which to espouse his opposition to racial inequality. He was purportedly reluctant to launch a public singing career until he realised: "What induced me more than any thing else to appear in public was to give the lie to 'negro serenaders' (minstrels), and to show to the world that coloured men and women could sing classical music as well as the members of the other race by whom they had been so terribly vilified". He became famous for refusing to perform before segregated or white-only audiences. For an 1855 performance in Hamilton, Ontario, where the theatre manager refused to seat six black patrons who had purchased reserved first-class seats, Bowers refused to perform. Trotter writes: "Mr. Bowers, during his career, has sung in most of the Eastern and Middle States; and at one time he even invaded the slavery−cursed regions of Maryland. He sang in Baltimore, the papers of which city were forced to accord to him high merit as a vocalist." Bowers also appeared at benefit concerts to raise funds for the recruitment of black soldiers to the Union Army training camp at Camp William Penn. Other activities Together with other members of his family, Bowers was a national organiser of "black opposition to the fugitive slave laws of the 1850s and a state representative of the Equal Rights Convention. In October 1864 he was a delegate from Philadelphia to the National Convention of Coloured Men in Syracuse, New York. Personal Bowers married Lucretia Turpin, a native of New York, sometime before 1850. They had one daughter, Adelia. At the time of his death in 1885, he possessed "nearly $10,000 in real estate, Pennsylvania Railroad stock, household furnishings and cash in the Farmers and Mechanics Bank". Bonanza episode In a 1964 episode of Bonanza titled "Enter Thomas Bowers", Thomas was portrayed as the African American opera singer by actor William Marshall. References Further reading External links "Enter Thomas Bowers" at Internet Movie Database 19th-century African-American male singers Musicians from Philadelphia 1820s births 1885 deaths African-American abolitionists