Louis George Gregory - Early Years

Early Years

He was born on June 6, 1874 to African-American parents liberated during the Civil War whose number included his future stepfather 1st Sgt. George Gregory. His mother was Mary Elizabeth whose mother, Mary, was African and whose father was an enslaver named George Washington Dargan of the Rough Fork plantation in Darlington, South Carolina. When Gregory was four years old, his father, Ebaneezer George died, and his mother remarried to George Gregory. At this point Louis George Gregory took the name of his step father.

During his elementary schooling, Gregory attended the first public school that was open to both African Americans and whites in Charleston, South Carolina. He then attended the Avery Institute, a private secondary school in Charleston, and Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee where he completed his Bachelor's Degree. He continued on to Howard University in Washington D.C., one of the few universities to accept black graduate students, to study law and received his LL.B degree in March 1902. He was admitted to the bar, and along with another young lawyer, James A. Cobb, opened a law office in Washington D.C. The partnership ended in 1906, after Gregory started to work in the United States Department of the Treasury.