George E. Stephens
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George E. Stephens (c. 1832 – April 24, 1888) was a 1st Sergeant and 1st[citation needed] and 2nd Lieutenant[citation needed] in the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, an American Civil War Union regiment, and a war correspondent to the New York Weekly Anglo-African.
Stephens was born in about 1832 in Philadelphia, where his family had moved from Virginia the previous year to escape the white violence which arose following Nat Turner’s rebellion. His father, William Stephens,[1] worked as a bootblack, waiter, and laborer, and became a lay preacher in the First African Baptist Church, a strongly abolitionist congregation active in the Underground Railroad.[His school Records are not recorded]
Education
George Stephens was well educated, likely in schools operated by the Quakers and the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.
Career
He worked as a cabinet maker, with stints also as an upholsterer and as a sailor.[2]
After the Civil War, he initially worked in conjunction with the Freedmen's Bureau educating newly freed slaves in Virginia. For a time he worked in Philadelphia, and later moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he died in 1888.[citation needed]
Community activism
Together with 15 other associates, in 1853 he founded a literary society and library named the Banneker Institute in honor of the African-American mathematician Benjamin Banneker. He also became active in the Underground Railroad. During his time at sea during 1857–1858, Stephens was nearly enslaved in Charleston, South Carolina, building his hatred of slavery even higher than his earlier strong abolitionist views.
