The North Carolina Association of Black Lawyers (NCABL), together with the North Carolina Highway Historical Marker Program, will introduce the memorial in a public dedication ceremony at 3:40 pm. The marker is located on Market Street, between 16th and 17th streets, a short walk from Mabson’s final resting place in Pine Forest Cemetery.
The text on the highway marker will read “George L. Mabson 1846-1885: Pioneering Black lawyer practiced in N.C. His license granted in 1871. State rep. & senator, civil rights advocate. His grave is 5 blocks N.”
The inscription is short enough to fit on the small metal sign meant to catch the eye of passersby, and at the same time accurate enough to earn the approval of the committee of historians that accepts and rejects marker applications. Yet history is nothing if not complex, and this text can only be, at best, a stand-in for the much larger and richer life Mabson led in his native Wilmington.
Simply put, George L. Mabson was one of the most important Black leaders in North Carolina during Reconstruction, the era lasting from the end of the Civil War in 1865 through the fateful withdrawal of the remaining federal troops from the Southern states in 1877. He helped blaze trails for African Americans in the law, politics, and civil and military service during this time, and each station in his career offered an inherent and powerful challenge to the racist attitudes that prevailed in his day.
Mabson in the Archives
I first became aware of Mabson in summer 2025. That June, the attorney James Williams Jr. approached Third Person Project, a local historical non-profit, for research assistance while applying for Mabson’s marker. Williams retired from a distinguished career as a public defender in Orange and Chatham counties in 2017, and he eased himself into his leisure years by becoming a public historian. He had already helped to honor Black lawyers who were the first of their race to practice in individual counties—including Lisbon Payne Berry (licensed in 1882) in Orange County and Peter H. Bell (licensed 1901) in Washington County—and these local initiatives eventually prompted him to think more expansively.
“At some point I wanted to know who was the first Black attorney licensed in the state of North Carolina,” Williams told me in a recent interview. His research kept turning up two names as probable candidates for the distinction—Mabson, and Thomas Warrick. Some newspaper accounts from 1871 claimed that Mabson was the first, and these seemed to be supported by multiple secondary sources, such as short entries on Mabson in old biographical directories. However, other contemporaneous newspaper accounts clearly stated that Mabson and Warrick were both admitted to the North Carolina bar on the same day in June 1871.
Despite this wrinkle, Williams had developed a sense that something was different, and probably special, about Mabson’s career. Mabson seemed to show up repeatedly as an attorney in North Carolina courts in 1871 and beyond, to say nothing of his other professional and civic activities. Warrick, on the other hand, appeared to vanish from local papers entirely.
Williams then discovered that an application for a highway historical marker had actually been submitted for Mabson once before, over 20 years ago. The Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, which oversees the marker program, had rejected that application in 2004, and just as Williams saw something special in Mabson, so he saw something dubious in this rejection.
“I felt there was a good possibility that there had been a mistake,” Williams told me. “I felt this man was worthy of a marker, particularly having some sense of other people for whom markers had been approved, who, in my opinion, were no more worthy, and some of whom might have been less worthy, than George Mabson.”
Williams got his hands on a copy of the old rejection letter, in order to bolster the application’s chances on the next attempt. The Highway Historical Marker Advisory Committee from 2004 had cited Warrick’s license as evidence that the distinction of being first could not belong to Mabson alone. The rejection letter then stated that “[b]eyond that claim, Mabson’s career achievements were not exceptional.”
At this point Williams reached out to Third Person Project, a loose collective of researchers dedicated to uncovering Wilmington’s Black history. This initiative (of which I am a member) was founded in 2015 by local writers John Jeremiah Sullivan and Joel Finsel, and includes among its members the New York-based researcher Nate Brown, a direct descendant of Joshua Halsey, a victim of the 1898 Wilmington massacre and coup. Since its inception, Third Person Project has made multiple important discoveries, among them identifying the location of the only known gravesite associated with a victim of the 1898 massacre. Williams wanted to address the advisory committee’s objections, and Third Person Project had the local and historical expertise to help.
Revamping the application was complicated by two factors. Warrick was the first, and by far the easier to deal with. While Warrick was indeed granted his license on the same day as Mabson, we found no evidence that he actually practiced law here. In fact, he seems to have moved out of the state shortly after receiving his license. This left Mabson as the first licensed Black lawyer to actually practice in North Carolina—a truly remarkable achievement, given the continuing existence of the “color line,” or oppressive racial segregation, in the decades after the Civil War. This argument appears to have moved the committee at least a bit.
The second and greater factor—actually just an outright problem—was the shortage of scholarly literature on Mabson’s life and career. When Mabson showed up in secondary sources, he was typically treated in a few sentences. I also discovered that the meager secondary literature on him that did exist was often riddled with errors.
In order to convince the advisory committee of Mabson’s importance, I would have to dive deep into the archives myself. As I dove, that statement from the 2004 rejection letter—“Mabson’s career achievements were not exceptional”—rang loudly in my ears. What I found in the archives made it clear to me that nothing could be further from the truth.
A Great Battle Fought and Won
Relatively little can be said about George Lawrence Mabson’s early life with any certainty. It is known that he was born in New Hanover County around 1846, the son of a white man named George Washington Mabson and a Black woman of mixed descent named Eliza Moore.
It is unclear if Eliza and her son were enslaved at the time of his birth, but the young George was almost certainly free by the mid-1850s, when he was sent to Boston by his father—who was from a wealthy and prestigious family—to be educated. While Mabson was in that Northern hotbed of abolitionist sentiment, the Civil War broke out, and Mabson quickly joined the Union cause, first as a navy volunteer and then as an enlistee in the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry.
Shortly after the war ended, Mabson returned to Wilmington and began his involvement in Republican Party politics, which would be a guiding light for the rest of his life. By working his way up the ranks of the party of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, Mabson was able to advocate for the rights of Black Americans and at the same time prove his own abilities.
In August 1867, for instance, Mabson was elected president of the newly formed Colored Soldiers’ and Sailors’ League in Wilmington. He gave a speech that night imploring his fellow Union veterans to band together, “that we may…preserve our great blessing, the ballot box, as we did the United States muskets which the government placed in our hands.”
He wasn’t restricting his sights to his hometown, either—the same day’s paper noted that Mabson would be travelling to Columbus County the following week to rally Republicans there. He was all of 21 years old.
Mabson canvassed, stumped, and “speechified” extensively during elections throughout 1867 and 1868. He also represented New Hanover Republicans and particularly Black Republicans at state party conventions in Raleigh and at a Congressional nominating convention in Lumberton. As a young man, he was helping to shape the face that North Carolina Republicans showed to the state and nation.
On May 2, 1870, Mabson made a telling public appearance. A jubilee was taking place in Wilmington to celebrate the newly ratified 15th Amendment to the Constitution, which was intended to cement the ability of Black men to vote—especially in Southern states, which were eager to undo as many of the postwar advances in Black civil rights as they could.
Mabson, then a law student at Howard University in Washington, D.C., was introduced to the crowd by Joseph Abbott, one of North Carolina’s senators in Congress and Mabson’s earliest political patron. The short speech Mabson delivered that day praised the new amendment.
“But,” he added, “while it is true that a great battle has been fought and won, won too by the Republican Party, the mission of that party is not consummated.” The word “white” still existed in the statute books of the United States, particularly in the context of naturalization, he told the crowd, and until it was struck out, a vestige of slavery would remain. From the early days of his legal education, Mabson clearly saw the law through the lens of civil rights, and vice versa.
Perseverance Accomplishes Wonders
1870 is when Mabson’s career really took off. He was elected to the North Carolina House of Representatives from New Hanover County that year, and within weeks of taking his seat, he was speaking out on the House floor against the repeal of the Shoffner Act, which had enabled the governor to combat the Ku Klux Klan. He also opposed the removal of political disabilities — restrictions on holding federal office based on the 14th Amendment — from Zebulon Vance, a former Confederate who served as North Carolina’s wartime governor, and the Conservatives’ preferred candidate for United States senator. Mabson was new to the halls of power, but he wasn’t afraid to come in fighting.
Then, in early June, 1871, Mabson applied to the Superior Court in Wilmington for permission to practice law throughout the state. He had graduated from Howard University’s law school earlier that year, and he showed the judge a certificate noting his admission to practice in Washington, D.C. However, the Superior Court judge refused the request on technical grounds.
So Mabson travelled to Raleigh to petition the state Supreme Court. His first application there was also unsuccessful, for reasons unknown, and a racist newspaper editor in Wilmington used the occasion to mock the very idea that a Black man could or should practice law. “Determined to be a Lawyer,” read the headline of the article recounting Mabson’s failed petitions. It ended on a note of light condescension, one that Mabson would have been familiar with his entire life: “Perseverance, however, sometimes accomplishes wonders.”
What happened next was no wonder, though it was indeed the result of perseverance. On June 17, 1871, Mabson applied to the state Supreme Court again, on the same day as his old Howard University classmate Thomas Warrick. After a legal examination, both men were admitted.
Mabson probably didn’t take much time to celebrate. He was in the middle of a heated statewide political campaign just then, trying to fight off an attempt by the Conservative Party to call a constitutional convention intended to roll back Reconstruction-era policies and blunt Black political power in North Carolina’s eastern counties. As a nominated delegate to the proposed convention, Mabson travelled up and down the Lower Cape Fear region in July 1871, stumping tirelessly against the plan—though he did pause at least once, to successfully defend a client in court as North Carolina’s “newly fledged” first Black lawyer. Mabson and his “No Convention” allies were able to carry the election that August and prevent drastic constitutional changes, at least for a few more years.
(The Conservatives would gather their strength and push again, successfully, for a state constitutional convention in 1875. That event is at the root of one of the most persistent factual errors about George L. Mabson. It is incorrectly claimed in many secondary sources that he participated in the 1875 convention. In fact, it was his younger brother William who served as a delegate then.)
In 1872, Mabson was elected to the state Senate. That November, he introduced a bill to roll back cumulative suffrage in Wilmington, which had been written into the city’s charter by Conservatives earlier in the year to undermine Republican Party clout. Then, in December, he joined with the rest of his party to pull off a scheme of their own: during the General Assembly vote on whom to send to the United States Senate from North Carolina, the Republicans threw their weight behind Augustus Merrimon, exploiting divisions among their Conservative opponents to once more deny Zebulon Vance a coveted Senate seat.
In the midst of all this hardball politicking, Mabson did not forget the power of the law to do good. In 1873, newspapers reported that he was taking on a new specialty in his legal practice. Congress had recently passed an act to equalize the payouts given to formerly enslaved men who had enlisted in the armed forces during the Civil War. Many of these veterans were basically owed back pay, and Mabson decided to use his skills to help them. Around this time, a newspaper correspondent called Mabson “one of the leaders of the colored people in the State.” Similar claims would be made about him again and again over the years.
By 1875, Mabson was out of elected office, but he stayed heavily involved in the civic life of Wilmington. Much of his remaining time up until his early death in 1885 would be spent at his job in the federal customs house at the port, or at the Giblem Lodge, the vitally important Black Masonic lodge that Mabson helped build.
He also served in various roles in the state-sanctioned Black militia regiment based in Wilmington. Mabson was made a captain of this unit in 1874, and in 1876 Governor Curtis Brogden promoted him to colonel. (When Mabson received his colonel’s commission, a newspaper in Craven County claimed that it was the first time a Black man had achieved such a rank in North Carolina.)
History as Mission
As with the short text on the highway historical marker, this brief profile can only present a fraction of a man’s life. Two things I hope it conveys, though, are Mabson’s energy and his sheer determination. Mabson faced many obstacles on his groundbreaking career path, most notably the friction caused by the color of his skin. But he persevered, armed with a belief in the law and in his own self-worth.
Speaking of perseverance, James Williams Jr. was present at the meeting of the Highway Historical Marker Advisory Committee that finally approved Mabson’s marker last December — 21 years after the committee had rejected an earlier application. Williams saw the application through to the end, and Third Person Project was honored to contribute research support to the effort.
Williams had also enlisted a meaningful co-sponsor for the application: the North Carolina Association of Black Lawyers. The NCABL, which is both a civil rights advocacy group and a professional hub, traces its roots back to 1954. Williams told me in our interview that it played a major part in his own career, which began when he passed the bar in 1979.
“The [NCABL’s] mentorship and role modeling was something that was very important,” Williams said. “But just as importantly, the NCABL isn’t just a legal or trade organization. Historically, this organization has been so involved in trying to address issues of unfairness and injustice.”
It is therefore appropriate that the unveiling of Mabson’s historical marker will be worked into the program of the NCABL’s annual continuing education conference, which is being held in Wilmington this weekend. Speakers at the conference will include North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls, the storied law professor Irving Joyner and other prominent legal minds.
At the end of a full slate of panel discussions on Saturday, Williams and NCABL President Kimberly Moore will preface the marker’s unveiling with speeches on the importance of George Lawrence Mabson, a man whose life and career led the way for the Black legal professionals who came after him. For Williams, this history is a mission, and the mission — at least in the form of Mabson’s marker — was accomplished.
“We’ve got to do what we can do to make sure that history is accurately presented,” Williams told me. “That’s the way I look at it.”
