Lewis Woodson

Lewis Woodson (January 1806 – January 1878) was an educator, minister, writer, and abolitionist. He was an early leader in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Woodson started and helped to build other institutions within the free African-American communities in Ohio and western Pennsylvania prior to the American Civil War. Woodson was among the original 24 trustees to found Wilberforce University in Ohio in 1856, in a collaboration between the AME and the Cincinnati Methodist Council. When the college faced financial difficulties during the American Civil War, the AME Church bought it from the Methodist Church in 1863, making it the first historically black college to be owned and operated by African...