Exactly 174 years ago on April 29, 1845, as noted by several historians, attorney Macon Bolling Allen along with then-paralegal (and future attorney) Robert Morris Jr. signed a contract with each other to begin providing legal services together. And one week later on May 5 in Massachusetts, they opened the first Black law office in the country.
They, unlike many- or sadly maybe most- Black lawyers today, presciently understood what the preeminent civil rights legal strategist Charles Hamilton Houston would profoundly say nearly 100 years later when he proclaimed, “(The) Negro lawyer must be trained as a social engineer.... Due to the Negro’s social and political condition..., the Negro lawyer must be prepared to… guide... his (or her) group advancement....” He later added, “A (Negro) lawyer is either a social engineer or a parasite on society....”
Macon Bolling Allen was born in 1816 in Indiana. He passed the Maine bar exam in 1844, just one month before his 28th birthday and is the first Black person in America to be licensed to practice law.
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