Philadelphia Business Journal: 19th century lawyer admitted to Pa. bar posthumously, prejudice had excluded him

George Vashon broke many barriers as a black man in the 1800s. He was the first black to graduate from Oberlin College, the first black lawyer in New York state and the first professor at Howard University. But there was one barrier he could not break — obtaining a law license in his home state of Pennsylvania, where his application was twice rejected because of his skin color.

But more than 160 years after first being turned away, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that Vashon be posthumously admitted to practice law in the state in response to a petition from two of his relatives. One is Nolan N. Atkinson Jr., Vashon's great grandson and a Duane Morris partner who in the last decade co-founded the Philadelphia Diversity Law Group, a consortium of firms designed to improve diversity.

Atkinson said his mother made him aware of his great-grandfather and his nephew, Paul Thornell, wrote a paper about Vashon's life and had it published while a student at the University of Pennsylvania in the mid-1990s. Thornell's research was included in the petition.

In early 2009, Atkinson was honored with the Philadelphia Bar Association's first-ever Diversity Award and dedicated it to Vashon. Soon after, he contacted Wendell Freeland, a well-known black lawyer in Pittsburgh, to try and get Vashon admitted to the state bar posthumously. Duane Morris associate Leslie Carter handled the case with Freeland while Atkinson and Thornell were petitioners. The petition was filed in January and approved per curium (collectively) by the court, which also ordered that Vashon be honored during a future public court session.

"What this means is that future generations will now know that George Vashon was indeed qualified to practice law in Pennsylvania in the 1800s," Atkinson said Wednesday. "I think it's important for historical purposes to note that he was qualified and make sure others are aware of this."

Vashon was born in western Pennsylvania in 1824 and raised in Pittsburgh. He graduated from Oberlin in 1844 and returned to Pittsburgh to study law under a judge, which was the custom at that time. But when he applied to practice law in Allegheny County in 1847, he was denied because of his "negro descent," according to Thornell's research. In 1838, a revision of Pennsylvania's constitution restricted the practice of law to white men.

So Vashon moved to upstate New York and passed the bar there. According to a Vashon biography, he moved to Haiti in 1849, where he served as a professor of Latin, Greek and English. He also served as a correspondent to Frederick Douglass' newspaper, "The North Star."

In 1851, he moved to Syracuse, where he practiced and taught law. In the aftermath of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Vashon became involved in the Underground Railroad and state and national conventions, which brought blacks together to discuss issues confronting the free black communities and the means of ending the system of slavery. Another biography said that Vashon ran for New York attorney general in 1855, becoming the first black to run for statewide office.

After the Civil War, he worked in the Solicitor's Office of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands in Washington and then became Howard University's first professor and was instrumental in establishing its law school. Vashon was admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1868 but was rejected in Pennsylvania a second time the same year before settling down in Mississippi, where he taught and practiced law after passing the bar there. He died in 1878 and his widow relocated to St. Louis, where a high school was named in honor of him and his father, also an abolitionist. Notable alumni are New York Yankees legend Elston Howard, U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters and singer Donnie Hathaway.

Atkinson said his father's side of the family was from Georgia. His father Nolan Sr. graduated in 1936 from medical school in St. Louis, where he met his wife, Vashon's granddaughter. The couple soon relocated to the Philadelphia area so Nolan Sr. could be closer to his eldest brother, Whittier Atkinson, also a doctor. Whittier Atkinson founded Clement Atkinson Memorial Hospital in Coatesville, which offered health care to all despite inability to pay. His hospital is now designated as a state historic landmark.

Thornell, now working at Citigroup's government affairs unit in Washington, said the petition's success is a validation for Vashon's life's work but also a reminder of the discrimination that thwarted him at many turns.

"But I think it is tremendous that my uncle, an esteemed lawyer in his own right, was able to right history by using the same legal channels that denied his great-grandfather all those years ago," Thornell said.