James Robert Spurgeon
Graduate of Yale Law School, 1892
Biography
Born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1869, Spurgeon graduated from Valley Public School in Richmond, Virginia. He then went to the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (now Hampton University), where he graduated as valedictorian in 1890. Spurgeon then came to law school at Yale, where he was named the Townsend Prize speaker, served as student treasurer, and joined the Kent Club.
Spurgeon graduated from Yale in 1892. In 1894, he married Rosetta Cuffey, also a Hampton graduate, and began practicing law in Maysville, Kentucky. He served as an administrator of Black schools in Maysville.
In 1898, President William McKinley appointed Spurgeon as Secretary Minister of the American Legation in Liberia. He worked as a lawyer and member of the Supreme Court of Liberia and also as a lecturer and educator at Liberian colleges. In 1899, Spurgeon received an LLD degree from Wilberforce University.
Spurgeon retired from his post in 1903 and returned to New York City, where he practiced law in the firm of Atkins, Collins, and Spurgeon. He was a high-ranking Mason and involved in other fraternal organizations. He published a pamphlet, “The Lost Word, or, the Search for Truth,” in Liberia in 1900. He died in New York in 1942.
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Publications
"From Far-Off Africa," The Public Ledger, August 15, 1898.
The Lost Word Or, The Search For Truth: Oration Delivered before the Grand Lodge of the Most Ancient And Honorable Fraternity of Free Masons in the Republic of Liberia. Monrovia, LR: Press of the College of West Africa, 1899.
"New York and Liberia Steamship Company: Or the Commercial Possibilities of the Trade of West Africa with America," Colored American Magazine 7, no. 12 (1904).
"The Metropolitan Mercantile & Realty Company," Colored American Magazine 13, no. 5 (1904).