers.
He went on to become the first Black man in the country to hold a judicial position when he became a justice of the peace in Massachusetts. He was later made a partner in the first Black-owned law firm in South Carolina, where he was also a Charleston County judge.
Despite his pioneering legacy, Browning said the history Allen made in Maine happened relatively quietly and is not fully appreciated today.
"He was this forgotten first," said Browning. "And sadly, very little has remained that people can easily find and learn about."
THE NATION'S FIRST
Allen's time in Maine, though groundbreaking, was just a brief stop on his legacy-setting career.
He arrived to Portland in 1844 at the invitation of abolitionist Samuel Fessenden, Browning said. Records show the 28-year-old school teacher from Indiana had been living in Boston, where he changed his name from "Allen Macon Bolling."
Because of an incomplete historical record — there are few writings from Allen about this period in his life — historians don't know why Allen wanted to come to Maine. It was Fessenden who petitioned for him to be admitted to the bar that spring.
They turned Allen down initially because he was not a fully established Maine resident. (Newspaper clippings refer to him as a "Boston man," Browning said.) But that July, Allen agreed to take an oral exam with a panel of attorneys and judges. He succeeded.
In a letter to fellow abolitionist Samuel Sewell, Fessenden wrote that "Allen was so impressive with his knowledge they really had no choice," Browning said.
Still, Allen's achievement didn't generate a lot of fanfare.
"It happened relatively quietly," Browning said. "We have the reactions in Maine newspapers, but it didn't get as much in the way of national coverage. Even in the form of the Black press, or the abolitionist publications like the Liberator."
Nor did his legal career generate any media attention or even wealth. Allen left for Boston after less than a year, unable to find clients in the almost entirely white state of Maine.
MAINE BAR STILL MOSTLY WHITE
Over the next several decades, Browning said Allen would also become the country's first Black attorney to argue during a jury trial, the first Black man to open a law firm, and the first Black judge.
Black representation in Maine, meanwhile, wouldn't change much.
It wasn't until 34 years later that a Virginia man, John H. Hill, became the second Black man admitted to the Maine bar, according to a 2021 Maine Bar Journal article titled "BIPOC Lawyers in Maine: Past, Present and Future." (Hill left the state less than three years later.)
In 1913, Milton Roscoe Geary was the first Black man to graduate from the University of Maine School of Law, the article stated. He practiced here until the 1960s and was the only Black lawyer in the state at the time of his death.
"Three African American lawyers in 120 years!" the article reads.
It wasn't until 2000 that Maine would welcome its first Black judge, Rick Lawrence. Lawrence became the state's first Black justice on the state's highest court in 2022.
The Maine State Bar Association also published the results of its first diversity survey in 2021.
"When you looked at the pure numerical data, it seemed like there's no problem in the bar," said President Susan Faunce, the first Asian-American woman to hold the position. "But the comments showed that maybe some people were still experiencing racism either within the bar or just by the experience of being within the court."
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Of the bar association's 2,467 members — which doesn't account for all of Maine's attorneys — just eight attorneys (0.3%) reported being Black or African American, according to the latest report to the Legislature's judiciary committee. There were 10 attorneys who said they were American Indian, 23 Asian, 16 Hispanic and 32 who were Multi-Racial or "other." More than 1,900 reported they were white. About 450 other members chose not answer or were "unknown."
Their comments in the diversity study highlighted issues of court staff assuming attorneys of color weren't lawyers; racist assumptions about non-white clients; and non-white attorneys being held to different standards.
"All of these comments demonstrate the need for increased diversity in Maine's judicial system," attorneys wrote in the 2021 journal article. "Racism and implicit and explicit bias thrive in a vacuum where there can be no challenge to erroneous assumptions."
A more diverse bar would also better serve all of those who rely on Maine's courts, the attorneys wrote. But data show that attracting and keeping attorneys of color in the state has proven challenging.
The bar association established its first BIPOC section in 2020, which Faunce said serves as "a forum for the BIPOC community to come together to discuss and commiserate, and share experiences."
The association has offered related training and networking opportunities to its members and advocates for changes that will help diversify the bar.
Faunce said because of those efforts, she's met others who she didn't realize were practicing in Maine.
"I will say, the first time we had a BIPOC section meeting, it was actually pretty amazing," she said. "It was during the pandemic, so it was of course on Zoom, but it was just like, we didn't know there were so many of us out there."
ALLEN'S LEGACY
As a lawyer in New England, Allen didn't take a lot of high-profile cases.
His counterparts — including Morris, who was admitted to the bar shortly after Allen — often made headlines for taking serious civil rights cases, including one over desegregation in schools.
So Allen also saw less financial success than Morris. Even as Allen repeatedly made history (often to little recognition), he struggled financially.
Morris "was just more financially successful, and I think it was because he was a little less picky about what he would take on," Browning said. "But he would also take things on that were going to get attention. ... Allen, not so much. He was not flashy. ... He did, when he was serving in South Carolina, he did help draft legislation for civil rights. But he just saw that as part of what he should be doing. He wasn't doing anything in a flashy way."
At one point in Boston, Allen's landlord took him to court for damaging his property. It's alleged Allen had to tear some wood from the structure for fuel to keep warm.
He was acquitted, but that level of poverty was not something other attorneys were often subject to, said Browning.
He dealt with racism and personal tragedy.
A group of men randomly attacked Allen in the streets. He lost two young children in Boston, and later his wife and daughter, before moving to South Carolina.
By the time Allen moved to Charleston things had gotten better. He was elected to two judicial positions by lawmakers, and also tried running for secretary of state. In private practice, he mentored and sponsored several young Black attorneys, said Browning.
"I think some of his more important legacy is helping to inspire and teach other Black lawyers," Browning said. "To educate them, to sponsor them."
At the end of the Reconstruction era, he moved to Washington, D.C., and used his influence with the Republican Party to get an auditor position at the Department of the Treasury.
Yet even though he was quiet in his work, Allen took every opportunity he could to correct the record when his status as the "first" was being overlooked or forgotten.
"In responding to a journalist in D.C. who wrote about Morris' death — again, mistaking him for being the first Black lawyer — Allen corrects him and refers to his 'many dear friends in Portland, and Boston, who knew the truth,'" Browning said.
"He was clearly aware, and I think justifiably proud, of his status."
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