Frederick L McGhee

Frederick McGhee

(1861-1912)

Lawyer & Social Critic



Frederick McGhee (1861-1912) -- born of Mississippi slave parents about six months after the opening of the War Between the States -- was as one of America's first African-American lawyers a pioneer in early desegregation, anti-lynching, and civil rights cases, and a tireless activist and organizer for African American civil rights.

His father Abraham, a literate slave from Blount County, Tennessee, was sold 13 years before and sent to the John Walker cotton plantation near Aberdeen, Mississippi.

Fredrick's mother, Sarah, already a slave on the Walker plantation, was the daughter of an African slave. uring the Civil War Abraham , between 1864 and1869, managed to get out of Mississippi and later return to Knoxville with Sarah and their three sons Matthew, Barclay, and Frederick. Skilled as a blacksmith, Abraham died a year after his returned, leaving his wife alone with three sons. Illiterate, Sarah was reduced to a washerwoman. She soon expired leaving her sons orphans.

By this time, Barclay, the oldest, and Matthew had positions in Knoxville hotels as waiters, prized jobs at the time. Like their father, both were literate, able to read and write. An 1880 Knoxville directory shows that Fredrick was also a laborer. Somehow Frederick attended and completed his studies at Knoxville College. Seemingly he become the fist colored lawyer in Tennessee, Illinois, and later Minnesota.

Distinguished by his hawk-like gaze and shock of silver hair, his forceful oratory and fierce advocacy, Fredrick McGhee rose to fame as Minnesota's first black criminal lawyer and the owner by 1899 of forty acres of land in St. Cloud. He began his legal career in Chicago, where he primarily represented whites, gaining a reputation for competence. McGhee also converted from the Baptist faith to Catholicism and seemingly became an associate of Archbishop John Ireland to use the church as a positive vehicle for racial equality.

At some point during his public career, McGhee, a respected social critic, changed his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat. And though initially allied with Washington, McGhee later sided with DuBois when the two giants in the struggle for racial equality clashed on tactics and philosophy.

Like T. Thomas Fortune, Frederick McGhee was a race man. He was sincerely concerned about the fortunes and misfortunes of the freed slaves and the turning back of the clock by the U.S. Supreme Court and rabid state's righters of the South. He became immediately involved in Fortune's National Afro-American League organized in 1890 to combat disenfranchisement, lynching and other injustices and to encourage separate black businesses.

McGhee, Du Bois and others formed the, Niagara Movement the forerunner of the NAACP, in 1904.


Founders of The Niagara Movement at Niagara Falls: Left to right: Top row: H. A. Thompson, New York; Alonzo F. Herndon, Georgia; John Hope, Georgia; _?_.2nd row: Fred McGhee, Minnesota; unidentified boy; J. Max Barber, Illinois; W.E.B. Du Bois, Atlanta; Robert Bonner, Massachusetts; 3rd Row: Henry L. Baily, Washington, D.C.; Clement G. Morgan, Massachusetts; W.H.H. Hart, Washington, D.C.; and B.S. Smith, Kansas


Fredrick McGhee died in 1912 a few weeks shy of his 51st birthday. Had he lived we do not what role he might not have played in the NAACP. Years later, NAACP chairman Roy Wilkins would remember of McGhee that "it was through him that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People reached St. Paul and [our house at] 906 Galtier Street."

Nelson, Paul D. Frederick McGhee: A Life on the Color Line, 1861-1912. Feb. 2002. 261p. illus. index. Minnesota Historical Society,

Booker T. Wshington Papers Vol.14l / Booker T. Washington Papers Vol.8