Twilight, Alexander

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Twilight, Alexander

September 26, 1795
June 1857

Born free in Corinth, Vermont, in 1795, Alexander Lucius Twilight, an educator and legislator, was the third of six children of Mary and Ichabod Twilight. Indentured to a local farmer, Twilight worked in his spare time and eventually saved enough to purchase the last year of his indenture in 1815. Twilight went on to attend Randolph Academy and in 1821 graduated with the equivalent of a high school degree and two years of college. He then entered Middlebury College and in 1823 received his B.A. degree. Twilight was probably the first African American to graduate from an American college.

After completing college, Twilight accepted a teaching position in Peru, New York. He studied theology and was granted a license to preach by the Champlain Presbytery of Plattsburgh, New York. In 1829 he moved to Brownington, Vermont, where he took over as principal of the Orleans County Grammar School as well as minister of the local congregation, which prayed in the school building. Twilight began a campaign to raise money for a new, larger school building to house an intermediate school, Brownington Academy. He received little funding either from public or private sources, but he supervised the construction of Athenian Hall, a three-story granite structure with sufficient room.

Twilight became so popular through his various activities that in 1836 he was elected by the village to a one-year term in the Vermont state legislature in Montpelier. He thus became the first African-American state representative and probably the first black elected official in America. His term of office was unexceptional, and at its close Twilight returned to Brownington Academy. In 1847 he left Brownington to teach in other villages, but he returned to his ministerial and educational functions in Brownington in 1852. He retired in 1855, following a stroke, and died in June 1857.