William Hamilton

William Hamilton (1773 – December 9, 1836) was a prominent African-American orator and civil rights activist, based in New York City. He was born to a free black woman and was reputed to be a natural son of Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father. William Hamilton is best known as a leader in the first wave of American abolitionism.

Life and career Hamilton was born in New York sometime in 1773, and was reputed to be a son of Alexander Hamilton, Founding Father and future Secretary of the Treasury. His mother was a free woman of color. Historians are uncertain whether Alexander Hamilton was the father.

William Hamilton learned the trade of carpentry, which he depended on to make his living. He got involved in community activism within the African-American community. Although New York passed a law to establish gradual abolition, there were still numerous slaves being held in the early post-Revolutionary War decades.

In 1808, Hamilton co-founded the New York African Society for Mutual Relief, which provided financial support for sick members as well as for their widows and children.

As part of a movement of African Americans to independence after slavery was abolished, many established independent congregations of churches and other independent black institutions. The African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME Church) was founded in Philadelphia as the first independent black denomination in the new United States. In 1820, Hamilton became a founding member of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, another independent black denomination, in New York City.

In 1827, Hamilton helped establish Freedom's Journal, the first black newspaper in the United States. In the 1830s, he participated in and spoke against slavery at the first national conventions of African Americans. Like many blacks in the United States, Hamilton sought full equality and civil rights in the United States, where he was born and had a stake, rather than emigration to Africa, a place he never knew.