Thomas Dalton (abolitionist)
Thomas Dalton (1794–1883) was a free African American raised in Massachusetts[1] who was dedicated to improving the lives of people of color.
He was active with his wife Lucy Lew Dalton, Charlestown, Massachusetts, in the founding or ongoing activities of local educational organizations, including the Massachusetts General Colored Association, New England Anti-Slavery Society, Boston Mutual Lyceum, and Infant School Association, and campaigned for school integration, which was achieved in 1855.
Her father, Barzillai Lew (1743–1822), born a free black, was a Revolutionary War soldier and a musician.
[20] Dalton was one of the successful African Americans living in Boston's West End (Charlestown) prior to the Civil War.
[25]: 74 Dalton joined the Prince Hall Freemasonry Lodge in 1825 to build a network who could improve the lives of African Americans.
[25]: 84 He and abolitionist David Walker oversaw the publication of John T. Hilton's An Address, Delivered Before the African Grand Lodge of Boston, No.
[25]: 116 Several members of the Prince Hall Lodge met in 1826 and established the Massachusetts General Colored Association "to promote the welfare of the race by working for the destruction of slavery."
"[28] In January 1833, Dalton as president led a successful petition for the Massachusetts General Colored Association[29]: 20 to join the New England Anti-Slavery Society founded by William Lloyd Garrison, editor of The Liberator.
[31] Boston's African-American community has worked for educational opportunities since shortly after the American Revolutionary War; in 1787 Prince Hall petitioned the legislature for equal access to public schools.
[33] In the spring of 1833, the year before they were married, Thomas Dalton and Lucy Lew Francis were among a small group of women and men who formed the Boston Mutual Lyceum on West Central Street to sponsor educational lectures for the colored citizens of the Boston area.
[29]: 143 Thomas Dalton, Charles V. Caples and George Washington founded the "Infant School Association", which was approved on February 20, 1836, by the governor of Massachusetts.
The organization's purpose was "receiving and educating children of color preparatory to their entering higher schools," setting up a kind of kindergarten.
Dalton led seventy other fellow citizens in a renewed effort to gain access for their children into the white public schools of Boston.
Together with William Cooper Nell, and attorney Robert Morris, they sent petitions imploring the Boston School Committee: "It is very hard to retain self-respect if we see ourselves set apart and avoided as a degraded race by others.
From the black community, integrationists John T. Hilton, a barber, and Thomas Dalton, a tailor, with as many as eighty-eight others had petitioned the school committee three times between 1844 and 1846.
