Nimrod B. Allen was an advocate for Columbus' Black community who sought interracial harmony

Civil rights leader Nimrod Booker Allen was born in 1886, in Girard, Alabama. He came to Ohio to study at Wilberforce University, where he earned his bachelor of arts degree in journalism.

After Allen graduated from Yale University in 1915 with a bachelor of sacred theology degreee, he made Columbus, Ohio, his home. His first position in Columbus was as the executive secretary of the YMCA Spring Street branch, which served the Black community.

During his time at the YMCA, the organization partnered with other groups like the NAACP and churches to create the Federated Social and Industrial Welfare Movement for the Negro to help African Americans migrating from the South adjust to their new lives in Columbus. In 1918, this group would become the Columbus Urban League, and Allen served as the organization’s executive secretary from 1921 until his retirement in 1954.

In 1925, Allen and other Black leaders in Columbus founded the Big Walnut Country Club in present-day Gahanna. The club was a place where African Americans in central Ohio could play golf and engage in other recreational activities while segregation was still widely practiced.

Allen also founded the Black service organization Frontiers of America in 1936, and the group incorporated in Ohio two years later. The organization changed its name to Frontiers International, Inc. in 1962, when it added a chapter in present-day Guyana in South America.

Frontiers of America was created to foster and engage Black leaders in helping the community. Frontiers International, Inc. is still active today and Allen participated in the organization until his death in December 1977.

After Allen's passing, he was a few years later inducted into the Columbus Hall of Fame. He was also inducted into the Urban League Hall of Fame in 1987 and the Ohio Civil Rights Hall of Fame in 2015. Throughout his life, Allen always advocated for the Black community with the goals of integration and interracial harmony.

Nicole D. Sutton is a Black Heritage Special Collections Librarian at the Columbus Metropolitan Library

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Nimrod B. Allen was an advocate for Columbus' Black community who sought interracial harmony