James W.C. Pennington was born into slavery in Maryland in 1807. His unique position as an enslaved man in a border state pushed him to escape to freedom at the age of nineteen. He later chronicled his dangerous journey in his autobiography, The Fugitive Blacksmith. James left behind his mother, father, and eleven brothers and sisters for a chance at freedom.

Once free, Pennington was taken in by a Quaker couple – William and Phoebe Wright, who taught him how to read and write. He ended up in New York, where he was the first Black man to attend Yale University. His attendance was informal, and he did not earn a degree, but he soon put his education to good use, becoming an ordained Congregational minister. Notably, it was Pennington who officiated the wedding between Frederick Douglass and Anna Murray Douglass, his first wife. Harriet Beecher Stowe also thought highly of him.

Pennington also wrote one of the first history books for Black teachers.

Throughout his life, Pennington advocated for the enslaved. In addition to his incredible theological fidelity, he devoted himself to activism for the equality of Black Americans. Pennington identified as a pacifist, he recruited Black troops for the Union during the Civil War. At the war’s end, he pastored a congregation in Jacksonville, Florida, where he died in 1870.