Acceptance by New Haven society was short-lived, however, and racist jealousies would ultimately ruin the businesses and life he had worked so hard to build.

Lanson and other family members moved to New Haven in 1803. Little is known about his life before that. “No one has been able to find out exactly where he came from,” says Stacey Close, associate vice provost and vice president of equity and diversity and professor of African American history at Eastern Connecticut State University. 

Some historians believe Lanson was born free around 1785, perhaps in Derby. Regardless, he quickly became a successful entrepreneur and advocate for New Haven’s Black community. 

In 1810 he was awarded a contract to complete a complex 1,350-foot extension of New Haven’s Long Wharf to accommodate larger vessels so the city could compete with the ports of New York and Boston. The work required round-the-clock efforts and ingenuity. Lanson had special flat-bottomed transport boats built to carry as many as 25 tons of stone, which he and his African American workers quarried from East Haven. 

Lanson’s next major project was a contract awarded in the 1820s to build the retaining wall for the harbor basin for the newly planned Farmington Canal, another undertaking for which he hired Black workers. Lanson’s handling of these construction projects earned him praise from prominent New Haven residents including the Rev. Timothy Dwight, the eighth president of Yale College. 

“It is amazing, at that time, to be in charge of a small group of men, 25 or so, and have a company where you’re actually doing that kind of construction in the 19th century,” Close says. 

But Lanson did more than merely run a successful business that employed community members and built infrastructure projects. When a state law forbidding African Americans to vote was passed in 1814, Lanson, among others, advocated for voting rights or for African Americans to be exempt from taxation. Lanson and others living in New Liberia, located along the Mill River, also served as a stop on the Underground Railroad. “When people escaped, New Haven’s community was a very good place to hide,” Close says. 

In 1825, Lanson was elected “African King,” or Black governor, of New Haven, an honorary but important title held by African American community leaders throughout New England in the period. 

However, soon afterward, forces of history and hatred began to turn against Lanson. “In 1831, after Nat Turner led a rebellion of Black slaves in southeastern Virginia killing more than fifty white people, support for African-American freedom in New Haven dissipated and turned into anger toward Lanson,” Close writes in the winter 2021 edition of Humanities, the magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

Further fueling white fear and hatred was a plan by Simeon Jocelyn, a respected white religious and antislavery leader, to build a college for African American residents in the city. 

“There’s this argument that comes out that you might have a rebellion in New Haven,” Close says. Because the proposed college would focus on technical trade skills, some of New Haven’s Irish population who already held those types of jobs were angered by the potential for competition. “Then you had the notion that you would have young Black men coming into New Haven. They would be in close proximity to young white women who were attending some of the seminary programs in New Haven,” Close says. 

Although Lanson never publicly expressed support for the African American college, as a prominent Black citizen he became a target of these unfounded fears circulating in New Haven. The city’s newspapers turned against Lanson, accusing him of supporting illegal activities ranging from prostitution to gambling. Though crime was common in poor sections of most cities, Lanson and other character witnesses always maintained he was innocent of these accusations. In 1831 riots broke out in Black neighborhoods in New Haven. 

“It was led by local authorities who believed that Lanson was a public nuisance,” Close says. “I’ve seen some suggestions that it may have been one officer who maybe had a vendetta against Lanson.” 

While authorities had been hounding Lanson and his businesses, the focus of this riot was different. “They don’t really touch or arrest any Blacks,” Close says. “Its focus is to basically clear all whites who have any connection with the Black community out of the area. So it’s one of the more interesting moments that I’ve ever come across in the 19th or 20th century.” 

Close knows of no other race riots that targeted the intermingling of races in such a way. After the riots, Lanson continued to be the focus of attention by authorities who surveilled him and were intent on catching him in a crime. He was regularly brought before the courts in the 1830s and charged and sometimes jailed for alleged petty crimes. These efforts, along with health issues, caused Lanson’s business to collapse. He eventually lost his properties and descended into poverty before dying in 1851. 

Of late there have been many efforts to do more to honor Lanson and his important contributions to New Haven. “One of the things I wanted people to remember about William Lanson is that in a most difficult period for African Americans in the United States, he took what was available to him and tried not only to provide economic opportunity for people in the community, but he also tried to be a symbol,” Close says.

In September 2020, the sculpture of Lanson was unveiled on the Farmington Canal Trail in New Haven. Though no images of Lanson exist, sculptor Dana King researched portraits of 19th-century West Africans and Lanson’s history for her depiction. Now standing near the modern version of the canal he helped build, Lanson stares forward proud and free, his contribution to the city’s history no longer overlooked or forgotten.