Macon B.Allen,the first Black licensed to practice law in the United States,passed his law examination in Worcester,MA,on May 3,1845.
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Macon Bolling Allen was the first recorded licensed African American lawyer in the United States. He was a self-taught lawyer who gained his knowledge and legal skills by serving as an apprentice and law clerk to practicing white lawyers in the pre-Civil War era. Negro professionals received their training by apprenticeship; however, they could not depend upon the practice of law for a living. They had to work at other crafts. Allen was also known as a businessman but the nature of the business is not known.
Very little is known about Allen’s early years other than the fact that he was named A. Macon Bolling when he was born a free Negro in Indiana in 1816, the same year Indiana was admitted as the nineteenth state to join the Union. He was actually a mulatto (a first generation offspring of a Negro and a white). However, mulatto was listed as a race on early census forms. Allen learned how to read and write as he grew up, and his first job in Indiana was that of a schoolteacher.
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