William Howard Day’s mother, a strong abolitionist and a founding member of the first African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in New York City, taught him an early lesson about courage. She had to escape from an attack by anti-abolitionists in 1833 when mob violence forced church members to barricade their homes. William boarded with a white family in Northampton, Massachusetts which afforded him the rare opportunity to attend a private high school and teach runaway slaves. He became the third black student to enroll at Oberlin College and worked as a printer, a career he continued for much of his life. After graduating, he became active in the Liberty Party and its successor, the Free-Soil Party. Day was elected to many offices in state and national Negro conventions from 1845 to 1852 where he worked against Ohio’s restrictive Black Laws, and in 1849 the laws were finally repealed. In Cleveland he worked as a reporter for the True Democrat, a black paper in which he demanded freedom for blacks. In 1859 he traveled to Britain with Rev. William King to raise money for the Buxton settlement. After emancipation, he was ordained a minister and worked to improve black schools and gain suffrage for blacks. Day also became one of the first black city school board presidents in a white community in the U.S. After his death in 1900, W.E.B. DuBois spoke at a dedication of a cemetery to Day’s memory.