Description:In 1850, Pennington visited the 'Birmingham Female Society for the Relief of British Negro Slaves'.
Dr Pennington was himself a slave until the age of twenty in the United States of America. He went on to become the minister of the first coloured Presbyterian Church in New York. He was also elected president of the Hertford Association of Congressional Ministers which gave him the opportunity of presiding over assemblies made up of all white men.
Pennington was a delegate at the 'World Antislavery Convention' (1840) which had been organised by Joseph Sturge of the Birmingham Anti-Slavery Society. He was admired by Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'; also a visitor to Birmingham in 1853). Pennington conducted the wedding of Frederick Douglass, another important African American abolitionist who came to Birmingham (see previous image).
Image: Wilson Armistead 'A Tribute for the Negro'(1848)