Dr. Allen Butler Ballard Jr., a writer of both fiction and non-fiction books, a government professor at the City College of New York (1961–1986) and then a history professor at the State University at Albany where he was Professor Emeritus and A Collins Fellow, died November 5, 2026 at the age of 98.
Dr. Ballard was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on November 1, 1930. He attended a legally segregated all-black school in Germantown, PA, and then the integrated Central High School, where he lettered in football and graduated as “the Varsity Athlete With the Highest Academic Average in his class.”
Upon graduation he was admitted to Kenyon College in Ohio, where, along with Stanley L. Jackson of Steubenville, Ohio, he was the first black student to matriculate there. He was active on campus, playing both football and lacrosse, and he was elected Student Council President.
He graduated Magna Cum Laude and was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society. Before active military service at NATO headquarters in Paris, France in 1953-1955, he spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Bordeaux.
He then entered Harvard University where, specializing in the study of the Soviet Union, he received a Ph.D. in Government in 1960 and then embarked on a career of teaching and college administration, serving as a Dean of the City University of New York for some years, and a teacher of history, political science, and Africana studies at CCNY and then, SUNY Albany.
He was the recipient of honorary doctorates from both Kenyon College and Tuskegee University. While at City College, he was instrumental in the founding of the SEEK program, the precursor of Equal Opportunity Programs in New York and in the country at large.
He also authored five books, three non-fiction, and two novels. His novel, Where I’m Bound (Simon & Schuster 2000), was among the first Civil War novels to depict the war from an African-American perspective.
His 1984 history of Black Philadelphia, One More Day’s Journey (2004) was a pioneering work in the study of the Great Migration of Black Americans from the rural South to the urban North. It was favorably reviewed and recommended by Alex Haley who called it “informative and emotionally moving.”
His other books included The Education of Black Folk: The Afro-American Struggle for Knowledge in White America (2004) the memoir Breaching Jericho’s Walls: A Twentieth-Century African American Life (2011), and Keep on Moving!: An Old Fellow’s Journey into the World of Rollators, Mobile Scooters, Recumbent Trikes, Adult Trikes and Electric Bikes (2018), a senior citizen’s look at the world of rollators, adult bikes, mobile scooters, recumbent trikes, and electric bikes.
His final book was Carried by Six: A Novel of Urban Bravery in America (2020), which he discussed at an event at the New York State Writers Institute, a short clip of which is recorded on video here.
Ballard particularly loved sailing on and swimming in Lake George, where as a young college student he had worked as a cook at the Silver Bay Association.
He often told the story of how in 1946, you could drink the water right out of the lake and how the kids would run down to the shore and shout, “motor boat, motor boat!” when a single small outboard craft would pass by. A Senior Life Guard, he swam across the lake when he was seventeen years old.
Ballard enjoyed photography, guitar playing, folk-singing he did his very best to help prepare thousands of students for their journey through life – among them New York Almanack‘s John Warren, for whom he served as a graduate student advisor.
He was a long-time member of the Mt. Calvary Baptist Church in Albany, where he put his cooking skills to work as a member of the Soup Kitchen Ministry and sang in the Male Chorus. In his latter years, due to transportation needs, he became a member of the fellowship of Macedonia Baptist Church in that same city.
You can read Dr. Ballard’s full obituary here. Calling hours will be held on Thursday, November 12, 2026 from 9 until 11 am at Mount Calvary Baptist Church, 58 Alexander St, in Albany. A funeral service will follow. Interment with full military honors will be held following the service at 2 pm at Gerald B.H. Solomon Saratoga National Cemetery in Schuylerville.
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