Andrew Jackson Allison

Andrew Jackson Allison was born to Lillie Allison in 1892 in Nashville, Tennessee. His mother remarried in 1903 to Boyd Wilson Ferguson. As of the 1910 census, Boyd Ferguson worked as a coachman for a private family, and Lillie Allison worked as a seamstress.

Andrew Jackson Allison graduated from Pearl High School, which was the first public school built for African Americans in Nashville in 1909. After graduation, he enrolled at Fisk University, joining Alpha Phi Alpha and graduating with a bachelor of science degree in 1913.¹ After graduating, he became a principal of a high school in Albany, Georgia, a professor of mathematics at Savannah State University, and was employed in the Department of Labor. He first entered Harvard Law School in 1920 before transferring to Yale Law School in 1921 but did not receive a degree. He worked as an industrial secretary for the New York Urban League before joining the Hartford Council of Social Agencies where he led research efforts on the issues and needs of recent Black migrants from the South in Hartford.² In Hartford, Andrew Jackson Allison married Thelma Whitaker in a wedding celebrated by the Hartford community as the “social event of season” in 1925.³ He continued to be a community leader in Hartford, where he was named secretary of the Women’s League and helped open nurseries, schools, and community centers in Hartford.⁴

In 1927, he left Hartford and moved back home to Nashville after being offered a new position at Fisk University as alumni secretary. He traveled across the country where he toured high schools for future students, fundraised for the university, and met with Fisk alumni throughout his tenure.⁵ During his tenure, he joined Fisk professors and students in condemning the university for failing to protect the Black community after Cordie Cheek, a black teenager recently freed on charges of rape, was abducted near the university and lynched.⁶ In 1943, he left the university to accept a position as superintendent of Provident Hospital in Chicago where he was responsible for business management, public relations, and fundraising.⁷ At some point, he and his wife converted to the Baha’i faith and were active members in the religion.⁸ He died from kidney failure in 1979 at the age of 86 in Durham, North Carolina where he was survived by his wife, six children, ten grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.⁹