Williams, George Washington

October 16, 1849
August 2, 1891

Born in Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania, clergyman and legislator George Washington Williams had no formal schooling until after the Civil War. He enlisted with the Union troops in 1864, with the revolutionary forces in Mexico, and with the Tenth Cavalry in 1868. He studied briefly at Howard University and the Wayland Seminary before going to the Newton Theological Institution, where in 1874 he became the first African American to graduate. Successively he became pastor of the Twelfth Baptist Church in Boston, editor of the Commoner in Washington, D.C., and pastor of the Union Baptist Church in Cincinnati. There he contributed articles regularly to the Cincinnati Commercial under the pen name "Aristides," became the first African American to serve in the stage legislature, and manifested a lively interest in public affairs. He had a reputation as a skillful politician and a gifted orator. After studying law in the office of Judge Alfonso Taft, he passed the Ohio bar.

Meanwhile, one of Williams's greatest interests was in the study of history. He had already written a history of the Twelfth Baptist Church, as well as a historical sketch of blacks from 1776 to 1876. In 1882 he published his two-volume History of the Negro Race in America, 1619–1880. As the first serious work in the field, it was widely reviewed among critics, whose judgments ranged from very favorable to unenthusiastic. Williams was nevertheless an immediate success and in such great demand as a lecturer that he hired one of the major literary agents in New York to handle his engagements.

After publishing a History of Negro Troops in the War of Rebellion in 1887, Williams turned his interests largely to international affairs. He had received an appointment in 1885 as United States minister to Haiti, but the incoming administration of President Benjamin Harrison refused him a commission. Crushed and embittered, Williams decided to make his mark abroad. In 1889 he attended the antislavery conference in Brussels, and in the following year he journeyed to the Congo. He found conditions there so miserable that he published for circulation throughout Europe and the United States "An Open Letter to His Serene Majesty, Leopold II, King of the Belgians." He roundly condemned the king for his cruel oppression and exploitation of the people of the Congo. This first general criticism of Leopold was followed some years later by similar strictures in Europe and the United States.

Williams did not return to the United States. After traveling extensively in South Africa and East Africa, he went to England, where he died.

See also Historians and Historiography, African-American

Bibliography

Franklin, John Hope. George Washington Williams: A Biography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.

john hope franklin (1996)