Race Patriotism: Protest and Print Culture in the A.M.E. Church

Home , James Walker Hood, Theophilus Gould Steward

Race Patriotism

Race Patriotism Protest and Print Culture in the AME Church

Julius H. Bailey

Frontispiece: The Christian Recorder masthead.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bailey, Julius. Race patriotism: protest and print culture in the AME Church / Julius H. Bailey. — 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. eISBN-13: 978-1-57233-880-7 eISBN-10: 1-57233-880-6 1. African Methodist Episcopal Church—History. 2. African Methodist Episcopal Church—Publishing. 3. African Americans—Race identity. 4. Blacks—Race identity—United States. 5. American literature—African American authors—History and criticism. 6. Christian literature—Publishing—United States—History. I. Title.

BX8443.B35 2012 287'.83—dc23 2011041679 To Jayden and Aleah

Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction xi

Chapter 1. Public Protest and the Emergent Black Religious Press 1

Chapter 2. The Christian Recorder and the Cultivation of a Reading Culture 19

Chapter 3. Western Zions 39

Chapter 4. Should “African” Remain in Our Title? 63

Chapter 5. The Rhetoric of African Emigration 83

Conclusion 111

Notes 115

Bibliography 131

Index 147

Acknowledgments

The idea for this book has been nurtured through a series of conversations with generous colleagues over a number of years. It was at the NEH Sum- mer Seminar, “Roots: African Dimensions of the Early History and Cul- tures of the Americas,” at the University of Virginia where I was drawn to the connections between Africa and the early AME Church. My fellow par- ticipants in the Young Scholars of American Religion program read early chapter drafts and provided thoughtful suggestions. Judith Weisenfeld and John Corrigan emerged from the seminar as invaluable mentors in my professional growth. Laurie Maffly-Kipp has remained a caring and dedicated advisor long after my graduate-school days. Keith Naylor at Occidental College, who was a central reason for my becoming a religious studies major, is still my academic role model. An American Academy of Religion Individual Research Grant and fund- ing from the University of Redlands made this project possible. I am grateful for my colleagues at the University of Redlands—Fran Grace, Karen Derris, Bill Huntley, Emily Culpepper, John Walsh, and Lillian Larsen—and their constant support. I am thankful for the love and encouragement of my family. To the lights of my life, my son Jayden and my daughter Aleah, this book is dedicated to you.

Introduction

On June 21, 1883, Henry McNeal Turner wrote an article titled “The Afri- can Question Again” for the Christian Recorder, the official denominational newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, in which he assessed not only the state of the African emigration movement but also the nature of African Americans in America. “The whole tendency of our ignoble status in this country is to develop in the Negro mean, sordid, selfish, treacher- ous, deceitful and cranksided characteristics,” he declared. “There is not much real manhood though far more learning and general intelligence, I grant, but far less race patriotism, and wherever race patriotism does not exist among a people treachery in its worst form does.”1 In this brief statement, Turner voiced the nature of slavery and discrimination and what that legacy might mean for the future of African Americans, which turned on and culminated in what he referred to as “race patriotism.” Turner’s word choice is revealing. For race does not simply entail shared physical features; rather, in his estimation, conditions and treatment in America could foster certain characteristics and, in some cases, stunt cultural and moral traits in individuals that would directly affect their behavior in the world. In other words, historical moments in the black past influence one’s present worldview. Even further, Turner invoked a “patriotism” that asserts an affinity for a particular homeland, nation, and place. Who African Americans were, are, and will be in the future, Turner suggested, pivots around who they understand their people to be and the spatial location to which they are loyal. Yet Turner ascribed a coherence and self-evidence to issues that had been debated from the inception of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) denomination as leaders and laity publicly sorted through the varied options that were believed to weigh heavily upon and impact the future trajectory of the church and race. He utilized many of the rhetorical tropes that stretch back to the earliest American protest pamphlets and continue throughout the formation of a formal black press. Most prominent among these is the invocation of the past to substantiate claims and portend the future. This historicization process would be repeated time and again, from the reframing of the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 in Philadelphia by the early denominational founders Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, to the varied renderings of the exodus from St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church, to the meaning of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. Many of these explicit arguments were undergirded by sometimes subtle and often unarticulated assumptions about place that also figured into assessments of an author’s racial and religious authority to speak for African Americans—or as Turner cast it, “race patriotism.” This book examines AME print culture and the ways leaders and laity protested and constructed historical narratives around varied spatial locations to sway public opinion on key social issues. I use the term “protest” in two interconnected ways. The first examines the ways literature has been employed to express dissent and disapproval and often offer a corrective to erroneous assumptions and representations of particular African American constituencies. The second concerns efforts to proactively persuade through earnest, passionate, and sometimes solemn declarations and assertions of truth. The inclusion of the latter component is important, for too often protest in African American religious history is framed as solely a response to injustice or as reactive to discriminatory practices. The type of historical writing that took place in the AME tradition and in African American communities more broadly were active affirmations of black self-worth and achievement; they were confident prognostications that were not subject to or always catalyzed by external renderings of the race. Although the editorials and articles that appeared in the black press are not often categorized as historical writing, the AME Christian Recorder functioned as a type of ongoing multivocal communal narrative whose format lent itself to the types of heated debates that took place in its pages and the wide range of topics whose terms and stakes were constantly shifting throughout the nineteenth century. Denominational historians, through the continual process of retelling and asserting an orthodoxy about a shared religious past, employed the genre for particular activist purposes that sought to have an impact on black behavior and attitudes. Each chapter in this book examines the diverse but interrelated ways AME leaders, laity, and interested observers, drawing upon this burgeoning black religious public sphere, crafted historical formulations that addressed contemporary con-

xii Introduction cerns and shaped the perception of locales offered as viable options to hold the future of the race and denomination. This rhetorical strategy was particularly apt for an AME tradition built around the compelling lore surrounding leaders such as Richard Allen and pivotal events such as the departure from St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia in 1787, which catalyzed the formation of the new denomination. Few narratives as dramatically demonstrate the exodus of African Americans from white denominations in the early nineteenth century as the founding of the AME Church. In November 1787, St. George’s was undergoing renovation. During the construction, the location of the segregated areas designated for African American congregants kept chang- ing. On one particular morning, some black members inadvertently sat too close to the white section and were pulled up off of their knees during the worship service and prevented from even finishing their prayers before being escorted toward the “Negro pews.” This was the final indignation. Richard Allen, who would become the denomination’s first bishop, wrote in his journal that “we all went out of the church in a body, and they were no more plagued with us in the church.”2 This group of African Americans, led by Allen, left St. George’s determined to begin their own denomination. The event lent itself to the triumphant historical interpretations that dominated AME histories as it was repeatedly invoked as exemplifying an immediate response to injustice and as a harbinger of ever-increasing black autonomy in the face of white oppression. Yet despite the invocation of the dramatic walkout of St. George’s as a sym- bolic departure from white Christianity, the future of the AME denomination would be intricately interwoven with the Methodist Episcopal (ME) denomination for years to come. Far from rejecting their white brethren, Allen strove to fashion a working relationship within the broader ME connection. Disputes over property ownership, membership requirements, and leadership positions caused tension and led to some inventive efforts to stem the movement toward separation. ME Church leaders and congregants filed lawsuits, opened an alternative African American church, and denied or demanded large sums of money to offer communion to AME members. Despite these tactics, in Philadelphia Mother Bethel Church’s membership in 1813 has been estimated at thirteen hundred. Two years later, the relationship had grown so testy that a white minister was physically prevented from speaking from the pulpit. The preacher filed a writ of mandamus, which reached the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. In 1816, the judges found in favor of the congregants and granted official independence to Mother Bethel Church.3

Introduction xiii Given these tensions, scholars have, at times, projected modern notions of race upon Allen’s theology and worldview, yet his own autobiographical account of his attraction to Methodism and missionary work among Afri- can Americans suggest that race and denominational identity were almost inseparable: “I soon saw a large field open in seeking and instructing my African brethren, who had been a long forgotten people and few of them attended public worship.”4 While Allen regularly expressed an affinity with his “African” and “colored” “brethren,” terms he used interchangeably, it was always in the context of evangelization efforts and concern for their souls— a charge that Allen clearly took seriously, preaching as often as five times a day. However, it was a Methodist identity and his loyalty to those early missionaries who originally did outreach to African Americans that seemed to occupy Allen’s ideological self-understanding, as he noted in his memoir: “We were in favor of being attached to the Methodist connection; for I was confident that there was no religious sect or denomination would suit the capacity of the colored people as well as the Methodist; for the plain and simple gospel suits best for any people; for the unlearned can understand, and the learned are sure to understand; and the reason that the Methodist is so successful in the awakening and conversion of the colored people, the plain doctrine and having a good discipline.”5 In another entry, he remi- nisces, “The Methodists were the first people that brought glad tidings to the colored people. I feel thankful that ever I heard a Methodist preach. We are beholden to the Methodists, under God, for the light of the Gospel we enjoy; for all other denominations preached so high-flown that we were not able to comprehend their doctrine.”6 It was a denominational identity, gratitude for early missionary efforts, and a desire to be the best Methodist he could be, just as much as race, that drove Allen’s crusade for independence. While the AME Church was recognized as an independent denomination, Allen and his fellow ministers made few adjustments to ME doctrine. Rather than “Africanizing” the doctrine, they sought to return to what they understood to be the original purity of early Wesleyan Methodism. In the first Doctrines and Discipline of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (1817), the only changes included a prohibition against wearing robes that had been omitted from ME Church doctrine and the abolishment of the position of presiding elder, which was a step above elder but below the bishopric (Allen felt it was a remnant of Catholicism). Perhaps more significantly, the new Dis- cipline reestablished Wesley’s ban against slaveholders holding church membership, which many white Methodist congregations had failed to enforce.7 These are just a few of the moments that lent themselves to varied render-

xiv Introduction ings in denominational histories. Yet it is precisely the malleability and interpretive layers involved in early AME history that make them such rich fodder for creating narratives that simultaneously engage the past and present and portend particular futures. Given the recent wealth of literature on African American historical writing and texts, the black press, literary and historical societies, and the convention movement by scholars such as Laurie Maffly-Kipp, Stephen G. Hall, Elizabeth McHenry, John Ernest, Mia Bay, and Frankie Hutton, this book enters a rich historiographical terrain. In particular, John Ernest’s Liberation Historiography and Elizabeth McHenry’s Forgotten Readers have demonstrated the ways many nineteenth-century African American writers and literary societies sought to hone the boundaries of African American identity and realize their agency, particularly in the tradition of historical in- vestigation. Within this important moment, Ernest argues, the black press established “an appropriate theater for the collective performance of cultural identity and activism on the historical stage.” For her part, McHenry traces the reciprocal relationship between early nineteenth-century literary societies and the emergent black press to “coordinate an African American readership and foster the sensibility of Black Nationalism that was essential to both the survival of the black community and their organized pursuit of civil rights.” As Maffly-Kipp notes, the construction of AME histories “affords a window into the creation of a historical consciousness among African-American Christians and the elaboration of a black sacred canon.”8 This book is a glimpse into that historical consciousness and the ways one of the largest black denominations responded to and had an impact on these broader trends in black historical writings. A central purpose of nineteenth-century African American writing was to detail the key individuals, events, and shared moments that shaped the identity of the race and empowered those of African descent to reach for and achieve greater heights. However, the religious press, including the AME Christian Recorder, is often overlooked for the ways it uncovered the sacred elements of seemingly secular events and historical moments. In many ways the Christian Recorder was uniquely suited for African American historical writing because of the range of voices and perspectives included in its pages and the ways each individual issue could be employed to string together and connect seemingly disjointed elements of the black past. In this way, the black press, particularly the Christian Recorder, functioned as a kind of perpetual communal history of the race as events and issues were continually reframed and shaped.

Introduction xv The scholarship of African American Methodism is growing increasingly rich. Monographs of AME bishops Benjamin T. Tanner, Henry McNeal Turner, Theophilus G. Steward, and Richard Allen provide insights not only into the personal reflections and influence of these leaders but also into the historical moments that shaped their lives. Studies such as Canter Brown Jr. and Larry Eugene Rivers’s For a Great and Grand Purpose draw attention to the importance of region in the development of the AME Church in Florida, and thematic works such as my first book, Around the Family Altar, trace the uses of specific ideologies, such as domesticity, in the denomination following the Civil War. James T. Campbell’s Songs of Zion analyzes the transatlantic connections between the tradition and South Africa, and Lawrence S. Little’s Disciples of Liberty examines the transformation of the denomination in the age of imperialism in the final decades of the nineteenth century through the early twentieth century.9 Yet there is no current study that focuses specifically on the ways AME leaders and laity employed print culture to navigate and negotiate varied notions of racial identity through the construction of narratives about particular regions and locations. The rise of social history has tended to dichotomize “religion on the ground” with that which takes place within formal organizations. This renewed interest in popular and lived religion has supplanted a focus on institutions. While the emphasis on laity has expanded the voices included in the historiography, scholars have tended to posit an oppositional relationship between churches and their members. This is not to suggest that denominations themselves have not defined themselves against the marginalized, but simply to caution against the total discarding of “top-down” approaches. This book takes seriously the patriarchal formulations of many black male ministers in a time when denominational histories have fallen out of fashion. Even further, current studies of the rise of megachurches have interpreted the phenomenon as sounding the death knoll for traditional Christian denominations.10 While multiple components made up African American identity in the nineteenth century, one’s specific Christian affiliation should not be downplayed. Richard Allen, Daniel Payne, Benjamin Tanner, and a host of other less prominent and well known African Americans cannot be understood apart from their deep commitment to their denomination. Others request assurances that church histories tell us something about the big picture of African American history. In part, this book makes the case that an AME Church that grew from approximately twenty thousand members in the late 1850s to almost half a million by the close of the nineteenth century is the big picture.11

xvi Introduction Having said that, as Thomas A. Tweed argues persuasively in Retelling U.S. Religious History, the site from which an argument emanates effects the types of narratives that you tell. As he puts it, “The placement of the narra- tor and the narrative determines what can be seen, what stands in shadow, and what disappears from view.” In this way, it is important to distinguish between the varied points of entry that African Americans employed to enter the public realm. African American writing has played an often underappre- ciated role in shaping American public life and discourse. However, from the late eighteenth century, African Americans have found creative ways to have their voices heard regarding debates on the national stage. With autobiographies, slave narratives, submissions to newspapers, poetry, novels, sermons and speeches, blacks altered the course of political conversations both within their local communities and beyond. This book begins with one of the earliest forms of these writings, the protest pamphlet, which grew in popularity and effectiveness as authors read, borrowed, and honed the art of persuasive public rhetoric at the turn of the nineteenth century. The concise form of the pamphlet lent itself to brief and pointed arguments for particular causes, narratives of key events, and the proceedings of particular organizations, and the immediacy of the publication process allowed pamphleteers to comment on contemporary and ongoing issues in American society.12 The historiography of African American historical writing locates the postbellum period as a key moment in the development of the literature, when authors turned from protest pamphlets to institutional works docu- menting the Underground Railroad, black military exploits, the growth of religious denominations and churches, and other important events, organizations, and markers of African American achievement. These histories, in both the topics they covered and their approach, implicitly argued that the Civil War marked a new epoch for the race. As John Ernest put it, having finally garnered national recognition, African American historians turned to the “politics of uplift, the attempt to ‘elevate’ the African American community by inculcating habits of intellectual and moral discipline in the service of bourgeois social values.”13 While this may generally be true about the secular black press, the pages of the AME Christian Recorder following the Civil War reveal a contested site in which major issues of the day remained contentious and secular history was parsed for its revelation and correlation to a broader sacred story. Far from a distinctive and separate phenomenon, the black religious press built upon the foundation laid by early pamphleteers to reframe protest in new ways in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Introduction xvii Chapter 1, “Public Protest and the Emergent Black Religious Press,” examines this tradition of print culture in the AME Church from early protest pamphlets to the ascension of the denominational press as the primary public discursive site in which AME leaders and laity engaged one another on the most pressing issues of the age. From the life and writings of Daniel Coker, an early leader in the African Methodist movement who employed protest pamphlets, sermons, and published diaries to impact the discourse surrounding slavery and African emigration, to the rise of the Christian Recorder and the Church Review, these varied media provided distinctive arenas for African Americans to enter into sustained conversations about the future of the race and, in so doing, reshaped the public discourse of the broader American public sphere. Chapter 2, “The Christian Recorder and the Cultivation of a Reading Culture,” turns to Bishop Benjamin T. Tanner’s editorship of the denominational newspaper from 1868 to 1884. Tanner’s leadership marked a significant turning point in the history and trajectory of the Christian Recorder as the periodical gained increased credibility and prominence on a national scale. The mixed efforts of previous editors were replaced by a professional- ism unmatched in the newspaper’s existence. During his sixteen-year tenure as editor, Tanner provided editorials, correspondences from leaders and laity, book reviews, varied literary artistic expressions, and local and national church news.14 This chapter focuses on the cultivation of a reading culture among African Americans still dealing with the legacy of slavery, discrimination, and rampant illiteracy. Tanner and other leaders’ efforts to create a “reading people” in congregations across the country provide a window on the enterprise of African American historical writing more broadly. This study also engages many enduring themes in American religious history. Chapter 3, “Western Zions,” reframes Frederick Jackson Turner’s fa- mous “frontier thesis” within the context of the African American experience. Years before Turner presented his influential paper “The Significance of the American Frontier in American History” at the American Historical Association, in which he suggested that expansion without limits, “peren- nial rebirth,” and “new opportunities” were central tenets of the American nature, African Americans were debating whether the freedoms assumed by many immigrants to the country would ever fully apply to them.15 In narratives of the American West and the frontier, so central to the history of the country’s expansion, African Americans barely make the radar except for a few black “pioneers,” cattlemen, and prospectors during the Gold Rush in California. This chapter begins to chart the religious map of African

xviii Introduction Methodism in the West by sketching the multiple visions of the region, some of which were offered as alternatives to African emigration. Chapter 4, “Should ‘African’ Remain in Our Title?” analyzes the ways constituencies within the AME Church wrestled with the implications of social Darwinian thought upon contemporary debates over the retention or removal of the term “African” from the denominational title. As Patrick Rael has shown, there is a long history of the “names controversy” in African American history, as primarily northern thinkers debated the most accurate term for the race. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth century the term “Af- rican” came to prominence, followed by “people of color,” “colored people,” or “Colored American” at midcentury and the ascension of the capitalized “Negro” embraced by W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington in the early twentieth century.16 Yet well into the late nineteenth century debate continued to rage about the appropriateness of the term “African” in the AME denominational title. The racial or ethnic marker chosen to precede Methodist Episcopal would commit the church to an ideological position and course with wide-ranging implications. Perhaps more so than any contemporary issue, the African emigration movement revealed how varied black experiences were in the postbellum era, particularly around socioeconomic standing. As Steven Hahn has shown, strong emigrationist thought initially emerged primarily among rural blacks in the late 1870s as larger numbers viewed a departure from America as a means to thrive as a race outside of white control.17 Facing the possible dis- mantling of their own churches if congregants left for Africa in droves, to stem this groundswell of emigrationist sentiment, many AME leaders again turned to print culture to make their case. As will be seen in Chapter 5, “The Rhetoric of African Emigration,” ministers were adept at using this medium to press their agenda, particularly when institutional mandates and the aspirations of “ordinary” members clashed, as was the case with African emigration. The voice of authority that prevailed often turned on who would ultimately be defined as the true “race patriot.”

Introduction xix

Chapter 1

Public Protest and the Emergent Black Religious Press Print culture had been central to the AME tradition from as early as 1794, when Absalom Jones and Richard Allen produced a pamphlet to challenge misrepresentations of black Philadelphians during the yellow fever epidemic of 1793. Matthew Carey, a well-known printer, claimed publicly in his own pamphlet that African Americans had taken advantage of the outbreak by burglarizing the homes of whites who had left the contaminated city. In the absence of a response by the white press, Jones and Allen published A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People During the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia. Setting the tone for subsequent African American authors, Jones and Allen felt it was critical to correct the public record as quickly as possible to avert further fallout from the slanderous assertion. Prior to the formation of an established black press, Allen and Jones were one of many African Americans that utilized the pamphlet format to protest racial and social injustice in America. Addressing issues such as abolition, education, socioeconomic status, and a wide range of other moral and religious concerns, a vast number of pamphlets flooded the early-nineteenth- century discourse. Usually printed as thin brochures, the pamphlets were meant to reach a diverse audience, from sympathetic whites to literate black communities across the country, who might aid their cause. Calls for action and minutes from important events and meetings were also published in hopes of catalyzing movements for social change.1 While regularly categorized as distinctive genres, many of the writers and supporters of protest pamphlets were instrumental in the creation of denominational newspapers and periodicals to disseminate information, assert their civil rights, and engage in public debate about the best future course for the black community. The black press would embrace the stylistic and rhetorical devices of the early pamphleteers to transform the protest tradition after the Civil War. Not only did they challenge Carey’s characterization in their pamphlet, but Jones and Allen described the ways blacks had, at risk to their own health, helped a substantial number of white citizens during the crisis. They detailed the heroic efforts of African Americans who responded to the call to help white residents of Philadelphia with only a vague assurance “that people of our colour were not liable to take the infection.” They described how black responders, far from acting in a chaotic manner, consulted with city officials such as the mayor to determine the most prudent course of action. Many African Americans rendered aid without consideration of the steep cost to their own financial and personal well-being. While acknowledging that some misconduct did take place, they assured their readers that “there were as many white as black people, detected in pilfering.”2 Even further, they made a larger argument that boldly asserted that the presence of African Americans was not the problem; rather, it was the institution of slavery that denied blacks from reaching their full potential that ultimately led to immoral behavior when it occurred. To demonstrate their claim, Jones and Allen called for an educational “experiment”: “We believe if you would try the experiment of taking a few black children, and cultivate their minds with the same care, and let them have the same prospect in view, as to living in the world, as you would wish for your own children, you would find them upon the trial, they were not inferior in mental en- dowments.”3 This equal playing field coupled with the abolition of slavery, they argued, would demonstrate the true intellectual prowess of the African American race. Continuing this protest tradition, sixteen years later, Daniel Coker, on the national stage, prophesied about the importance of an autonomous black church and clergy as “a biblical embodiment of the cultural and religious transformation of enslaved Africans into free Afro-Americans” in his pamphlet A Dialogue between a Virginian and an African Minister (1810). In the face of charges that blacks were an “unredeemable” and “uncivilized” people, Coker asserted that African Americans were a “chosen generation,” a “royal priesthood,” a “holy nation,” and a “peculiar people” selected for a unique divine charge.4 Scholars have heralded Coker’s writings as the most literary of the early protest pamphlets. In particular, historian and literary critic Dorothy Porter characterized the work as a “scholastic dialogue.” Coker’s pamphlet was one of the few written and published in the slaveholding South. In this way, he sought to put his views into the mainstream without totally of-

2 Public Protest and the Emergent Black Religious Press fending white readers, both those potentially sympathetic to his cause as well as slave owners who might become more firmly entrenched in their opposition upon encountering his tract. As abolitionism stalled in the early nineteenth century, Coker hoped to stoke the flames of the slavery debate. Coker’s work of literature is distinctive within the early protest pamphlet genre because of how adroitly he navigated his advocacy for African American civil rights and the dictates of the political climate of the early nineteenth century. In so doing, Coker created a seemingly plausible conversation between a staunch pro-slavery advocate, a white Virginian, and an abolitionist “African” Christian minister that advanced the cause but did not affront the sensibilities of the predominately white reading public. He imagined a dispassionate conversation that voiced the dichotomous positions on the slavery question and in which logic and revolutionary ideals inevitably would lead to the end of the peculiar institution. In his Dialogue, Coker worked his way through the major issues and supporting arguments employed to justify the institution of slavery in America. In this work, the white Virginian is in strong opposition to emancipation and the African minister is the skilled orator seeking to change his mind. Much as the overall tone of Coker’s work is deferential to a white reading public, so too in the opening paragraphs is the African minister keenly respectful of the white Virginian. He thanks God “for putting it into your mind, to condescend so low, as to visit one of the descendants of the African race.” The Virgin- ian came to see him on word that he “imbibed a strange opinion.” For his own protection, the African minister calls for a “gentleman in the next room” to make “a recapitulation of what has passed down in conversation” by recording their discussion in writing, “in order that no advantage be taken of me, for conversing freely with you on the subject, whatever it may be.”5 Virginia, the state with the largest slaveholding class since the eighteenth century, provided rich terrain for exploring the nuances of the legal debates surrounding slavery. In the narrative, the Virginian maintains that since the legislature deemed Africans slaves, his purchase of them was legal and bind- ing. He likens abolition to the theft of a horse or cattle and their offspring from their rightful owner. Yet the African minister questions the validity of the law, which “established inequity” and was “against the laws of humanity, common sense, reason and conscience.” Drawing on Lockean philosophy, the minister says that since the question centers on the “liberty of a man,” the real issue is who has the most legitimate claim. Because the property involved never truly belonged to the legislature, they had no authority to be- stow it upon another. Since slaves never “forfeited nor alienated” their rights,

Public Protest and the Emergent Black Religious Press 3 freeing them is not an illegal transfer of property but the restoration of per- sonhood to its rightful owner. If weighed on a balance, the minister asserts, the “injustice” of losing money for some slave owners pales in comparison to the suffering of the slave who was “deprived . . . of all capacity to possess property [and] of his own free agency. . . .”6 Consistent with the protest pamphlet genre, Coker repeatedly returned to his central question, the legitimacy of the institution of slavery. The African minister lays the responsibility squarely at the feet of white slave traders, arguing that the institution of African slavery is only possible through the financial support of Europeans, who are also complicit in fostering wars, furnishing both the means and the ends: “If the Africans are thieves, the Europeans stand ready to receive the stolen goods; if the former are robbers, the latter furnish them with arms, and purchase the spoil. In this case, who is the most criminal, the civilized European or the untutored African?” The Virginian succumbs to the logic: “I am convinced by the cogency of your argument, that we are more at fault (as you have justly observed) than the uncivilized Africans.” While the Virginian encourages the minister to be “grateful” for the act of Congress that abolished the slave trade, the African minister describes a hidden yet pervasive tact of kidnapping and trading large numbers of Africans in America, a practice that endured into the nineteenth century. The Virginian eventually acknowledges that these crimes still occur: “Sir, I must confess that there is such a trade existing in the United States, and must also acknowledge that it is a cruel one.”7 To fully examine the justifications for slavery also required Coker to take on Christian arguments that condoned the institution. The Bible was a chief resource for those seeking to ideologically support slavery in the early nineteenth century. Mocking those who took this tact, Coker portrayed a white Virginian firm in his theological stance but unfamiliar with the Bible’s contents, exemplified by his inability to locate exact verses. The Virginian has only a general idea of biblical tenets and simply alludes to the fact that Abraham owned slaves and that Paul called for slaves to obey their masters. It is the African minister who responds with the precise biblical citations. He quotes the first reference as Genesis 17:13: “He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must be circumcised.” The African minister argues that the passage, rather than sanctioning slavery, proves just the opposite. Since, in ancient Israelite culture, masters were required to “incor- porate” the children of their male servants into “their church and nation,” they were therefore “servants of the Lord, in the same sense as the natural descendants of Abraham were.” For support, he cites Leviticus 25:42 and 54:

4 Public Protest and the Emergent Black Religious Press “For they are my servants, which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as bondsmen. And if he be not redeemed in these years, then he shall go out in the year of Jubilee, both he, and his children with him.” These Scriptures, according to the minister, far from condoning slavery, actually “forbid it.” Once again, the Virginian crumbles under the weight of the argument: “Hold sir, you have said sufficient. I am sorry I mentioned the text: but I had no idea of your being able to give such an explanation of it.”8 Because Coker was also addressing literate white Christians, he provided alternative theological readings to particular biblical passages that were regularly invoked in favor of slavery. The African minister takes up the second passage, Colossians 3:22: “Servants obey in all things your masters.” He feels the historical context at the time of the book’s writing explains the intent of the quotation. Because Christians were under the “Roman yoke” and faced “bloody persecution” and even death if they opposed the state, they could not speak out as they wished against slavery: “In such circumstances, therefore, had the apostle proclaimed liberty to the slaves, it would probably have exposed them to certain destruction, and injured the cause he loved so well, and that without the prospect of freeing one single individual; which would have been the height of madness and cruelty. Therefore it was wisdom in him, not to say a single word about freedom, more than he did.” The Virginian is astonished that his own pastor has “kept some part back” of the scriptural interpretations. The African minister attributes this to a fear that if the Virginian freed his slaves, “you could not afford to pay him so large a salary.” Even further, he asserts, slavery is against the “spirit and nature of the Christian religion.” In support of this, the minister cites Matthew 7:12: “Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them; for this is the law and the prophets.”9 Taking on contemporary slaveholders through the voice of the Virginian, Coker wrote that the Virginian became “convinced that slavery is a great evil” but remained steadfast in the belief that emancipation would give rise to even “greater evils.” Since slaves had become accustomed to following orders, they “never acquired the habits of industry; the sense of propriety, and spirit of emulation, necessary to make them useful members of civil society.” Indeed, “many have been so accustomed to the meaner vices; ha- bituated to lying, pilfering, and stealing, so that when pinched with want, they would commit these crimes, become pests to society, or end their days on the gallows.” The African minister responds that if slavery caused the formation of these bad habits in slaves, the end of the institution should also eliminate these traits: “Remove the cause, and the effects may cease.” The

Public Protest and the Emergent Black Religious Press 5 Virginian is persuaded: “I confess that it is an argument more against slavery than for it.”10 Coker also voiced contemporary fears that miscegenation would be an inevitable consequence of emancipation, creating “an unnatural mixture of blood” and making all future Americans “mulattoes.” The minister challenges this belief in two ways. First, he describes a type of social ostracism that followed such a union: “It is a rare thing indeed, to see black men with white wives; and when such instances occur, those men are generally of the lowest class, and are despised by their own people.” Second, the African minister points out that “Divine Providence” has not only separated the races by placing them on different continents but instilled a “natural aver- sion and disgust” between them.11 Surprisingly, this statement came from Coker, a product of an interracial union. For evidence, Coker uses an incident recorded by a Captain Philip Beavor in Africa in which a white woman was captured by Africans but “no violation of her chastity was offered, owing probably, to the extreme an- tipathy they have to a white skin, which they fully evidence on several occa- sions.” Seemingly contradicting his earlier statement regarding the rise of mulattoes, the minister says that it is “too late to prevent this evil; the matter is already gone beyond recovery; for it may be proved with mathemati- cal certainty, that if things go in the present course, the future inhabitants of America will be much checkered.” Even further, the African minister acknowledges that interracial mixings were also initiated by white masters with their female slaves: “Thus this realized evil is coming about in a way, truly disgraceful to both colours.” This has led to a potentially confusing situation in which “fathers will have their own children for slaves; men will possess their own brothers and sisters for property . . . and youths will have their grey headed uncles and aunts, for slaves.”12 The Virginian wonders aloud what many slave owners of the time claimed: whether, if offered their freedom, slaves would accept it. Nearing the end of the conversation, the minister replaces his initial deference toward the Virginian with an assertion of spiritual authority, stating, “My son, hand father the bible.” After which he relays the passage that addresses what to do in the Virginian’s predicament: “And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife and my children; I will not go out free: then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post: and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him forever (Exodus 21:5–6).” The Virginian agrees to offer his fifty-five slaves their freedom, and those who refuse to leave, in ac-

6 Public Protest and the Emergent Black Religious Press cordance with the passage, he will be “justified in keeping as slaves.” While the minister is skeptical that any of the slaves will remain, he encourages the Virginian to treat them as people “providentially placed under your care; and show yourself a faithful guardian, by giving them a Christian education, and providing them a sufficiency of the necessities of life.” Practically, this meant providing enough food for each day, appropriate clothing, and exposing them to the religious truths of Christianity.13 Addressing the treatment of slaves in America, toward the end of the pamphlet, Coker writes not as the Virginian or African minister but in the first person as a slave. The conversation moves from an intellectual discussion of the merits and deficiencies of the institution of slavery to the firsthand voicing of the daily trauma that slaves experienced being chained, starved, and stretched out on the ground under the beating sun. Coker wrote, “Suffer the owner of my body to cut my flesh, until pounds of blood, which came from my body, would congeal and cling to the soals of my shoes, and pave my way for several yards.” The Virginian expresses the hor- ror expected to be elicited from the reading audience, saying, “Stop sir. Let that be concealed from a Christian nation.” Despite this ill treatment, the slave responds, “When I looked and saw my blood running so free, my heart could not help praising my Saviour, and thanking God that he had given me the privilege, and endowed me with the fortitude sufficient to bear it without murmuring.” Yet even this was exploited by the master who took the slave to a blacksmith to have an “iron collar riveted around my neck” and then “with kicks and cuffs, I was led away and clapt in a field to labour.”14 The minister asks even more of the Virginian. He requests that he include in his will a provision to free those slaves who might remain after his death to protect them from his heirs, who “may not be of your humane disposition, for very profligate, and cruel children sometimes spring from very pious and benevolent parents.” The Virginian asks how to end slavery. In response, the minister suggests that America select a date from which point the institution of slavery will cease, establishing a time when all “coloured” children would be set free. In addition, he calls for the removal of all laws that prevent owners from freeing their slaves whenever they choose to do so. He praises a system in Spain that allows slaves to pay for their freedom using the money they earn from the one day of the week allocated for their own sustenance. This program, he argues, will instill the “habits of industry, and prompts to commendable economy.” As expected, the Virginian agrees: “Sir, I am satisfied that that might, and in my opinion, ought to be done.” The African minister is pleased—“Well sir, I am happy that I have

Public Protest and the Emergent Black Religious Press 7 made a proselyte of you, to humanity”—and they part as “friends.”15 By the end of the work, the initially deferential African minister has become the spiritual mentor of the white Virginian. Having successfully challenged the racial stereotypes supporting slavery and logically refuted the master’s arguments regarding property rights, Coker’s pamphlet resoundingly makes the case for the abolition of slavery. More broadly, through his Dialogue, Coker modeled black engagement with the American public sphere by entering the fray of the slavery question. The years after the publication of his Dialogue represented a dramatic change in the course of Coker’s career path in the AME Church. On April 9, 1816, five black churches in Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jer- sey sent sixteen representatives to the First General Conference of the Afri- can Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. At this inaugural meeting, Daniel Coker of Baltimore was elected the first AME bishop, but he never took office. Instead, Richard Allen was installed as the inaugural denominational bishop the following day. One of the most intriguing lines in all of the denominational histories is in Daniel A. Payne’s History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (1891), which simply states that Coker “resigned, or rather, declined the office” without further elaboration.16 In his autobiography, David Smith, a delegate at the conference, offers a hint at a potential answer, suggesting that Coker’s election was challenged by those loyal to Richard Allen from Philadelphia at least partially based on his skin tone. Smith wrote, “He being nearly white, the people said they could not have an African connection with a man as light as Daniel Coker at its head.”17 On January 31, 1820, Coker would stand in the African Church in New York City, at a celebration commemorating the first ships sent to Africa by the American Colonization Society (ACS), awaiting his own transatlantic voyage soon after. Having declined the inaugural bishopric of the denomination at the first AME General Conference in 1816, in the same year, Coker and Allen had a public dispute over the appropriate oratorical style for ministers. In 1818, Coker was expelled from the denomination following mysterious charges that were kept from the public record. A year later, Coker was reinstated to good standing but could only preach at the expressed request of a local elder.18 This restriction limited his ability to re- sume his leadership of the Baltimore AME churches, and it is this surprising fall from grace that partly explains Coker’s search for greener pastures in West Africa. Given Coker’s own challenging background in the denomination, the publication of the journal from his voyage to Africa represents one of the

8 Public Protest and the Emergent Black Religious Press more complex examples of protest literature with its thinly veiled call for others to join the emigration movement and its implicit critique of the AME Church. Specifically, its content seems to be a dramatic reversal from Coker’s deep commitment to the establishment of the nascent AME denomination in America. While it would be an overstatement to cast Coker’s emigration to Africa as completely the result of his change in fortunes in the AME Church, his personal circumstances point to an individual potentially sorting through a variety of racial and religious identity issues. Coker employed his journal to advance his campaign for a return to Africa for African Americans and examine and act on his deep opposition to slavery, addressing the perpetual question, why would a just God have allowed slavery to occur? For Coker, one component of the answer was the ex- posure of Africans, brought to America through the slave trade, to Christian doctrine and a subsequent God-given mandate for African Americans to use their “natural” connection to Africa to redeem their African brethren. While this position makes a number of theological assumptions, one can see in Coker’s writings the way he negotiated this sentiment to empower blacks to make the voyage to Africa as emigrants or in service of the missionary cause. More personally, Africa, it seems, became a site where Coker could understand his own biracial heritage and constantly evolving racial identity. From the opening pages of his journal, Coker walked a challenging line between concern for his own health and material well-being and maintaining his faith in God’s protection. He expressed anxiety over the family he left behind and the missionary work that lay ahead of him yet an assurance about future blessings. “My dear family rests with great weight on my mind,” he wrote. But he was quick to qualify that: “Not that I distrust the providence of God.” During the voyage, Coker had many moments of “fer- vent prayer for the expedition and conversion of the heathen.” During rocky nights at sea, Coker called out, “God spare us to arrive in Africa that we may be useful.” After prayer, he often acknowledged feeling “encouraged in our work, in the conversion of the heathen,” and he shared his confidence in a successful mission: “What is God about to do for Africa?” “Surely something great,” he predicted. And through particularly severe storms, he felt relief at God’s deliverance, believing that “our good God brought us through the night.” Yet Coker also anticipated the challenges that lay before him and his fellow travelers: “Our minds and conversation are much taken up with our expected arrival at the colony, and the reception that we shall meet with. . . . there are dangers and trials ahead.” Coker, having read several scientific studies of Africa describing the “unhealthiness of the climate”

Public Protest and the Emergent Black Religious Press 9 and the treachery of the rainy season, was prepared to pay the ultimate price for the cause, writing, “I feel it necessary to be in a constant state of readi- ness for death.”19 Coker relished being a “kind of middle link” between the white missionary agents and the black emigrants. Coker wrote regarding the African voyagers, “if they had not confidence in them (the agents,) yet they had in me; and as I was in the cabin with the agents, I was in all of their councils, etc. . . . Oh God help me to be true to my trust, and to act for the good of my African brethren in all things.” Coker empathized with the white agents, who he felt were appropriately “pious.” He praised them for their willingness to leave “civilized life” and was “astonished at their kindness and patience” and the “deep concern of the agents for the good of poor afflicted Africa.” In the next sentence, after endorsing the efforts of the agents, Coker expressed a connection with his fellow African Americans: “At this moment my mind is carried back to the thousands of my colour whom I have left behind in America; and my soul breathes to God in their behalf.” His nostalgia for Africa was frequently followed by expressions of hope for America. Approaching the Cape Verde islands of Fog and Brava, Coker wrote, “Had I not have experienced it, I could not have believed that the sight of land could have given such heartfelt pleasure.” He hoped that America would “heal the wounds that have been made in bleeding Africa” and “shine forth among the nations of the earth, in building up the waste places of that land which I hope in a few days my eyes will behold with transporting joy.”20 Equally revealing were Coker’s ambivalent attitudes toward Africa at once romanticizing his own African heritage while stereotyping the “native Africans,” whom he clearly distinguished from himself, and pitying their current state as “heathens.” On March 9, while anchored at Free Town, Sierra Leone, Coker observed what he termed “Cruemen” or “Know-men” who were coming on board, naked, and hired as laborers: “They adhere to their superstition, of charms and witchcraft—I stood on the deck and looked at these children of nature, til streams of tears ran down my cheeks.” In Sierra Leone, he embraced his Americanness when travelers recognized him as the minister who performed their last sacrament while in America and emphasized his African pride in seeing an all-black jury in a court of law. One night an African attempted to get Coker and a companion to drink rum, but he replied in an almost minstrel parodied dialect that we “no drin- key rum” and pointed upward and said, “God no likey dat,” shook their hands, and left for the evening. Coker remained steadfast that the Africans would accept the Christian message and planted the seed that others should

10 Public Protest and the Emergent Black Religious Press follow and advance the mission. “Who could refrain from tears, to see afflicted Africa receiving her sons on her own soil,” he wrote. “The field is surely white to harvest,—but who will leave father, mother, sister, brother, friends, and all the comforts of a civilized life, to cross the great waters and seek these lost sheep?” After preaching one sermon, Coker described “some old mothers, natives,” who pressed his hands and said, “Me live in de mountains; Godey bless you, my child, me feed on what you say,” which Coker took as a sign of divine destiny. “At that moment my soul could rejoice that my lot was cast in a strange land.”21 Both the wealth and cruelty that he encountered challenged Coker’s pre- conceptions about the continent. In Sierra Leone, Coker dined with a local preacher whose table was filled with mutton, beef, pork, chicken, oysters, fish, and vegetables of “excellent quality,” which made it “hard to distinguish between such a table, and one in America.” While he was well read on the slave trade, Coker was shocked after seeing the conditions first hand: “Although I have read Clarkson’s history of the slave trade, yet when I saw this small vessel, (she anchored near us) I was astonished beyond descrip- tion.” He described a Spanish slave ship that was captured by the English whose captains chose to poison the four hundred slaves on board. Only six survived to reach port.22 Coker anticipated religious and political challenges, particularly given the presence of Islam: “This day I saw, for the first time, several of the Man- dingoes; (they are ‘Mahometans;’) they distinguish themselves by a long white dress. I spoke to them but had not much time for conversation. They are said to be full of deception. Some of them are men of liberal education, in Arabick. I believe it will take great missionary exertions to bring these Mahometans and Pagans in. But it will be done.” In addition, Coker noted some dissension over the property rights of the early settlers as well as the “natives”: “We labour under some apprehensions of difficulties from the natives, on account of some advantages that they conceive the English have taken at Sierra Leone. Our trust is alone in God.” As he approached within thirty miles of Sherbro Island, Coker was filled with anticipation and anxiety. “The sand has a handsome appearance, looks level,” he noted. “I have to labour between hope and fear as to our reception. At this moment the language of my heart is, while I write and look at the vast tracts of land in sight,—Oh God! Is there not for us a place whereon to rest the soals of our feet? Will not Africa open her bosom, and receive her weeping and bleeding children that may be taken from slave ships or come from America?” When the agents in Africa were informed that the emigrants had arrived,

Public Protest and the Emergent Black Religious Press 11 Coker related that one asked, “If we had Christ in our heart? If not, they had better have staid in America.” Coker hoped to eventually obtain land and build houses and anticipated a long, hard road in Africa. “But God is in this work,” he added. “I expect that a few of us who are to bear the heat and bur- den of the work, will suffer much. But our labours will, I trust, be seen and gathered by the generations yet unborn.” He recognized the abolitionist implications of his mission: “May the Lord direct us in this matter, at this critical juncture. I believe he will. We expect that all who are engaged in the slave trade at the Galenars, both white and natives, will try to do us all the harm they can, by setting the chiefs against us. They well know, if we get foot hold, that it will be against the slave trade.”23 Coker predicted a successful resettlement of colonists to Sierra Leone as long as high standards were maintained for potential emigrants, especially prohibiting heavy drinkers. If, instead, they took the “proper care” to “send industrious and sober persons,” Coker averred, “in a few years we shall exceed the colony of Sierra Leone.” Coker’s call to raise the cri- teria for missionaries to Africa did not insulate him from challenges to his own qualifications and ability to relate to the “natives” given his light complexion. When bringing a man to court for stealing, during Coker’s cross- examination, the accused stated that “he did not like to be examined by a mulatto.” However, a fellow agent spoke on Coker’s behalf: “Mr. Coker was a descendant of Africa, and was appointed a justice of the peace; and that he would suffer no such reflection to be cast.” In the midst of his personal travails, Coker regularly prayed for the “conversion of Africa” and concluded his journal with a call for more like-minded Christians to follow suit: “Had we about ten thousand of our coloured people from America, here, what might we not do! But we must trust in God, and do what we can.”24 Coker published a series of his letters from Africa to America along with his journal, which read, in many ways, more like advertisements than personal correspondences. Having arrived safely to Africa along with ninety other emigrants, on March 29, 1820, Coker described a bounty of souls waiting to be enlightened with the Gospel: “We find the land to be good, and the natives kind, only those, who, from intercourse with the slave-traders, become otherwise. There is a great work here to do. Thousands, and thousands of souls here, to be converted from Paganism and Mahometanism to the religion of Jesus. Oh! brethren, who will come over to the help of the Lord?” Coker remained stern that no ideological and theological divisive- ness should be brought to Africa. “If you come as Baptists,” he declared, “come to establish an African Baptist church, and not to encourage divi-

12 Public Protest and the Emergent Black Religious Press sion.” The same reprimand was given for potential emigrants from other denominations. Perhaps speaking from his own tumultuous experience in the AME Church, Coker wrote, “We wish to know nothing of Bethel and of Sharp-street, in Africa—leave all these divisions in America. Before these heathens, all should be sweetly united; and if darkness is driven from this land, it must be by a united effort among Christians. The Sharp-street brethren; will be to me as the Bethel brethren; all will be alike. I wish to forget all such names and distinctions. Those who will come in love, to do good, and spread the gospel—come in the name of God, come! Otherwise, they had better stay away; for nothing but love and union will do good among these heathens. God grant that such may come over to help with the great work. I am yours, in the bonds of a pure gospel.”25 In his efforts to paint an attractive picture of African culture and life in Africa, Coker sought to do away with misconceptions, but at times, he inadvertently confirmed them. He wrote, “Oh! My dears, what darkness has covered the minds of this people. None but those who come and see, can judge. You would be astonished to see me traveling in the wilderness, guided by a little foot path, until, coming suddenly upon a little town of huts in the thickets; and there, to behold hundreds of men, women and children, naked, sitting on the ground or on mats, living on the natural productions of the earth, and as ignorant of God as the brutes that perish.” Despite their meager conditions, they treated Coker well, spread out a mat for him, and offered him food: “In a word, they are friendly and kind. Such is their conduct, that any one who loves souls would weep over them, and be willing to suffer and die with them. I can say, that my soul cleaves to Africa in such a manner as to reconcile me to the idea of being separated from my dear friends and the comforts of a Christian land.”26 In a seemingly strategic juxtaposition, the perils that missionaries would face in Africa were written in a way to stir only the most devoted while simultaneously portraying a prosperous land waiting for ambitious African American settlers to help it reach its full potential. “I expect to give my life to bleeding, groaning, dark, benighted Africa,” Coker wrote. “I expect to pass through much, if I should live. I should rejoice to see you in this land; it is a good land; it is a rich land, and I do believe it will be a great nation, and a powerful and worthy nation: but those who break the way will suffer much.” Coker encouraged as many to come to Africa as was possible, since “you may do much better than you can possibly do in America, and not work half so hard.” Coker’s journal concludes like an adventure tale, describing his participation in heroic attempts to rescue Africans on the shore awaiting

Public Protest and the Emergent Black Religious Press 13 transport by slave ships: “We are going in a barge to try to get them away. I hope that God will aid us; it is a dangerous attempt.”27 Coker used all literary means at his disposal to encourage, excite, and spur on African Americans to join the cause of emigration and the redemption of Africa. As early as 1841, the AME Church created the African Methodist Epis- copal Church Magazine. Eleven years later, the Christian Recorder, the official denominational newspaper of the AME Church appeared, joining the discourse of other African American newspapers, such as the Freedom’s Jour- nal started in New York in 1827, which was soon followed by the Colored American, the National Watchman, the Weekly Anglo-African, the Mirror of Liberty, and Frederick Douglass’s North Star. In 1858, Daniel A. Payne and a group of ministers founded the Repository of Religion and Literature and of Science and of Art, which lasted five years. In 1884, Bishop Benjamin T. Tanner would recapture that spirit in a monthly literary magazine, the AME Church Review, which showcased the talents of African American writers. The Protestant Episcopal Church began the Afro-American Churchman in 1886 and the Church Advocate in 1894, the AME Zion Quarterly Review was established in 1890, the National Baptist Magazine was founded in 1894, and the Colored Catholic began publication in 1909. While reading and education were a central concern of the AME Church from its inception, its earliest periodicals dealt mostly with internal matters and denominational minutiae that were of little interest to the general black public. Upon taking office as bishop, Richard Allen established a publishing house, the AME Book Concern, which he led until the creation of the position of general book steward. Until the appearance of the African Methodist Episcopal Church Magazine in 1841, headed by George Hogarth, the church mainly produced hymnals, the church discipline, and minutes of meetings and conferences. Although advertised as a monthly, in its two-and-a-half- year existence it produced twelve volumes and ended in May 1848 because of financial difficulties. In his first history of the church, Payne praised Hogarth’s business ability but lambasted the quality of the African Methodist Episcopal Church Magazine: “The truth compels us to say that the character of this literature is inferior, and consists chiefly in letters about subjects interesting to but a few, if any, outside of the pales of the African M. E. Church. The editor himself was destitute of what is now considered a good common school education. . . . In thought, he never rises above medioc- rity, in composition, he evinces an absolute ignorance of rhetoric.” Hogarth seemed to foreshadow the challenges he would face in the prospectus of the Church Magazine. “In embarking upon this laudable enterprise,” he wrote,

14 Public Protest and the Emergent Black Religious Press “it becomes our duty, in the outset, to inform our friends that such a work cannot be conducted with dignity and honor to our people unless it meets with an ample supply of pecuniary and intellectual means.” He estimated that 900 one-dollar annual subscriptions would keep the enterprise afloat. Ministers were to act as subscription agents securing funds from their congregations. Yet in June 1843, only 150 yearly and half-yearly subscribers had been secured. One year later, the number had only risen to 213. The 1844 AME General Conference enlisted Molliston M. Clark as a traveling book agent to raise sales. In a letter to Hogarth, Clark was hopeful about his prospects: “I feel confident that I can get . . . one thousand subscribers out of ten or fourteen thousand members, within one or two years. . . . Do not be discouraged: our people are awaking up on the subject. I am now more than ever encouraged in the work. I only want good health, the blessing of God, and the spring and summer to come, to make great progress in my business.” After only one year, Clark tendered his resignation, writing that he had been “of little or no use to the book concern.” In his final report, he concluded that “such is the want of interest on the subject, such is the want of taste for reading among our people, except perhaps one-tenth part of them, that the books cannot be sold, or subscriptions obtained to the magazine, except at a very sparing rate.” In his 1891 history of the church, Payne echoed Clark’s sentiments: “The chief reasons which might be assigned for the failure of the magazine are the almost total want of learning among the laity of the Church, the limited education of the ministers, and the small number who were sufficiently educated or had the time either to contribute to its support by writing or to appreciate the efforts put forth for its sustenance. Low as the price was, it was too high for the majority of both ministers and laity who could read, owing to the extreme poverty of the great mass of those to whom the magazine naturally addressed itself.”28 However, given the success of the early protest pamphlets, it may have been less a lack of interest in reading among African Americans than a disconnect between the denominational material produced and the life experiences of the majority of blacks in America. Ten years after the demise of the African Methodist Episcopal Church Magazine, the denomination produced the Repository of Religion and Literature and of Science and Art. The prospectus of 1857 declared its goal as “first, to diffuse useful knowledge among our people—second, to cultivate and develop their latent talents, and elevate their intellectual, moral, and religious character.” The Repository began publication in April 1858 as a quarterly, supported by the literary societies of the Indiana, Baltimore, and Missouri conferences. In January

Public Protest and the Emergent Black Religious Press 15 1861, the site of publication shifted to Philadelphia, and the New England conferences took over sponsorship. At the beginning of 1862, the periodical was offered as a monthly. The publication’s contents were diverse, addressing each of the components listed in its title—religion, literature, science, and art—as well as specific areas for different constituencies, such as a “Mother’s Department,” a “Young Ladies’ Lecture Room,” a “Children’s Room,” a section devoted to book and magazine reviews titled “Monthly Book Table,” and a “Church’s Monthly Record,” in which announcements were listed. In its first year of operation, the Repository secured five hundred subscribers and made a profit of thirty-five dollars. However, the lack of new subscribers and the rise in delinquent payments placed the magazine over three hundred dollars in debt at the suspension of its run in April 1864. One overarching goal of the magazine was to instill an appreciation of the arts among African Americans. As the editors put it, “It improves the minds of our people, as well as it encourages those of the white people, who are subscribers and well wishers to the colored people, and who know that education among any society of people, [makes] them fit for society, better neighbors in any community, wherever God permits their lot to be.”29 The 1848 General Conference approved the publication of a weekly newspaper, the Christian Herald, to be edited by Augustus R. Green. In 1852, the newspaper was renamed the Christian Recorder, and the publication office relocated from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, where Molliston M. Clark served as the editor. The early years of the newspaper focused on church activities, minutes from annual district and general conferences, financial reports, recognizing ministers in the denomination, editorials, general religious topics, and events in local congregations, with the occasional inclusion of poems and essays. Clark stated the goal of the newspaper as offering “intelligent articles on religion, morality, science, and literature.” The prospectus read, “The paper shall not know any social and geographical distinction among our people of East or West or North or South, but shall be the equal friend of all. The Bishops, the itinerant brethren, the locality, the laity, and all friends shall have free access to its columns by their com- munications, when not inconsistent with our position. Our reputation and honor are here pledged to make it a paper—in print, size, in type and general appearance—that shall give respectability and credit to us and the church and community. It will be in a form so as to be folded as a book or pamphlet, that families and individuals may have books made of it and preserved for historical references.”30 Clark faced enormous financial challenges as editor and published only nineteen issues of the newspaper over two years, resign-

16 Public Protest and the Emergent Black Religious Press ing in 1854. After a brief suspension, Jabez Pitt Campbell took over as editor and inherited the same economic woes that had swamped his predecessor. He managed to publish about one newspaper per month from 1854 to 1856. From 1856 to 1868, a number of individuals held the editorship until Elisha Weaver passed the helm to Tanner.31 During the post–Civil War period, the AME Church experienced an incredible increase in membership with the influx of new southern members. Historians have estimated that in 1858, the membership of the AME Church was approximately 20,000, with virtually no members in the southern states. By 1896, total membership of the church was over 450,000, with approximately 80 percent of the members residing in the South. During those forty years, the AME Church transformed itself from a small northern community into a national denomination.32 The Christian Recorder mirrored this growth, transforming from a regional Philadelphia periodical into one of the most influential black presses in the country. The editors of AME Church periodicals, especially the Christian Recorder, felt it was part of their responsibility not only to disseminate information and world news to the growing AME Church membership and African Americans across the country but also to help them interpret the implications of those events.33 From the early struggles of AME periodicals, the Christian Recorder emerged as a discursive space in which contributors debated and discussed how to best uplift the race. With Benjamin T. Tanner at its helm as editor, the newspaper revived the protest tradition. The Christian Recorder would provide a distinctive type of historical writing in which narratives were created, interrupted, and reframed at varied points with an eye toward shaping the future trajectory of the race and denomination.

Public Protest and the Emergent Black Religious Press 17

Chapter 2

The Christian Recorder and the Cultivation of a Reading Culture When Benjamin T. Tanner ascended to the editorship of the AME Christian Recorder in 1868, he hoped to not only create a newspaper that rivaled the best white religious periodicals in the country but also make African Americans a “reading people”: “Readers not of trashy novels and story books; but that kind of reader, that loves to read the history as well as the philosophy of any special branch of science or art, or of the sciences generally . . . brightens the intellect, sharpens the perceptive faculties and elevates to a high standard, the judgment; it makes the pious and contemplative reader, more and more a natural, not an artificial worshipper of God.” The Christian Recorder would be essential in fostering a reading culture among blacks: “We too, as a people, must cultivate a love (by reading, or practice) for the arts and sciences.”1 After the AME General Conference of 1868 elected Tanner editor of the Christian Recorder, he took to the office with energy and vigor. An extensive reader who made a point of staying abreast of the key developments in domestic and international news, in many ways Tanner was the ideal can- didate to elevate the status of the newspaper, which had experienced varied levels of success since its first incarnation as the A.M.E. Magazine in 1841. Daniel A. Payne and other prominent leaders anticipated that Tanner’s election would quickly lead to the newspaper becoming one of the preeminent religious journals in the country. For his part, Tanner was much more cautious in his prognostication, estimating that it would take at least twenty years before the Christian Recorder was considered among the elite denominational periodicals. Tanner understood the legacy of slavery, discrimination, and widespread illiteracy as enduring obstacles to the general quality and reception of the newspaper. During his tenure as editor from 1868 to 1884, Tanner wrote editorials, essays, and book reviews and published correspondences from leaders and laity, church news, and varied literary works such as poetry and serialized novels.2 As editor, Tanner exerted a disproportionate influence on the tenor of the discourse surrounding key issues facing the race and denomination. As such, he generously offered his insights through editorials, articles, and introductory comments to reprinted material for an audience that likely was less well read than himself. Tanner and other AME leaders’ efforts to create a “reading people” in denominational congregations provide a window on the enterprise of historical writing. Through the construction of histories and book reviews printed in denominational literature, AME leaders imparted the value of history to their congregations and provided a means by which to evaluate the growing body of works. His predecessor, Elisha Weaver, while serving diligently in his post, seemed overwhelmed toiling alone at the helm of the Christian Recorder, functioning as both editor and the general book steward responsible for collecting funds. By 1868, subscribers were months behind on payments, leading Weaver to write several articles urging readers to “pay up!” and if not possible, to pay in full to “send a part now and part at another time.” Weaver was also frustrated at the lack of formality of submissions to the newspaper. Some writers failed to include their full name and address, or at least a “nom de plume” or initials. Adding to the press’ financial woes was the failure of other writers to pay their full postage.3 Weaver reminded readers just how full his plate was, and in one editorial, he let his audience know that he was eight weeks behind in reading correspondences and anticipated turning over the mantle to Tanner. “After the General Conference,” he added, “our successor will, no doubt, attend to you well.”4 Despite the trying conditions, Weaver made several significant steps in the development of the newspaper. In one editorial, he shared his desire to create an all-inclusive newspaper: “We have tried to study the interests of all classes of people, both the refined and educated, and those unfortunate ones whose education and training have been sadly neglected. In a word, we have endeavored to accommodate all.”5 For nine years, Weaver intermit- tently took the reigns of the periodical. When he began in 1859, there were few regular subscribers. Weaver likened his task to buying a piece of land that had never been farmed. One was required to “cut down the trees, clear the rubbish away, build your house, and then make headway as best you could. After a term of years you succeed in laying a good foundation, and

20 The Christian Recorder and the Cultivation of a Reading Culture those who may follow will have a much easier time than his or their predecessor. This, my dear readers and friends was just the condition to which your humble servant had to labor.” Weaver characterized his time as editor as a greater “sacrifice” than “will ever be revealed until the day of judgment.” Although acknowledging that his experience exposed him to ac- quaintances that he would never have known otherwise, Weaver seemed relieved to be leaving the position. He wrote, “[I] bid you an affectionate farewell from all the responsibilities which hung over me for nine years, in our Publication Department!”6 In his “Editor’s Farewell,” Weaver heralded Tanner’s abilities as “a man, we think, amply qualified for said position, and who knows how to sympathize with the many disadvantages our people have to contend with.” He hoped readers would do even more in support of the newspaper under Tanner. A testament to Weaver’s labors was the AME General Conference’s separation of the positions of editor and book steward, placing Reverend Joshua Woodlin in charge of the finances of the publication department. The significance of this moment was not lost on Weaver, who noted, “There never was a stronger fact of proof that the Book Concern is in a far better condition than ever it was before, than by virtue of the election of two, instead of one, to work in our place.” He took pride in being able to hand Tanner a substantial list of subscribers. In his benedictory, Weaver concluded, “We bid you, with others, adieu from the weighty responsibilities we have undergone so long.”7 For his part, Tanner seemed to want to lower the expectations of his constituency for a quick turnaround to the newspaper. He wrote that he feared that “his brethren will expect too much.” In America, where “jour- nalism has taken such a high stand,” it would be too much “to expect any one man, much less a novice, to make a first class paper.” Those who expected as much would surely be “disappointed.” Tanner’s goal was to make the Christian Recorder comparable to the Methodist and the Independent within twenty years and to the Nation in fifty. If this occurred, “we may indeed take courage, and boast of our common humanity with the world.” He was confident that the newspaper could be first class in terms of its “variety and truthfulness of the matter it contains.” Tanner was optimistic that the diversity of materials that were printed would be second to none since the “black Yankee,” having “gone out into all the world,” could provide information “from almost every quarter of the globe.” The bishops would bear a disproportionate part of this load since “they go to the most interesting parts of our work—the South and California; and it will be for them to add

The Christian Recorder and the Cultivation of a Reading Culture 21 very much to the absolute worth of the paper.” Together with the corre- sponding secretary, leaders, and members of the church, Tanner was confident that through a collective effort the Christian Recorder would be a “sheet of which none of us need to blush, but you must do it.” He added, “The mite of him whom you have entrusted with such seeming confidence, to guide the little ship, be assured will never be wanting. But you must help.”8 Almost immediately upon taking office, Tanner set about improving the editorial office, which was in desperate need of books from which he could draw information and confirm facts. “Your editor wants an editorial library; and he thinks that a connection so large and influential as ours ought to furnish it,” he wrote. He called for members to send in donations to purchase the much needed materials.9 However, Tanner felt the newspaper would fall short in the area of “the beauty of the diction employed.” It is unclear whether Tanner attributed this shortcoming to his own deficiencies as a new editor, the contributions of his peers, or the submissions of those who had yet to receive a formal education. If Tanner included himself in this category, it may have been false modesty. His work An Apology for African Methodism, which elevated him to prominence in the denomination received rave reviews both in the religious and secular press, including the Christian Advocate and Journal, Zion’s Standard and Review, Frederick Republican, Baltimore Daily Journal, People’s Journal, and Missionary Reporter. The New York Tribune characterized Tanner’s prose as “not only earnest, but often eloquent.”10 Tanner tried to guide contributors to improve their chances of getting published. He advised them to keep their correspondences to one page. If submitting a longer article, he urged contributors to write on only one side of the paper to lower the likelihood of errors and to use pen instead of pen- cil. Tanner reminded readers to always sign their names to their submissions and chastised those who opened their letters with an apology for writing. “It is your privilege, and if you are a minister regard it as a duty,” he noted. He requested patience from authors, who apparently often expected to have their letters appear in the next issue: “Believe that your editor is no nearer perfection than yourself; and accord him some little sympathy.” Tanner sternly warned against plagiarism, writing, “Do not be surprised if the article you copied out of some book, should find its way to the waste basket.”11 Tanner was frustrated at the numerous requests for personal information relevant only to the correspondent, especially those who failed to include a self-addressed stamped envelope. In one editorial, he wrote that “persons cannot expect him [the editor] to give time, labor, paper, envelope, and then furnish the stamp” for such responses.12

22 The Christian Recorder and the Cultivation of a Reading Culture The editors and readers created a discursive space in which information was exchanged, debated, and, if necessary, publicly corrected. The Progressive American of New York chastised Tanner for suggesting that the Church Review would be the first periodical of its kind by African Americans, pointing out that even his own denomination years earlier had produced a similar monthly, the African Methodist Magazine, which premiered in 1841. Tanner responded that “we are far from making any claims to priority” and reiterated that the new magazine would be of the highest quality.13 For his part, Tanner was frustrated at the lack of knowledge about African Americans demonstrated by many white editors as well as their constant requests for information about the race: “The frequency with which we as editor of one of the leading colored journals of the country, are called upon for information in regard to ‘your people,’ is indicative of a surprising ignorance on the part of our white fellow citizens. . . . It would verily seem as if they knew nothing about us, save that we once kept clean their houses and cooked their dinners.”14 On the other hand, Tanner struggled to get white periodicals such as those produced by the Methodist Episcopal Church South to exchange materials with him. He encouraged whites to support the newspaper because isolation in the past had caused some “negroes” who “withdrew into a separate community” to descend “into animalism, and gradually disintegrated and disappeared.”15 When push came to shove, the black public expected African American newspapers to address issues of social justice. When fraudulent immigration schemes arose and questionable motives informed certain organizations, they called upon the black press to advocate on their behalf. One writer urged the “colored press” to “rise up” together and “denounce” the efforts of groups such as the International Migration Society that were believed to be taking advantage of unsuspecting black southerners.16 J. S. A. Murphey challenged colored editors, including Tanner, for the lack of coverage of the murder of four black men, including an exhorter in the AME Church, in Marshall, Texas, by a white mob: “The colored editors are silent as far as I know. . . . Even Dr. Tanner, the most experienced colored editor in America, says not one word about the Marshall outrage!”17 When Richard H. Cain was forced to ride in a segregated train car despite having purchased a first- class ticket, he sued the railroad for twenty thousand dollars. The newspaper came together on his behalf, calling for “the entire AME Church to rally behind Reverend Cain and take the fight to the Supreme Court, if necessary.”18 These were only a few of the many complaints and reports of discrimination in public accommodations and violence against the race, including lynchings, that the newspaper received. By the 1890s, the newspaper

The Christian Recorder and the Cultivation of a Reading Culture 23 was inundated with so much of this type of mail that the editor asked readers to stop submitting the reports. Instead, he encouraged them to act on their own behalf: “It will do more good to decry justice with an eye on faith . . . the other ranging along the muzzle of a faithful Winchester, when necessary, than to constantly expose our revolting wounds to those too distant to help us.”19 Prominent African Americans such as Booker T. Washington wrote to the Christian Recorder often to critique black ministers, which led to a defense of the profession itself. Washington claimed that “over 70 percent of the Baptist and Methodist colored preachers are wholly unfit, morally, intellectually, or both, to lead the people.” One writer challenged the basis for Washington’s attack: “When a man condemns the entire Methodist ministry and possesses as limited knowledge of the class as one Prof. Washington, he lays himself open to the accusation either of prejudice or shallowness.” Others sought to discredit Washington’s position by aligning him with the “enemy”: “He joins the enemy when he charges that a large proportion of the colored Baptist and Methodist ministers in the South are wholly unfit to attempt to lead anyone. . . . May God save us from that class of men who labor in schools and colleges controlled by white people simply for loaves and fishes.” Washington echoed a widely promoted stereotype that black preachers were uneducated con men. The American Missionary Association issued a statement citing “the ignorant black preacher as one of the foremost obstacles to reforming Negro religion in the former Confederacy.”20 Throughout the nineteenth century, Washington continued to lambaste black preachers, including those in the AME Church, as a “class of leaders that eschewed hard labor in favor of political and professional life.” From his perspective, of all the careers, ministers seemed to have declined the most during Reconstruction, not only because they tended to be “ignorant” but also because they were “immoral men who claimed that they were called to preach.” In return, some AME ministers took Washington to task for his political views, particularly his desire to put “Negro equality off into a hazy future,” and his belief that “separate but equal facilities would be satisfac- tory.” At times the retorts veered into personal attacks. One minister wrote, “Prof. Washington can’t even make his school self-supporting and is forced to become a pandering beggar among whites.” The Philadelphia Preacher’s Association characterized Washington as “mischievous and slanderous.” One correspondent wrote, “I also saw through your paper a few weeks ago a vile slander upon the Baptist and Methodist Ministry of the South by one Prof. B. T. Washington, of an institution in Alabama. I don’t know the

24 The Christian Recorder and the Cultivation of a Reading Culture gentleman, nor have I heard of him before. Yet there might be a man of the race whose heart is so vile as to make an assault upon the great factors of his race.” T. M. D. Ward pounced on Washington’s rhetoric: “The paid sycophant, like Booker T. Washington, may conspire with our enemies to blacken and tarnish the fair name of our Afro-American pulpit, but when he and his money have perished, the colored ministry of the land will write their names so deep and plain on the annals of the age that no traducer, whether white or black, will find a chisel sharp enough to cut them out.” C. H. Taylor went after Washington for cowardly making a “willing surrender to southern racism,” writing, “What the Negro desires today is a Moses who will not lead him to the plow, for he knows the way there, but who will lead him to the point in this country where he can get all his manhood rights under the Constitution.”21 Henry McNeal Turner took issue with Washington’s “Atlanta Compro- mise” speech in his newspaper, the Voice of Missions. Turner was troubled by Washington’s refusal to address violence against African Americans and call for the end of Jim Crow segregation. If he was unwilling to address the most pressing social issues facing blacks, Turner argued, he should not have spoken about the plight of African Americans at all. He was particularly bothered by Washington’s suggestion that blacks only hoped for economic opportunities rather than additional social and political rights. “With all due respect to Professor Washington personally, for we do respect him personally, he will have to live a long time to undo the harm he has done our race,” he wrote. If not an outright traitor to the race, Turner felt Washington embodied a naïveté that did not anticipate the condemning use of his words by whites: “His remarks on social equality will be quoted by newspapers, magazines, periodicals, legislatures, congressmen, lawyers, judges, and all grades of whites to prove that the Negro race is satisfied with being degraded.” Turner gave Washington the benefit of the doubt that this was not his intention, adding, “Not that the Professor meant it, but such will be the construction given it by our civil and political enemies.”22 William S. Scarborough, a future president of Wilberforce University, excused Washington’s remarks as the product of financial necessity, which forced him to voice the perspectives of his sponsors in the industrialized North and conservative South: “Mr. Washington feels that he must get the $8,000 for his school annually from the state legislature of Alabama or more if possible. . . . his anecdotes and illustrations are not always of the highest order; they do not always illustrate the highest aspirations and emotions of our people.” Washington simply mirrored the viewpoints of those “who

The Christian Recorder and the Cultivation of a Reading Culture 25 are collecting for similar work; they appear at times to magnify the degra- dations of the people whom they seek to elevate.” While Washington was amply qualified to speak about educational issues in the South, contributors suggested, he should have little say about the broader issues of social and political rights facing the race. It was this lack of perspective that some readers believed kept Washington from being characterized as “the Moses of his race.”23 While an important medium for the exchange of ideas, the Christian Recorder continued to struggle financially. To cut costs, on June 12, 1869, Tanner decreased the number of pages of the newspaper from eight to four, but he assured readers that he had increased the amount of original material and only eliminated some advertisements and items exchanged from other editors. These changes would now allow Tanner to “call it our paper, before we could not.” The size of the pages of the newspaper increased, although the actual quantity of pages was reduced. The new format was warmly received within the AME community. Readers sent in glowing responses about the “enlarged Recorder.”24 The Christian Statesman heralded the Recorder as “another illustration to be added to those already given, of the cultivation which the negro is capable of attaining.” The Pittsburgh Christian Advocate touted that though the Recorder “has reduced its size . . . in every other respect improved its previous excellence.” John M. Langston wrote that the newspaper was “an excellent and able advocate of our people the country over.” Fanny M. Jackson also praised the paper: “I believe that the high tone and moral character of this little journal is doing much for the elevation of the mass of colored people North and South.” The Colored Citizens’ Monthly grudgingly acknowledged that the “Christian Recorder de- serves rank with the best journals of its class.”25 For those with reserva- tions about the changes, Tanner, over the next several weeks, described other Methodist newspapers that operated at a comparable size as the new Christian Recorder. In a series of editorials, Tanner emphasized that the more concise format was temporary. “How soon we shall be able to increase the size of the Recorder is somewhat uncertain; yet we have hopes that it will not be long,” he wrote.26 However, not all of the reviews were so unwaveringly positive. The Chris- tian Recorder’s competitors, such as the Colored Citizen, jumped on the new format for their own advantage. The editor wrote, “The Christian Recorder . . . comes to us with a new heading, and a reduction in size to about one half its former dimensions. . . . This change in the Recorder leaves the Citizen far ahead of any other paper, and it is our purpose in the future, as in the

26 The Christian Recorder and the Cultivation of a Reading Culture past, to keep it ahead in size, in the amount of matter especially adapted to the colored readers and in the amount of general miscellaneous reading.” Tanner retorted that the two newspapers were of equal length and the Recorder was a fourth of an inch wider. Using the June 19 issues as a point of comparison, Tanner noted that while the Recorder contained fifteen and a half columns of “original matter, fresh from our own pen, and the pens of our contributors,” the Citizen printed only five columns of “original matter,” with the rest consisting of state news.27 The value Tanner placed on reading is illustrated by the types of inducements that he and A. L. Stanford, the book manager, offered to try to motivate potential subscribers. If readers sent in the name of one “cash subscriber” along with the payment of one year’s subscription, Tanner offered to send them an AME Church Doctrine and Discipline or a copy of his work, The Negro’s Origin. For two, he would give “our beautifully engraved leather bound AME Hymn books, worth one dollar.” For each subsequent number of subscribers secured, the rewards increased from three “cheap” AME hymn books or one “superfine hymnbook with clasp” priced at $1.50 to a free copy of An Apology for African Methodism or a free yearly subscription to the newspaper for bringing in five subscribers. Tanner paid $1.00 for six or more subscribers, and for twenty, he promised an “Aluminous Gold Watch.” Tanner would send a monthly copy of Our School Day Visitor for a year to every subscriber.28 In February 1877, Henry McNeal Turner entered the fray as the general business manager of the Christian Recorder, and the tone of the requests for payment took a striking turn. Despite the financial difficulties, Turner called for upgrades to the press because the “type was old,” which he felt attributed to many of the typographical errors that had plagued the newspaper in the past. He also explained that they changed the size of the newspaper “because many of the ministers become petulant if their articles were printed on the inside columns, and to avoid the contingency as well as the cause of this dissatisfaction, and the charge of partiality on the part of the editor. . . . there will virtually be no inside or outside columns” and articles will have to “stand upon their own merits,” not on “their latitudinal connection with the paper.” Turner hoped that the cost of these improvements to the newspaper office would be paid with the recovery of delinquent debts and the addition of new subscribers. As added motivation, Turner threatened to publish the names of those whose payments had been late for over two years. He wrote, “If these delinquents do not settle their account, I shall notify them through the columns of the paper, and if they get insulted at it,

The Christian Recorder and the Cultivation of a Reading Culture 27 they can pay up and cool off.” Turner was aghast at the audacity of some readers who were behind on their bill yet complained about the delivery of their paper. Turner estimated that the newspaper was owed over five thousand dollars by subscribers.29 Turner increasingly expressed his frustration at the lack of support from the congregants across the country. After he sent books and newspapers “in good faith,” it would be “the last we hear of them,” he wrote. “They neither pay nor make any effort to pay; yet if I were to express the least distrust when their orders come in, what a howl they would raise.” Turner referred to those who refused to pay as an “enemy to our Publishing interest” and “an enemy to God and to his church.” When some subscribers who were in arrears praised the quality of the newspaper, Turner responded, “What do I care whether every body or any body is well pleased, if I am not meeting expenses. . . . I care nothing about empty compliments.” He added, “But brethren, if you break me down, I shall let every body know who did it. I shall publish the names and amounts they are due this Concern.” Tanner too lamented that many members and even some ministers failed to read the Christian Recorder. Without reading the newspaper, Tanner asserted, ministers would have a limited worldview, be unaware of the bigger issues facing the denomination, and be oblivious to “the state of their work.” To support Tanner’s efforts, the 1876 AME General Conference mandated that all ministers read the Christian Recorder, writing that the “minister who does not read his church paper, is unfit to have an appointment.”30 In addition to the Christian Recorder, during the postbellum period, greater consideration was given to the writing of the denominational history. The anniversary of key events in the church’s past sparked historical writing. Fifty years after the official establishment of the AME Church, Daniel Alexander Payne wrote The Semi-Centenary and the Retrospection of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (1866), and one year later Tanner penned his Apology for African Methodism. The celebration of the centennial of the exodus from St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church led by Richard Allen in 1787 inspired another series of histories. In 1888, Payne wrote his Recollections of Seventy Years, and three years later he published his History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. In the 1880s, letters written to the Christian Recorder reflected a growing concern for the preservation of AME Church history. One letter stated that “much valuable information relative to the value, integrity and faithfulness of the devoted fathers of our church is lost simply because they had not the ability to write their own biographies, and those who were capable of performing the task failed

28 The Christian Recorder and the Cultivation of a Reading Culture to do so.” In 1884, the AME book manager began selling “to ministers and all who desire to preserve the History of the AME Church” the minutes from the last three general conferences for $1.25. The manager confidently predicted that “those in whose hands the volume may be found in the next decade would not take a ten dollar bill for it.”31 However, these were just a few of the histories and doctrinal treatises put out by the denominational press in the 1880s and 1890s. Alexander Wayman produced My Recollections of African M.E. Ministers or Forty Years Experience in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (1881) and the Cyclopaedia of African Methodism (1882), Hightower T. Kealing wrote History of African Methodism in Texas (1885), Henry McNeal Turner penned The Genius and Theory of Methodist Polity (1885), and Wesley J. Gaines wrote African Methodism in the South (1891). These histories described key events in the history of the AME Church and those men and women who pressed the church forward. AME ministers took eclectic approaches to their histories. Some authors analyzed their own lives to illumine broader themes in AME history, such as Alexander Wayman in My Recollections and Daniel Payne in Recollections of Seventy Years. It was their firsthand experience with the specific church events, conferences, and regions that bolstered their credibility as chroni- clers of the church’s past. While Tanner’s Apology for African Methodism was wide-ranging, covering multiple theological topics, the formation of varied districts, and detailing the lives of early ministers, other authors were more precise about the scope of their projects and their ability to comment on particular topics. H. T. Kealing wrote about the History of African Methodism in Texas, and for his African Methodism in the South, Wesley J. Gaines con- sciously chose to focus on Georgia and those neighboring states that figured specifically into the narrative. “It has been my aim to touch upon the adjoining States to Georgia only so far as seemed necessary to a proper understanding of the spread of the work and when the relationship is so close as to make one a necessary complement of the other, and so far as my own personal experience in those States would warrant my adding them to my list,” he explained. His own Georgian background lent credibility to his study: “It is not the purpose to make this book one of abstract history. I have moved among these Southern scenes from birth, and with the birth of the A.M.E. Church in the South, I have ever since been identified with its Georgia history.”32 Tu r ner ’s Methodist Polity was both a manual for new ministers and a com- mentary on relying on formal training, rather than the “soul.” His introduction professed, “The following pages are intended to supply a want long felt

The Christian Recorder and the Cultivation of a Reading Culture 29 among the neophyte ministry and laity of our church. Even college training seldom, if ever, fits young men for practical work in the Methodist ministry. There is a qualification that comes only through years of experience—an ordeal of toil and hard labor which is indispensable to an effective ministry; and a ministry that is void of effectiveness is worthless to God and man. The young minister, therefore, who allows himself to be flattered into the idea that he is fitted for the pastorate because he happens to understand a little about the rules of college classicality, is laboring under a lamentable mistake, a mistake he may discover too late to remedy; the sooner, therefore, he rids himself of it the better for him and the people he may serve.”33 By the time of the appearance of Payne’s History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the late nineteenth century, denominational writing looked much more like what we would consider modern historical work. Payne drew upon church archival records, journals of fellow ministers, quarterly and annual conference minutes, and private records from leaders and members to construct the most comprehensive history of the church from the late eighteenth century to the book’s publication in 1891. Yet Payne still spoke about history as a conveyor of truth and an affirmation of the divine. Both “sacred” and “secular” history, according to Payne, revealed God’s power and ultimate control over human events.34 While many of these works were straightforwardly historical in nature, even theological treatises such as Tanner’s Apology and Turner’s Methodist Polity grounded their ideologies within particular understandings of the denomination’s history and made assertions based on their reading of that shared past. AME historians wrote during a new era in the publishing industry where the formation of national companies and the rise of mass production led to an unprecedented quantity of books and magazines. Multiple editions of black histories, the distribution of sample copies, and broadly conceived advertising campaigns disseminated authors’ post-emancipation visions for African Americans more widely than ever before. In turn, African American writers had increased access to contemporary literary circles and trends in intellectual thought. As the education level of African American ministers continued to increase, so too did their voices on the national stage.35 This history fever within African American churches also led to competing portrayals of denominational roles in American religious history. When Reverend J. W. Hood suggested that the establishment of the AME Zion Church (AMEZ) may have actually proceeded that of the AME Church, J. P. Campbell wrote an entire article in the Christian Recorder as a retort to the perceived slight. Campbell took him to task in particular for his skills as

30 The Christian Recorder and the Cultivation of a Reading Culture a recorder of the past. Hood “ought to know as a historian and chief minister in the Church of God . . . Richard Allen and his place in history.” Even further, Campbell vowed to “defend our mother Bethel Church against all assaults made upon her by you and others” and those who “seek to destroy the Church of the fathers to make a name for themselves.” At the same time, AME historians measured their efforts against the abundance of white ME Church histories, believing that this deficiency of literature could have severe ramifications for the next generation of African Methodist leaders. They coveted the ability of the ME Church to “refer to and read with pride the lives of her Heddings, Cartwrights, Simpsons &c” while African Methodists were forced to ask, “Who has read the life and labors of Bishop Waters or Morris Brown, or Wm. Paul Quinn recorded in book form?” Without the knowledge of those who came before them, letters to the Christian Recorder anticipated a declension in the quality of the ministry. They desired for the “lives of our heroic and devoted men recorded in book form that the youth of the church may know and read of how much devolution, toil and suffering was necessary to formulate and continue the church, of which we are all so justly proud.”36 Historians sought to have their works participate in the public discussions currently going on in the church. In his History of African Methodism in Texas, when recounting the typical AME itinerant encounter with a black household, Kealing prioritized denominational loyalty over racial identity: “The missionary, in telling who, and what he was, did not dwell upon the word ‘African.’ He was a Methodist preacher.” This pioneering archetype, deeply committed to his denomination, “never left without reciting the history of his church, and setting forth its claims in full, even at the risk of re- versing the good opinion which his genial, friendly manner had caused.”37 Tanner in his Apology and Kealing in his history on Texas both praised the natural oratorical abilities of the early missionaries. However, more broadly for the African American community, Tanner viewed education as providing a necessary civilizing influence upon the race. “The cold-blooded, unenthusiastic Saxon may do without education,” he declared, “but not the Negro: he is too rushing, and demands a pilot, else he will smash things!” Kealing described the “pioneers” who “were remarkable men; how remarkable none can know who do not know who do not realize what they had to undergo. They were uneducated men, who owed none of their success to showy attainment, or glamour, but entirely to natural force of character, and superior cast of mind. They were the same class of men who were most trusted by their masters, and most feared by them.”38

The Christian Recorder and the Cultivation of a Reading Culture 31 Even where an author began his historical narrative had implications about the politics of racial identity in the nineteenth century. For Kealing, arguing a case for an ancient connection to Africa was wrong headed, since the history of the church began in America: “No, it is not for us, who should prospect, and make the future, to delve beneath the deposits of pre- historic ages, seeking to exhume evidence of past greatness, not for us to bend, with knitted brow, over hieroglyphics, seeking to decipher the narrative of Ethiopia’s greatness, but to turn our attention to that part of our history having a more important and immediate bearing upon our future.”39 From another angle, Tanner characterized the AME preacher as a “true American, possessing all the frankness, characteristic of his country. Of all nationalities, the American is the frankest.”40 The reception of the denominational narratives was overwhelmingly positive. Reviews of Tanner’s Apology declared,

Every intelligent person should have a copy. It is in this book that all may learn just what colored men have done and are doing to educate themselves and improve their condition. It also clearly exhibits one striking truth, viz., that the A.M.E. Church has done more on less capital, than any other Christian denomination in the land. We consider this book the work of a model man . Brother Tanner has shown just what colored men can do, and how much more they would do if they had a chance. He has collated many facts relative to our Church and people and arranged them with systematical taste. He has given autobiographical sketches of the Bishops, General Officers, and a large number of the Elders, Deacons, preachers and members of the A.M.E. Church. No book of this kind has ever before been published. It is really, a complete history of our Church and has a strait regard for truth and justice in all its statements. We heartily recommend this book to all our ministers, members and friends. It ought to be in the possession of every man and woman of color as well as all others.41

The New York Tribune, for the most part, praised Tanner’s treatise and characterized the work as “devoted to the history and defense of a branch of the Christian Church established through the labors of Richard Allen, the first African bishop in America, and a man of great energy, ability, and moral worth. The volume presents an interesting statement of the origin and progress of the ecclesiastical body, with sketches of the lives and char-

32 The Christian Recorder and the Cultivation of a Reading Culture acters of several of its most active ministers and members. Though not without a tone of boasting, which adds nothing to its strength, it affords a valuable illustration of the African character, and is written in a style that is not only earnest, but often eloquent.”42 Another letter, signed “Alpha,” offered a review of An Apology:

I have critically examined the “Apology,” and I am free to say, that for perspicuity, strength, neatness, simplicity, originality, and depth of thought, it reflects great credit on the author, and stamps him as a writer of no mean attainments. There are some books, Mr. Editor, as you are aware, that we read once, and then placed them on the shelf forever, they scarcely bear reading once, but the one under consideration is of another class; to speak briefly, and to the point, it is a readable book, and this cannot be said of many others, claiming a much higher order of merit. It evinces in all of its parts, talent of the highest order,— the production of a mastermind. I consider it second to none ever published by a colored man in this country; superior to a great many published by the opposite class, and demonstrates most conclusively how “Methodism has degraded the negro.” Every minister of the A.M.E. Church, every member, every friend, and every enemy should have a copy, and I shall do all in my power to give it an extensive circulation. . . . It is really a complete history of our Church, and has a strict regard for truth and justice in all its statements.43

However, some did raise concerns about the histories. One author identified only as “Hannibal” offered a scathing critique of Tanner’s work: “I have just completed a perusal of ‘An Apology for African Methodism,’ and while my expectations have not been fully met,—yet I have been disappointed in many parts of the work—at the depth of Scholastic thought,— and at the amount of real labor expended by the Author in collecting materials for his very interesting and useful volume,—of course it cannot be denied—but what many errors,—even blunders will be found in this edition, and it would do the author an injustice to say otherwise,—but these it is hoped, will be remedied in a second edition.” Hannibal also took those who contributed to the volume to task, such as Martin Delany, whom he felt went “off on a wild airy theological flight, upon a subject both absurd and untenable,—his theory is perfectly inconsistent with reason, and if followed up logically, will refute itself,—but I suppose this to be one of the ‘major’s

The Christian Recorder and the Cultivation of a Reading Culture 33 peculiarities.’” Hannibal saved his strongest “objection” for the books bind- ing, which he felt was “positively miserable,—and were it not for respect to the Author, not one book in ten could be sold. The writers committed a fatal mistake in not having this book published by some of the large eastern establishments.” Despite the long list of misgivings he expressed about the work, Hannibal concluded that the “book should be in the hands of every member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.—It is well worth reading,—giving a brief history of all the leading men in the Church, both of the clergy and laity, together with a history of the organization, and answers to many objections brought against Methodism. We should say that it is not an apology, but a defense—for African Methodism, and as it has a mission to fulfil—we commend it to all.”44 Although serving a variety of purposes, reviewers modeled the kind of critical analysis that they hoped to instill more broadly in congregations across the country, evaluating the AME literature based on how well the histories translated to the contemporary concerns of the church. Regarding Tanner’s Apology, J. P. Campbell wrote, “I am not only pleased with it, as a well-written book for elegance of style, perspicuity and purity of diction— a work that will satisfy the taste of the critical reader, but in my heart, I do most sincerely thank God, that it is a book that exactly meets a want of the times. I boldly predict for it great success.”45 Some authors, such as Payne, used reviews as a vehicle to cross-promote their own work. “Of these chapters I can freely say, that I have been pleased with their terseness and adaptation to the purpose and scope of the work,” he wrote. “I consider them, both for perspicuity and point, an excellent supplement to my ‘Semi- Centenary and Retrospection,’ and, therefore, hope the book may obtain a wide circulation.” Although they were historically based works, reviewers often based their evaluations on whether the books could speak to the present. C. S. Smith praised Tanner’s Outlines of History and Government for its practical relevance in the racially and politically charged climate of 1884: “It is a weapon both defensive and offensive, and by its skillful use I can silence the last battery of the enemy when they open fire along the line of ‘superior descent.’”46 The histories were meant to be correctives to the misinforma- tion circulating about the origins and future of the AME Church. John W. Stevenson called Tanner’s Apology “a work of rare merit, and destined to correct many of the false opinions entertained relative to the African Methodist Episcopal Church.”47 The Plaindealer critiqued Payne’s Recollections suggesting that the early AME leaders may not have had the same stature as those in other traditions and forecasting that the AME Church was in the “throes

34 The Christian Recorder and the Cultivation of a Reading Culture of death.” The Recorder sharply rebuked both their interpretation of Payne’s work and their characterization of the state of the denomination.48 A number of other histories were also met with rave reviews. T. G. Steward supported Alexander Wayman’s My Recollections of African Method- ism. “The story is told with a frankness and simplicity that combine to make it decidedly refreshing,” he noted. “It does not set out to defend any theories or combat any prejudices; nor can the work boast of any displays of learned argument or dry-as-dust philosophy; but the book is a continuous narrative of the most interesting, significant, and sometimes thrilling facts, related in such a manner as to inspire confidence and win sympathy.”49 William H. Yeocum also wrote glowingly about Wayman’s work: “It not only shows that he has a wonderfully vivid memory, but it is replete with deep, matured thought and truths which the church and world ought to know.”50 He was not alone in his praise. Others wrote, “This book abounds with thrilling incidents of early ministers in the A.M.E. Church and the hardships and per- secutions which they met with. Many historical facts will be found in this volume that are recorded nowhere else. We are glad that the Bishop has given them to the public, that they may be handed down for posterity.”51 T. G. Steward’s own tribute to his mother, Memoirs of Mrs. Rebecca Steward, was also warmly received. Readers took note that rather than a biography of the “heroic deeds of a military chieftain,” the book offered the life of “a quiet, unostentatious, Godly, woman’s career in life and her glorious triumphant death,” crediting her with “coining rich genius of thought, both in prose and in poetry, which will occupy a prominent place in our literature.”52 Levi J. Coppin described Wesley J. Gaines’s African Methodism in the South as “one of the most valuable works that the church has produced. Like all well written histories it will grow more valuable with age. When one begins to read it, it is hard to stop. Chapter after chapter may be read, and instead of growing tired the anxiety to continue will become more intense.”53 Gaines’s work sold well. The Christian Recorder reported, “You will be surprised to learn that one thousand copies of ‘African Methodism in the South or Twenty- five Years of Freedom,’ have already been disposed of, setting the handsome sum of seventeen hundred dollars.”54 Another reviewer observed that “the book is well written, is in good diction and a style that at times is excellent. No man interested in the Afro-American will lay this book aside after reading without thanking God for African Methodism and Wesley J. Gaines.”55 Reviewers of Payne’s histories believed his work would be influential among AME Church members, particularly the young people. Rev. C. T. Shafefr stated that Payne’s Recollections of Seventy Years “cannot fail to inspire

The Christian Recorder and the Cultivation of a Reading Culture 35 the colored youth, especially of this land, with new zeal and energy and to higher and nobler purposes in their struggle against the odds in the race of life; as it most forcibly illustrates the old adage: ‘Where there is a will there is a way.’” Similarly, advertisements for Payne’s Recollections described the book as telling of “persons, places, and events of which this generation has but little or no knowledge.” A number of articles in the Christian Recorder pointed out that “there is rising a generation who knew not Pharaoh nor the fathers,” stressing the need for “refreshing the memory of the fathers, and do not forget the foremothers. Impart instruction, kindle new enthusiasm, gather and preserve the literature, assemble the people, organize centennial circles among adults, juvenile centennial clubs among the young, thus moving along the line.”56 Reviewers and church historians alike contextualized the narratives within the current condition of the denomination. H. T. Kealing, author of the History of African Methodism in Texas, stated that he hoped to “awaken an interest, hitherto unfelt, in those who have given little consideration to the race or its doings.” Even further, Kealing’s history was praised for being a firsthand account: “The above is the title of a 238 page volume from the pen of Prof. H. T. Kealing. After a careful reading of the book I am prepared to say that it contains a store of information, embracing the origin and progress of the Church in the State, which will prove a valuable addition to the library of every African Methodist in the world. The author does not narrate what he had heard in regard to the early conflicts of the founders of the Church in this State, but as a rule gives what his own eye has seen. The thrilling accounts are both amusing and instructive, while at the same time they call forth our holy indignation upon those who did so much to injure the cause of truth. Secure and read this book and you will receive new energy to work in the cause of right.”57 Whether or not the goal of the history was stated in the preface, AME Church members interpreted the books on the past through the lens of the present. One writer argued that any reader of Payne’s Semi-Centenary retrospection “cannot fail to see its identification with the anti-slavery cause, and the education of the proscribed race; though not always acknowledged, it has always been a faithful auxiliary to both of these noble causes—Emancipation and Education.”58 Leaders, editors, contributors, and reviewers called for African Amer- icans to build up their home libraries for their own knowledge and, more important, their children’s educational future. Thus many histories were advertised as necessary manuals for the AME Church home. Regarding Payne’s History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Shafefr wrote,

36 The Christian Recorder and the Cultivation of a Reading Culture “This book should be in every colored man’s home in America and perused by every member of each family as an inspiration for every fainting heart and as a constant reminder to us of the rock whence we were hewn and the pit from which were digged with the only source of real strength and courage for fallen men.” The histories were constructed so that the widest audience could have access to the book and read the work in short incre- ments, since many of the readers had little free time. Shafefr pointed out some key features of the book, noting, “This book is laid off into 33 chapters, thus putting it in the most convenient form for perusal by a people who have not the complete control of their time, and very few of whom are burdened with the luxury of a superabundance of leisure moments. These short chapters greatly facilitate the reading and enhances the interest of the book.” Shafefr remarked on the presence of rare portraits of past leaders of the AME Church and praised the clarity of the writing: “The intrinsic merit and value of the book can hardly at present be appreciated, much less expressed by one of my limited ability in the descriptive art. And yet I am impressed that it chiefly lies in the fact of the terseness of expression, the clear and forcible diction, the clearness of the conceptions, the boldness of the outline of the whole narration.”59 While these works were a good start, James A. Handy anticipated a comprehensive denominational history: “The growth of the African Methodist Episcopal Church is a nobler theme, which yet awaits its historian. In Bishop Payne’s Semi-Centenary, and Mr. Tanner’s Apology, we have not this history, but valuable contributions to it. . . . As a collection of facts the Retrospection and the Apology, present to the future historian all the material, (beautifully arranged) that had been developed from the setting of the Convention in 1815, to the close of the Baltimore Annual Conference of 1867.” It would be the duty a future historian to delineate the remaining history. Handy called for the diaries of the great leaders of the church, such as Wayman, Campbell, Ward, Brown, Turner, Cain, and Shorter, to be “copied and preserved” so that this important history would not be lost. “Let every fact, item and incident be secured, that all the light of the past, and passing event of our Church be thrown upon our future history,” he added.60 Tanner too felt that there was a gap in the AME literature. In July 1884, Tanner launched the Church Review to showcase the intellectual acu- men and quality of African American writings. Tanner left the editorship in 1888 to be followed by Levi J. Coppin (1888–96) and Hightower T. Kealing (1896–1912). The inaugural issue declared that the mission of the periodical

The Christian Recorder and the Cultivation of a Reading Culture 37 was to provide a site for the brightest minds of the denomination to share their excellent work including poetry, histories of key figures, theological analysis, and perspectives on contemporary issues.61 The Church Review was well received. Reverend I. F. Aldridge commented, “In it we read logic on logic, and rhetoric on rhetoric, from the learned and cultured of our race. . . . In it we find a masterpiece of Negro genius and ability.”62 Henry M. Turner remarked that “the first issue of our Review places the A.M.E. Church in the front of all the colored churches upon the continent” and anticipated including material from the Review in his future speeches and sermons.63 During the late nineteenth century, the Christian Recorder received numerous reviews and commentaries about the Church Review that were almost unanimously positive.64 Ministers urged their congregations to subscribe to and read the magazine.65 At the general conference of the Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church, W. G. Alexander of the AME Church, emphasized the comprehensiveness of the Church Review which he felt addressed “every topic known to the literary, scientific and philosophical world.”66 By the close of the nineteenth century, the AME Church had overcome many obstacles to firmly establish not only one but two major literary endeavors, namely, the Christian Recorder and Church Review. By 1891, Daniel A. Payne had penned the definitive history of the denomination and AME ministers had produced a wealth of histories. These authors had not only in- culcated a culture of reading among AME congregations but also, through reviews in the newspapers, taught their audience skills by which to assess the growing body of treatises. It was through this various media that AME leaders, laity, and interested observers would make their case for migration westward, wrestle with what it meant to be an “African” tradition, and debate the efficacy of African emigration.

38 The Christian Recorder and the Cultivation of a Reading Culture Chapter 3

Western Zions In “Go West, Young Men,” an article published March 2, 1882, in the official AME newspaper, the Christian Recorder, Bishop Benjamin T. Tanner pleaded for those African Americans considering emigration to Africa to re- think their choice and join those relocating to the American West. According to Tanner, the West not only offered additional professional and agricultural opportunities but also meshed much more closely with the “true spirit” of the African American race. Throughout his tenure as editor of the Christian Recorder, from 1868 to 1884, Tanner made political, economic, biblical, and scientific arguments for the “Americanness” of blacks. To live up to their full potential, Tanner asserted, African Americans had to embrace an American identity, and as such, the most appropriate destinations for migration did not lay outside of the United States but in the site of the quintessential American spirit, the West.1 Although the Great Migration from the South to urban centers in the North in the early twentieth century and the “Back to Africa” movements of the late nineteenth century and their role in the politics of racial destiny have been duly noted in the historical record, much less attention has been given to the distinctive redemptive vision many African Americans held for the American West after the Civil War. While there have been thoughtful works on post-Reconstruction migration, such as Nell Irvin Painter’s seminal work Exodusters and Michele Mitchell’s Righteous Propagation, sec- ondary literature on African Americans prior to this period in the West tend to focus on the individual accomplishments of black “pioneers” and the participation of blacks in particular historical events such as the Gold Rush in California.2 Although the disillusionment over the unrecognized promises of Reconstruction and the harsh political and economic realities of life in America partly explain the movement of African Americans out of the South, many African American denominations such as the AME Church, far from being passive and reactive, laid plans for church expansion in the West as early as the 1830s. Nineteenth-century AME Church leaders and laity fervently debated the meaning of the West, the feasibility of moving, the suitability of the region relative to other locations, such as the North, Canada, and Liberia, and the biblical sanction for such a migration. This chapter begins to chart the religious map of African Methodism in the American West using Tanner’s tenure as editor of the AME Christian Recorder as a window into the contested understandings of the region in the AME Church. Tanner’s editorship provides a distinctive perspective because he exerted a disproportionate influence on the tenor of the discourse surrounding westward migration, writing editorials and interpreting the importance of the issues for his audience by offering his own introductory remarks to letters and articles submitted to the newspaper. In part, the intensity of Tanner’s advocacy for the American West was rooted in his stark opposition to a large-scale emigration of African Americans to Liberia. In this way, he had a motive to paint a positive picture of the West that rivaled those of the Back to Africa advocates, who asserted that a return to the continent of their ancestors was the sole avenue for a glorious rebirth of the race and the pro- phetic fulfillment of its potential. To be clear, Tanner was not disingenuous in his support of westward migration. In fact, from his understanding of the origin, history, and destiny of the races, the American West was a natural fit for a generation of African Americans who had built the United States, defended their country in wars, and been an essential part of the American fabric for over two hundred years. Because of his strong stances, Tanner’s editorials provoked impassioned responses in his audience, who wrote letters and sent in traveler’s accounts, descriptions of events and regions, and articles to either rebut or support Tanner’s characterization of the West. In them, we glimpse the diverse images and visions of the West held by many AME congregants. The varied sources provide a point of comparison for the competing imaginings of the sacred spaces in which the racial destiny of African Americans would be fulfilled. On March 13, 1869, in the latest installment of Henry Highland Garnet’s series on “Pioneers of the AME Church” in the Christian Recorder, Garnet highlighted the achievements of “Rev. William Paul Quinn, Third Bishop.” He described one religious meeting on the western frontier that was threat-

40 Western Zions ened to be disrupted by “ruffians” until Quinn grabbed “an ample green stick” and sprung into action:

Thus armed, he walked out among the rioters, who received him with a storm of jeers and derisive shouts. But the tables were speedily turned. Right and left the undaunted Quinn swept his ponderous weapon, and right and left ruffians fell like wheat before the reaper’s scythe. Piercing cries for mercy began to be heard, instead of oaths and obscene epithets. On and on brother Quinn went through the band of villains, just precisely as though he was threshing corn. Some cried to the Holy Vir- gin, and others called on the twelve Apostles, and some in bad English called in earnest on the name of the second person in the Trinity, and others invoked the assistance of the blessed martyrs, and very many more saints than were generally known to be recorded in the sacred calendar of the Roman Church. As- tonished at the boldness of a single man, and intensely pained by his blows, the ranks of the enemy were broken, and they fled like chaff before a tempest. . . . Rev. gentleman did not speak a single word, and when the work was finished, he calmly took his seat on the stand, and since that time Methodist camp meetings have never been disturbed in Allegheny county.3

Whereas narratives of manly exploits in the West are hardly unique for this time period, what is distinctive is the particular manifestations of the anxiety over achieving “true manhood” expressed by many male AME Church leaders. While the founder of the denomination, Richard Allen, and others, had established the tradition after refusing to be mistreated in the white St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia at the end of the eighteenth century and the early itinerants proved their manhood on the western frontier, post-emancipation AME leaders had few comparable outlets with which to put to rest any doubts about their own masculinity. As younger men had new frontiers to conquer by performing missionary work among the newly freed slaves or traveling abroad to evangelize their African brethren, elder statesmen and leaders in the church had neither the physical ability nor the desire to engage in such activities. Instead, the pulpit, which historically had been a space where both men and women expressed and lived out their divine calling to share the Gospel message,

Western Zions 41 became increasingly masculinized and the vocation of minister synonymous with manhood. In 1867, in his Apology for African Methodism, Bishop Benjamin T. Tanner, when characterizing the future of the AME Church, asserted that the key measure of denominational success would be the attainment of true manhood. Those who best optimized the pinnacle of masculinity, he averred, were the early itinerant ministers who spread the gospel and expanded the denomination westward during the first half of the century. Tanner defined the ideal modern AME preacher as eloquent and passionate with an uncom- promising faith. The contemporary preacher, like the early missionaries, needed only a “horse, a saddle-bag, a Bible, a hymn-book, and a “glorious field for work” to spread the Christian message. However, in addition to spiritual traits, Tanner noted the physical attributes that aided AME preachers on the frontier: “Of strong muscles, a strength not to be resisted, with a will that recognizes no impossibilities, they are just the men to work at the oar, and work they do!”4 Tanner’s mention of the size and strength of the early itinerants was one of the first of many accounts by nineteenth- century AME historians who used the bodies and experiences of missionaries in the past as sites to sort through contemporary concerns about masculinity. When nineteenth-century AME leaders constructed denominational histories, they interpreted past experiences through their understanding of the present. As Donald Byrne demonstrated in his work on the folklore of nineteenth-century American Methodist itinerants, stories of the early heroic efforts of ministers served to increase a collective identity among Methodist clergy. Similarly, the exploits of early AME missionaries provided not only a model of frontier piety but also a location to publicly work through the intersection of spirituality and masculinity. AME histories, like their Methodist counterparts, were “communal representations” that presented “the past in terms of what the present ought to be” and allowed readers to “participate in and recapitulate primitive ideals for present and future purposes.”5 In this way, the bodily constructions of early denominational missionaries were not simply descriptions, but spoke to the present challenges and concerns surrounding African American manhood in the discourse of the AME Church. AME ministers used images of the early denominational itinerants in a variety of ways to communicate notions of masculinity to the next generation of ministers. While white evangelicals also glorified their first traveling preachers, AME ministers met the particular critiques of black manhood

42 Western Zions leveled by white periodicals with racialized images of black manhood on the frontier. These leaders tried, with some difficulty, to reconcile their embrace of popular notions of masculinity with their own growing allegiance to the “politics of respectability.” As white Americans increasingly cited social power and physical strength as markers of manhood, AME historians understood their ecclesiastical positions, educational achievements, and formalized attire as connoting status and influence and looked to the past for exemplars of physical force. From William Paul Quinn’s physical prowess to scale the Allegheny Mountains, to the booming voices and tattered clothes worn by early missionaries, to Texas and skin tone, the historians used all aspects of physicality at their disposal to make their case for African American masculinity. Through AME denominational histories and periodicals such as the AME Church Review and the Christian Recorder, ministers depicted the physiques, dress, and oratorical abilities of their forefathers to answer the current challenges to their own manhood and frame theological discussions of masculinity. Tanner’s emphasis on masculinity is not surprising since much of the public discourse in the AME Church in the second half of the nineteenth century centered on the achievement of manhood. David Leverenz has argued persuasively that new notions of manhood appeared during this period which evaluated manliness on “individual enterprise,” “competitive success,” and “power over others.” Departing from prior conceptions of masculinity, these attributes were understood to be accessible to all men. Those who were unable to succeed had only themselves to blame. Leverenz encapsulated this rendering of masculinity at midcentury as a “compensa- tory response to fears of humiliation.”6 Likewise, Gail Bederman has examined the ways middle-class whites viewed manhood as inseparable from “bodily strength and social authority.” Manhood was not something one was born with, but a “standard to live up to, an ideal of male perfectibility to be achieved.”7 For many African Americans of the time, prejudice, discrimination and structural and institutional barriers to positions of power would make demonstrating concrete evidence of masculine achievement nearly impossible. The publishing boom of AME histories in the final decades of the nineteenth century coincided with the passing of several key church leaders who had guided the denomination through the struggles of slavery and the post- Reconstruction period, including five bishops. In addition to Daniel Payne in 1893, Jabez Pitt Campbell died in August 1891, John Mifflin Brown in March 1893, Thomas Marcus Decatur Ward in June 1894, and Alexander W.

Western Zions 43 Wayman in November 1893.8 In the 1880s, Benjamin Lee, the newly elected editor of the denominational newspaper, the Christian Recorder, spent his inaugural year eulogizing the great bishops and leaders of the church.9 It was a time of self-doubt about who would take up the charge where the fallen leaders had left off.10 The deaths of the ministers led to reflection about their lives and the history of the AME Church and seemed to portend an uncertain future and potential leadership void in the church. Although historians noted that the departed bishops demonstrated un- paralleled manhood, articles to AME periodicals questioned the masculinity of younger, contemporary ministers and their ability to measure up to the standards of the past. Daniel A. Payne’s life was a particularly hard act to follow, because for many in the AME Church he represented the ideal of manhood. “Many honor the name of Bishop Daniel A. Payne,” Mrs. J. P. Sampson wrote, “from childhood he has been my ideal great man, and possibly he is to-day a pattern, giving inspiration for an exalted life to more young men and women than any other public man.”11 Many contributors suggested that the next generation, particularly young men, having not endured the trials of their forefathers, might lack the requisite traits to lead the church into the future.12 Some younger preachers took issue with this characterization, sensing that the nostalgia regarding the bishops was the source of the “prejudice” toward them. In some cases newer ministers were the scapegoats for recurring problems in the church such as the low retention rate of young people. Some attributed this flight to the younger ministers, who were “too liberal in their interpretation of our Church laws and our duties as Church members.” The Reverend W. G. Stewart contended that because many young ministers were primarily concerned with being popular in their churches, they failed to correct their congregations when “harmful acts” occurred, which “demoralize[d] the church and foster[ed] erroneous ideas in the young mind.”13 The common advice was to defer to one’s elders until established in the ministry. One self-identified young minister, the Reverend A. L. Gaines, wrote, “Let us be patient and abide our time.”14 By the end of the nineteenth century, manhood was intimately con- nected to the elevation of the race as a whole. H. Henderson Smith felt that the survival of African Americans in America rested upon three options: submission, immigration, or “the proper exercise of manhood.” For Smith, this meant confronting the discrimination that African Americans faced head on: “The proper exercise of manhood may cost the sacrifice of a few lives, but could we not better enjoy the blissful realities of the world to come, having died for our wives, daughters, sons and home like men, than to allow

44 Western Zions any one to drive us to some foreign land to die by disease, or with our hands folded and faces toward the dust die under the lash?”15 However, while cerebral tasks such as recording the history of the AME Church,16 creating theological works, or holding a ministerial post might be understood as “manly” endeavors because of the social authority that was ascribed to these activities and titles, few of the established leaders in the contemporary church demonstrated the bodily strength and power over others in American society so closely tied to nineteenth-century notions of masculinity.17 Obituaries and tributes to leaders in the church who had passed away pointed to the enduring manhood that exemplified their lives, but who would guide the church into the twentieth-century?18 To answer that question, AME leaders turned to an earlier moment of uncertainty in the denomination’s history as it attempted to expand westward and called on its current ministers to emulate the trailblazers of the past. In their constructions of manhood, many AME authors and leaders did not look to the educated and refined ministers of the contemporary church. Instead, they looked to the past for men who had engaged in the strenuous life of the itinerant ministry, demonstrating bodily strength and intestinal fortitude. Historians in the church remembered a golden age of masculinity to draw upon as a model for the present generation. The authors constructed images of the vocation of minister and life on the road that held up the itinerant preacher as the exemplar of true manhood. These preachers illustrated masculinity by consistently overcoming challenging environ- ments and situations, particularly hardships faced on the frontier, and having a large stature that demonstrated physical strength and a God-given manhood. AME historians highlighted the careers of those traveling ministers that gave up the comforts of civilization for the brutality of the West. In 1885, H. T. Kealing in his History of African Methodism in Texas equated masculinity with success in the mission field. He wrote, “We are not content, even, that the Missionary should remain on a level with the great men of earth. We claim for him the highest type of admirable manhood, in that he leaves the cushioned pew, and sure salary for the doubtful allurements of hardships deprivation, and misrepresentation.” Kealing emphasized the travails faced by many itinerant preachers. He quoted Reverend Joshua Goins as saying, “to have success I was compelled to suffer with hunger and go without de- cent clothes; I was hunted like wild cats in this country. I have gone three days without eating; I slept on the ground, and a stone was my pillow.” It was a given that extreme sacrifice accompanied the life of the minister on

Western Zions 45 the frontier.19 Even those physically disabled from the brutality of slavery took to the mission field. Kealing described Reverend Emanuel Hammitt, who “though crippled, and often prostrated . . . was all energy and enthusiasm.”20 Kealing’s missionary narratives focused on particular incidents in Texas that exemplified leadership, perseverance, courage, and boundless independence regardless of the circumstances. While some favored European features, other historians positively portrayed African attributes. Kealing described Reverend J. R. V. Thomas as “well proportioned in breadth and height, a pure black, with the most beauti- ful teeth, and hair that shows how really comely the hair of the Negro is when cultivated, brilliant eyes, nose that is aquiline, and skin that is as smooth as a child’s.” In his work on AME missionaries to Texas, Kealing described a series of missionaries of darker complexion without much elaboration, while those of lighter complexion received more detailed descriptions. Kealing depicted William F. Love as “about 5 feet, 10 inches high, and will weigh about 175 pounds. His color is dark-brown.” John H. Connor was described as “of very dark complexion, heavy set, about 5 feet, 7 inches high, weighing 190 pounds, of a pleasant expression of countenance, mustache but no beard.” J. F. P. Bradley was represented as “of a light brown color, of medium size and weight, and a very pleasant companion.” Jarrett Edward Edwards was depicted as “of dark brown color,” and J. W. Joshua was described as simply “dark.”21 In contrast, Reverend A. F. Jackson was described as a “fine looking man, standing five feet and six inches in height; his weight is 170 pounds; he has dark, straight hair, and dark eyes; heavy moustache, but no beard; he is of very light complexion, and would easily pass for one of the Cauca- sian race.”22 Strength remained a central component of idealized masculinity. Kealing described Reverend H. Wilhitte as a “pioneer of the Texas Confer- ence” and “a large man of over 200 pounds, and about six feet high. He is a great favorite with all his ministers, being of an even temper. His physical strength is enormous. He frequently used to walk many miles to meet an appointment, and then preach as vigorously as though he had come in a palace car.”23 Ministers of smaller stature were often accompanied by missionaries of larger size. Patton, a missionary to Texas, was described as “between five and six feet high, weighing about 175 pounds” and was supported by Haywood, who was the “complement of Patton . . . because he possessed the traits that Patton did not, necessary to deal with the times. When his enemies were threatening, and danger of death seemed imminent, Patton was the same calm, fearless, unresisting man, but Haywood, possessed of

46 Western Zions mighty muscle, threw himself in an attitude of defense, and bade them come on, which invitation, in view of his Vulcan-like arms, had the effect of keeping them off.”24 When unaccompanied by larger ministers, other attributes of smaller preachers were emphasized. Kealing wrote that William Leake, who was five feet, four inches high and weighed 132 pounds, was “quite a small man in stature, though a giant in the work.” What he lacked in size, he made up for in oratorical skill: “With the voice of a lion, when he thunders in a revival, the vengeance of God seems just behind him, and mourners come f locking.”25 Although their emphasis was on physical strength, historians made it clear that manhood was not gifted at birth but was an attribute to be attained. While education accompanied the contemporary elite in the church, the lack of official training was portrayed as a positive attribute of the early missionaries. Tanner emphasized experience over college education. He described the itinerants as “self-made men,” with few able to “boast of a ‘sheep- skin,’” and took issue with those who called uneducated preachers ignorant for not having graduated or “dozed against some college wall.” William Paul Quinn exemplified this notion as a warrior who “invaded the land of the West, and no conqueror was ever so gloriously triumphant.”26 Similarly, Kealing depicted the early missionaries in Texas as pioneers who were uneducated men and therefore did not owe any of their success to “showy attainment, or glamour, but entirely to natural force of character, and superior cast of mind.”27 The varied descriptions of William Paul Quinn, an early AME missionary who led the church’s expansion westward in the 1820s, perhaps most clearly demonstrated the ways ministers not only employed the bodies of the early itinerant for particular purposes but also contested notions of race in their portrayals. Most denominational histories defined Quinn as the standard by which to measure contemporary ministers. Tanner portrayed Quinn as distinctly built for the work of the frontier: “God in his providence, having eminently endowed him with the necessary qualifications for the arduous and often dangerous task of planting the ‘standard of the Cross’ in those then Western wilds.”28 By the late nineteenth century, Quinn’s adventures had been canonized. Estimates placed his distance traveled at three thousand miles and the number of sermons preached at over thirteen thousand.29 Reverend Benjamin W. Arnett detailed Quinn’s ability to climb the Allegheny Mountains to spread the Gospel.30 Henry Highland Garnet wrote a celebratory article in the Christian Recorder that praised Quinn’s work as an early pioneer in the AME Church and lauded his determination

Western Zions 47 to “lift up the banner of the cross in the west.”31 AME historians elaborated upon missionary narratives particularly those involving Quinn to highlight masculine achievement in the expanding American frontier. Yet there was little consensus about almost any aspect of Quinn’s life. In David Smith’s biography, he places Quinn among a group of other early church leaders who set up separate churches in defiance of Richard Allen’s authority. Smith understands Quinn’s subsequent assignment to the West as an opportunity for redemption. If Quinn agreed to “go West and Speed the Connection,” he would be admitted back into the denomination in good standing.32 For Smith, Quinn’s life exemplified the redemptive quality and nature of the West. Payne, on the other hand, omitted contentious issues in the early history and focused on the ways Quinn’s rise in the church mirrored the denomination’s ascension in the West. Payne noted Quinn’s presence from the founding of the church in 1816, his appointment as official missionary to the West in 1840, and his election as the fourth bishop of the AME Church. He wrote, “The majority of them went to this General Conference with the determination to place another brother in that important office, but when they saw how useful and important Brother Quinn had been, they said within themselves, ‘Surely this is the man for the Bishopric.” Tanner echoed this account: “The demands of the work made it necessary to elect another bishop, and, as if by inspiration, a large majority fixed their eyes on the great missionary, as the man most competent to fill the post.”33 In addition to concerns about masculinity, the bodies of the early ministers served as vehicles to understand present concerns about race. This is particularly evident in the competing characterizations of the physical traits of William Paul Quinn. Some AME historians embraced his non-African appearance. In Daniel Payne’s Semi-Centenary, George Hobarth, an AME member, describing Quinn’s appearance at the 1844 General Conference wrote, “In physique, he was indeed that man pre-eminent; his black piercing eyes, his loose flowing hair, his perfectly European physiogamy, his graceful movements; in weight about 250 pounds, in height over six feet, he seemed to have been made for great endurance, persistence and leadership.”34 Particularly striking is Hobarth’s emphasis on the European features of Quinn. While most sources cited Quinn’s place of birth as India, Payne rendered a very distinct story of Quinn’s background and conversion:

He was born at Honduras, S. A., and his parents were Catholics. A peculiar circumstance led to his conversion. One day, while

48 Western Zions mischievously throwing stones at the boys, he heard the cry of a mob, and reaching the spot he saw a woman whom they were abusing as a “damnable heretic,” as the priests called her. In the midst of their violence she held up in her hands a small book, which had been stained with the blood streaming from her fore- head, and said to the crowd: “I hold this as a testimony against you.” Her manner and appearance was so different from the hag or witch whom he had expected to see from what he had heard that instantly he felt a sensation pass through him like an elec- tric shock. This led him to serious concern about his responsibility to God, which concern increased till he was brought about through the agency of a Quakeress when he was only twelve years old.35

This account is unique in several ways. Payne moved Quinn’s place of birth from India to Honduras. While there is little indication why Payne made this switch, he may have found Quinn’s Catholic upbringing in that country and a subsequent Quaker influence more palatable than a background that included the caste system and Hinduism in India. Other historians did not even dare to hazard a guess about Quinn’s upbringing. Tanner admitted that he did not know who Quinn’s parents were, or in what year he was born, or in what location. However, Tanner asserted that he “knows of Wm. Paul Quinn, all that is worth knowing of him, or any other man—he knows some little of the work he had done.” Tanner did not focus on Quinn’s life before his conversion; rather, it was “for Brother Quinn and Bishop Quinn, the hearts of a full hundred thousand yearn.”36 Into the late nineteenth century, the published literature of the AME Church continued to wrestle with notions of manhood. In 1891, in the preface to his History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Daniel A. Payne wrote that the formation of the church allowed African Americans to “feel and recognize our individuality and our heaven-created manhood.”37 Near the conclusion of his An Apology for African Methodism, Tanner listed the regional differences he observed between eastern and western men:

A generation of Wisconsin, of Iowa, of Kansas and Nebraska men, is no more like a generation of New England, of New York men, than a Spaniard is like a Portuguese, and English- man is like a Scotchman. The man of the East is reserved, built close, like his own huddled home; the man of the West is open

Western Zions 49 and free, like his own boundless prairies. The man of the East is short, his soil worked out, and he don’t grow; the man of the West is tall, indicative of his own virgin land; a tied purse has the man of the East, for he gets his money from men; a purse that is open has the man of the West, for he gets his money from God. A man of kid gloves, of broadcloth and shining Genin hats, is he of the East; while he of the West is a man of shirt-sleeve, of “stogey” boots, and slouch hats; the Eastern man lives by figures, and the Western man by hope.38

In this dichotomy, the early AME missionaries were clearly of the western vein: “Free as the winds that sweep over the plains, as cheerful as the laugh- ing Mississippi, as honest as a Western harvest, he lives to adorn his portion of the AME Church.”39 From this paradigm, African American men took on the characteristics and rose to the level of the environment in which they lived. If the heroic pioneers could overcome the seemingly insurmount- able obstacles of the frontier, AME historians seemed to ask, how much more could the contemporary church community excel despite the political climate in America? While late-nineteenth-century historians might disagree about the attainment of manhood in the AME Church, like so many American communities before them, they all found the makings of the constructions of masculinity in the furthest imagined reaches of the frontier. Into the nineteenth century, as the frontier was increasingly perceived as receding, the far West, particularly California, was understood as playing a special role in the development of the AME Church. At midcentury, the denomination essentially ceased expansion in St. Louis and sent missionaries to the Pacific Coast to establish churches and evangelize African Americans moving west for the Gold Rush. These demographics are born out by the membership figures of 1856, which show twenty-two pastors in Ohio, fifteen in Indiana, six in Missouri, and, led by T. M. D. Ward, eight in California. As Payne put it in his History, the denomination “leaped” the Rocky Mountains and “rooted itself in California.” In his narrative, Payne portrayed AME itinerants who evangelized those drawn to California in the Gold Rush: “We had no societies west of St. Louis, Mo. It was gold fever that carried numbers of our laymen and a few of our local preachers to California, who were at length gathered into a flock by a minister there.”40 Yet twenty years earlier, T. M. D. Ward had written a series of letters expressing frustration at the lack of denominational support he received for his mission in California. In particular, he had hoped his eastern brethren

50 Western Zions would take his missionary project more seriously. “There is a screw loose somewhere,” he declared. “Are not nine States of this great Western empire worthy of the notice and sympathy of our great and growing Church? Or because we are isolated and far toward the sunset are we to be mocked, trifled with, derided and scorned?” Ward felt a similar exasperation at securing missionaries for the westward expansion: “I had supposed that after fifteen years of tears, anguish, toil, and bitter, terrible suffering, that I should find men, whose love for Christ and men was deep enough to throw them beyond the Rocky Mountains. But I have pleaded in vain. Every promise has been broken—every hope crushed, blasted, withered.” Yet Ward remained determined to complete his mission. “But as I have been thrown back into this field I will work on, hope on, preach on, pray on; believing in my innermost heart, that eventually, with my golden sheaves, I shall help shout the harvest home,” he wrote.41 This distance between the institutional memory of later historians such as Payne and contemporary newspaper accounts demonstrates just how malleable sacred geography can be; the West becomes at once a site of redemptive destiny and divine disappointment. T. M. D. Ward, who would become the tenth bishop of the AME Church, was born in Hanover, Pennsylvania, on September 28, 1823. He converted at the age of fifteen and was licensed to preach in 1843. In 1846, he joined the itinerancy of the New England Conference of the AME Church. One year later, he was ordained a deacon, and in 1849 he was ordained an elder by Bishop William Paul Quinn. At the general conference of 1868, he was elected bishop, along with Rev. John Brown and Rev. James Shorter. He was a missionary to the Pacific Coast for fourteen years. He also helped to establish and sustain Paul Quinn College in Waco, Texas, Quindaro College of Kansas, and Edward Waters College of Jacksonville. Ward was renowned for his poetry and gifted oratory.42 Obituaries commented on his stature, noting, “Bishop Ward was naturally constituted for greatness and various directions. Of massive frame and remarkable brainpower, he would not have failed to attract attention even went silent. In looks, but especially in ut- terance, he was a master of assemblies. He was always brief, pointed and eloquent whenever he spoke. . . . Before old age served its protests upon his resources, it is said he could sweep the multitudes before his eloquence, as Whitefield, Mirabeau and Beecher did in their happiest times.”43 As much as late-nineteenth-century historians would glorify the church’s expansion westward, at the time Ward struggled to raise funds and enlist enough missionaries to build churches in California. In September 1861, he estimated that it would cost five thousand dollars to complete a

Western Zions 51 single church—purchase the land, construct the building, and buy an organ (for $1,200). He urged his compatriots in the East to supply the needed funds within eighteen months.44 Nine months later, the AME Church com- plied with his request, paying the necessary costs, which turned out to be $5,500, slightly higher than Ward had estimated.45 Ward predicted that the new church would hold eight hundred congregants.46 He requested that only the best and the brightest ministers be sent to the West: “Give us one of your ablest elders, and the dwellers of the far West will take their places in the vanguard of our African American Zion. We don’t want men who advance backwards by abetting ignorance, hurling their shafts at learning and supporting an effete and hell-born superstition. Our pulpit must send forth, in noon-tide brightness, the triple lights of holiness, wisdom, and truth. With the Bible and the best textbooks of theology, mental and moral science, and philosophy, we must send forth our young men, as heralds of a more glorious era.”47 Although funds were a necessity, able bodies were at the top of Ward’s priority list. “What we want now,” he wrote, “is numbers to fill the Lord’s house—competent and heaven-called men to teach these multitudes the sublime lessons of the cross of Jesus, and snatch from the black vortex of sin and crime, the thousands who, without repentance and faith, will be hurled with fury from the presence of God and the Lamb.” He called for all AME leaders and laity to pray that Jesus would raise up such qualified individuals and “prepare, young men, for the momentous duties of the coming times.”48 Ward was firmly committed to donating five dollars of his own salary to the cause of building the church in California.49 Even during his struggles in the West, Ward framed California as a special space. As reported in the October 27, 1865, issue of the Sacramento Union, while a member of the business committee of the Colored State Convention in Philadelphia, Ward agreed with adopted resolutions that embraced, among other things, loyalty to the Union, commitment to peace, the right of citizenship, and the encouragement of industry, including agriculture and commerce. He also affirmed the potential role the state of California might play in the future of African Americans in the United States: “As relates to Cal- ifornia, she is rated as a free-born State; in her infancy she was nurtured and taught Slave State proclivities. But she stands to-day like a regenerated Southern man who has declared in favor of unrestricted freedom. The foul that once disgraced her statute book have long ago been removed. Her colored testimony laws have been repealed.” The convention called for the term “white” to be removed from the California state constitution. Once removed, they asserted, California would be second only to Massachusetts in regards

52 Western Zions to the freedoms extended to African Americans. Having offered blacks greater participation in civic life, the members assured, “California would never be given cause, on our part, to regret it.” This step would give Cali- fornia additional moral standing in America: “We don’t want her to be called a hypocrite by the reconstructed States, when she advises them to give the negro the ballot, without the least disposition of granting the right herself.”50 Ward was by far the strongest and most vocal apologist for the place of California in AME Church history. He asserted that “California’s sons and daughters would compare favorably with any other State in the Union.”51 Ward praised the “marvelous” resources of California, including the annual production of sixteen million bushels of grain, great mineral wealth, and an abundance of orchards and vineyards, which distinguished it from all other states in America. Yet despite these opportunities, African Americans were still considered the “rear guard of the grand army of progress.” Coming to California alone would not alter the fate of African Americans unless they embraced “sobriety, industry, intelligence and economy,” which would lead to a “united, religious and powerful race.” He remained undeterred in his view that the time to relocate westward was now, proclaiming that the “royal gates of opportunity unfolded her portals to the colored man on the coast of the Pacific as she never will again.”52 Although Ward had performed most of the on the ground leg work to establish the church in California, it was Bishop J. P. Campbell who received most of the credit in the press. Editor Molliston M. Clark praised Campbell for organizing the fledgling congregations into a conference district between 1864 and 1865. The Christian Recorder reported, “After traveling in that country, some hundreds, if not thousands of miles amidst the craggy mountains and defiles, filled with everlasting snows, he organized the California annual Conference, composed of Rev. T. M. D. Ward, and the worthy local men of the church in the country.” It was Campbell who located “suitable missionaries, and left the whole under the superintendence of the Rev. Mr. Ward.” Clark highlighted that it was through Campbell’s administrative work and his “great missionary spirit” that the denomination was established in California. Although other bishops had attempted the task and raised money for westward expansion, it was Campbell who “possessed the Paul-like spirit, to hazard sea and land for Christ.”53 While the available sources reveal little direct evidence to account for this historical snub toward Ward, his letters and articles reveal a personality that responded sharply to public critiques of his work. When the Christian Recorder published a letter stating that Ward had been absent from his new

Western Zions 53 post in Texas in 1877, he responded, “Some men are born with a censori- ous fault-finding spirit. A brother avers that no Bishop has been in Texas in six months. . . . You may call that whatever you choose, but you cannot call it truth.” He assured the AME community that he had only traveled briefly to Louisiana and Arkansas and did not even have an opportunity to visit his family during the year. In light of the accusations expressed by the letter writer, Ward declared, “We need more truth-telling, self sac- rificing, heaven-called and heaven-sent men, more church builders, more Sunday School workers, more men filled with the Holy Ghost.”54 Ward wrote a scathing rebuke of George W. Bryant, Reverend Welch’s successor in Mobile, Alabama. After acknowledging a positive initial impression of Bryant, Ward launched into a strong attack on his character: “The thoughtful members however saw there was something wanting. That there was vast intellectual imitative power, no one denied. There was dash, humor, invective philippic, and brazen-facedness. The young bucks of the town found in him a crony—a boon companion. To them he was a splendid fellow. It was ascertained that he was the owner of a mean, brittle, snappish temper, passionate as a wolf. That he was not disposed to bow to any power whatever. All must yield to him. A natural tyrant. Born so, he found the pulpit a good place to wield the sceptre of oppression.”55 One year later, Ward was officially censured by a church in the Chatfield Circuit in Texas for re- moving its pastor, Reverend Wade Rutherford, without consulting them.56 Perhaps the freewheeling spirit that made Ward so successful in California also caused tensions and alienated him from his fellow ministers within the AME Church. As much as Ward apparently enjoyed the title of the “man from Cali- fornia,” he seemed conflicted over his assignment in the West. In 1865, he supported a change to the church discipline that reframed the governance of the districts in California. Bishops Payne, Wayman, Campbell, Brown, Shorter, and Ward petitioned that the California conferences be “set apart to itself, to be visited annuity and in turn by the Bishops.”57 They felt that it was “certainly too much for one man to have to visit California for four suc- cessive years.”58 The resolution passed.59 Westerners looked forward to the bishops’ visits: “The colored people of California have long waited and looked for one of our Bishops to visit them, and heretofore it has been useless to talk, but now the idea goes into practical effect.”60 Campbell visited once in 1864 to organize the California Conference.61 He returned on May 15, 1865, for a weeklong visit.62 Ward wrote glowingly of Campbell’s visit and credited the success of the first session of the California Conference to his presence:

54 Western Zions “Bishop Campbell has left an impression upon the minds of Californians, which will never be eradicated. Men who are the sworn enemies of the Church were irresistibly drawn towards the Cross of the Redeemer, by the force of his keen analytic logic. His labors have been Herculean, and often attended with imminent peril, but through all, Israel’s God has been his friend, and he leaves to-day, bearing away with him the warm and earnest regards of every one whose esteem is worth having.”63 Despite his commitment to his missionary work, as early as May 25, 1861, T. M. D. Ward was pointing toward his eventual exit from California. In a letter to Bishop Nazrey from San Francisco, Ward suggested that he might like to work in Philadel- phia or Baltimore the following year,64 a request that was granted six years later.65 Ward continued to advocate for church financial support for missionary work in the West long after he left the region. He regularly wrote to the Christian Recorder requesting AME members to contribute at least a dollar each year to the efforts.66 Yet Ward would not be the only member of the AME Church to struggle to reconcile competing ideologies surrounding the American West. In his advocacy for westward migration, the presence of other ethnic groups in the region presented a major obstacle for Tanner as he sought to convey the nature of the West in his histories and editorials in the Christian Recorder. On the one hand, given his allegiance to the Americanization process, Tanner downplayed cultural distinctions and emphasized the unex- ceptionalism of the black experience. However, racial and ethnic difference was a reality in the West, as was the competition for social and economic resources. In many ways, Tanner faced a modern quandary of creating a coherent narrative of Americanness while acknowledging the multicultural environment in which he lived. In this vein, Tanner sought to address the challenges facing African Americans and spur on the race without disparag- ing or subverting the histories and experiences of other ethnic groups. Tanner approached this dilemma from multiple angles. He wrote editorials and introductory remarks for articles that highlighted the industriousness of blacks and pointed toward their eventual class ascension. Yet his point of comparison was not the achievements of immigrant ethnic groups of color but the success of European Americans. “The thing to be done, is to move into higher and better occupations, that is, take our positions alongside the native born,” he wrote.67 When he did address ethnic difference, it usually was through printed articles from other periodicals, such as the Tribune in New York, which described the success and work ethic of southern black emigrants compared to other immigrant groups: “They are

Western Zions 55 showing a willingness to work, a fidelity and teachableness which employers have often sought in vain workers of a different origin.”68 Another tact was to frame the conditions facing other ethnic groups as morality tales to caution blacks against using racism as an excuse for their own personal failures. Tanner published articles about the poor treatment of other immigrant groups such as the Irish to “give our readers to see that hard things are said about other than the colored portion of the American people, and indeed we give it for the purpose of letting them see that the simple fact of our color has little to do with our bad treatment.”69 Descriptions of the conditions facing the immigrants of other ethnic groups ended with a familiar lesson and conclusion for African Americans: “There is naught to do but surrender to an American destiny.”70 Other contributors such as Reverend T. M. G. Copeland found Tanner’s comparison of the black experience to that of immigrant groups problematic because African Americans were not “foreigners, but native-born citizens of the United States.” Copeland based this assertion on his belief that African Americans were not “full blood, pure” Africans but rather “terribly mixed.”71 Tanner challenged the stereotypical and biased portrayals of Native Americans in the press. He called out the federal government for its hypo- critical policies toward Indians and their application of the “savage” label to the Sioux. After reading accounts of their harsh treatment, Tanner wrote, “We almost felt like thanking God that we negroes have had no share and consequently no responsibility in shaping the policy of the government; so bloody and God-defying has it been.” Tanner felt H. B. Whipple, a Protestant Episcopal bishop of Minnesota who wrote a letter to the Tribune condemning Native Americans, actually proved that whites “were the more savage of the two.” This was particularly apparent to African Americans, who had “felt the iron heel of their savagery” and therefore were “perfectly prepared to believe” the violence of which whites were capable. Tanner dis- sected Whipple’s letter, taking him to task for calling Indians “cruel” for at- tacking white villages and killing women and children. “Is the act any more humane when civilization attacks Indian settlements and kills women and babies?” he asked. While Whipple accused Native Americans of cheating and stealing, Tanner reminded him that the “press, the people and the rul- ers seemed to have forgotten that these red men held the title to these lands by the guarantee of a nation’s honor, as well as by the undisputed possession of the centuries.”72 The treatment of immigrants, Tanner maintained, was much more extreme than that of blacks in the West. In particular, he wrote several articles

56 Western Zions and editorials on the mistreatment of the Chinese in California, which, he noted, was “even worse than” the treatment of blacks and Indians. “It is true that the Indians scalped a few whites—but the Chinese have been mas- sacred.” He argued that the Chinese had just as much right to American citizenship as all other races. Tanner urged African Americans not to participate in the oppression of the Chinese: “Better every Negro in California sell out and leave than help persecute the Chinese. If they cannot compete with him, whose fault is it.”73 The Chinese Exclusion Act and its impact on Asian immigrants to Cal- ifornia also warranted attention. Tanner wrote, “Rest assured that whatever portions of the American people sanction this measure, the nearly seven million colored people oppose it, and with an opposition that cannot be allayed. Having felt this fire ourselves, we would be exceedingly ungrate- ful were we not to extend the hand of sympathy toward the Chinese.”74 He wrote an article on “Chinese Slavery” describing the abuse of laborers in China and reminding his readers that “we are not the only race or people who have been enslaved.”75 Tanner also kept readers abreast of the continued discrimination against the Chinese. In one article he outlined the efforts of “an anti-Chinaman Ku-Klux-Klan in California” that was “sending secret circulars to all who employ Chinese laborers, warning them to desist or to expect serious consequence.”76 In 1869, Tanner reprinted an article from the Christian Advocate in New York noting the temporary appointment of nine native Chinese preachers to the California Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church who, after receiving deacon’s orders, would return to do missionary work in China. Tanner editorialized, “These Chinese Methodist preachers teach all the colored people of the country, especially that class of them who say that ‘we’ve got nothing to do with Africa’ a lesson. God, the nations, common sense— all say that we have. Surely the African Methodist church must prepare to extend her borders.”77 Although Tanner was against large-scale emigration and scientific and biological notions of a natural African American suitability to the African climate, he did feel that African American Christians, if so called, should evangelize the continent of their ancestors. In lieu of dwelling on past racial prejudices and clinging tightly to one’s distinctive culture, Tanner felt social forces were at work to prune away heterogeneity and transform all individuals in America into “true Americans.” Tanner’s view of the West as free of both the historical violence of the South and the de facto racism of the North led to an optimism that that region would more rapidly produce the character and values that all Americans

Western Zions 57 would eventually become and embrace. This process acted on all immigrants moving west but was particularly true of African Americans: “Day by day we see the African or alien element in his life and character becoming less; and it is only a question of time until it all shall have gone and he will stand forth a full-fledged man of the West and not of the South nor of the East. Having already lost well nigh everything that originally pertained to him as an alien African, his name, his language, his religion—he may be said to have already passed through the losing era of his career.”78 Tanner was clear that the assimilation process acted on individuals whether or not they were conscious of it. He even attributed the decision to migrate to two “forces” at work upon African Americans. The first he described as the “centrifugal” force of “social ostracism,” which “drives them from the white people.” The second was “a kind of centripetal force that holds together. It is the force of ‘likes.’” By this Tanner meant that those of the same race, ethnicity, and culture often chose to “associate together.” This tendency combined with segregation to compel African Americans to socialize solely with one another because they could not associate with those outside of their race.79 However, Tanner did not want African American migrants to be passive politically and anticipated that these social and biological factors would lead to the formation of “Black States” in the West. He encouraged migrants not to settle in haphazard patterns but to concentrate their relocation in western states where their votes would have the most impact. One anonymous letter to the newspaper agreed, suggesting that rather than emigrating in random patterns, African Americans should con- sciously choose three or four states to concentrate the nearly six million people in the black population in order to “be in power in this government” through this process of “centralization.”80 According to newspaper accounts, economic opportunities in the West abounded in the form of empty land, which beckoned to be developed by black southerners who were currently mechanics, tradesmen, farmers, and laborers and already performed the majority of the work in the South: “The exodus of our people from the South will bring them peace and happiness such as they have never known since the first ship load was landed at Jamestown in 1620, and what a glorious hallelujah will go up when the colored man shall enjoy the same privileges and comforts of other Americans.” Tanner’s optimism was confirmed by a traveler’s account submitted by H. Price Williams. “It has been my fortune to travel extensively in the West,” Williams wrote, “and I have seen thousands of unoccupied acres of land with resources and advantages unequaled in the world.” He cautioned that if an

58 Western Zions African American went “West he must work, and he will compensated for it, and if thrifty will accumulate means and educate his children—not from the coffers of the charitable but from the independent sweat of his own brow.” However, if an African American “remains in the south, he is addicted to the old habits of dependency” and must wait on his “former Master” to take any action. In the West, Williams asserted, “industry and intelligence are re- warded.” He encouraged African Americans to “seek the Western states for peace and happiness. Go West!” Rather than be an employee, he asked, what stopped blacks from “work[ing] for themselves in the West?” He concluded his correspondence by noting, “It is to be hoped that the colored man, in his endeavors to elevate and improve his condition, will not be hin- dered from directing his course Westward.”81 As Nell Irvin Painter demonstrated in Exodusters, in 1879 “ordinary” and “uneducated” freedpeople from Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee migrated west seeking new houses, lives, and the “freedom of Kansas,” fleeing the de facto “reenslavement” of blacks in the rural South. They sought land, education, and the actualization of their civil rights. By early 1880, scholars have estimated, there were fifteen thousand black migrants in Kan- sas, and of that number, four to five thousand came in the “spring 1879 Kan- sas Fever Exodus” and purchased over twenty thousand acres of land. Most worked on farms, railroads, or mines or were employed as domestics. Many exodusters continued to struggle economically but saw their condition as relatively improved from their former life in the South. Unlike the Great Migration of the early twentieth century, the exodus of 1879 was primarily a rural to rural migrational phenomenon.82 In addition, Quintard Taylor’s work has put to rest many stereotypes of blacks in the West as solitary figures without allegiance to home or society—the “rowdy” black cowboy or singularly heroic black soldier—and illumined the urban experience of African Americans in the West.83 The migration of exodusters to Kansas, which began in earnest in Feb- ruary 1879,84 by 1880 had inspired a regular submission of letters and articles to the Christian Recorder. Equally divided for and against the phenomenon, the writings gave strikingly contrasting predictions for the prospects of those relocating to Kansas. Some articles heralded the agricultural prospects and the low cost of farm equipment, which boded well for those going West, while others forecast impending doom.85 Given the “great controversy” concerning the movement of African Americans to Kansas, a number of articles were printed anonymously or with pseudonyms.86 For his part, Tanner was also conflicted about the place of Kansas in the racial uplift of African

Western Zions 59 Americans. On October 28, 1880, Tanner reported the loss of two wheat crops across all of western Kansas, the dwindling resources, and other travails for the migrants and the need for aid to help the people there,87 but he strongly endorsed the morality of the state, particularly the passage of an amend- ment to the Kansas state constitution forbidding the manufacture and “promiscuous sale of intoxicating liquors.”88 Tanner’s progress reports on the status of exodusters in other states such as Indiana were equally mixed.89 In the end, Tanner had an overall positive impression of “historic” Kansas, which he called “one of the finest Western States. . . . With indefinite resources, and with a history glorious by reason of its contentions for the goodly faith of liberty, Kansas is destined to become one of the most influential of the trans-Mississippi States.”90 A number of letters and articles in AME literature offered the American West as an alternative to African emigration. One contributor urged blacks considering going to Africa to think about relocating to the West: “He ought to have gone west and taken up government lands, and became independent. Then with houses—with culture—with a true moral standing and with divine grace, he would have demanded that respect of which . . . he has not. It is not yet too late. This is our home, Here we were born—here we have suffered and here we must develop a true manhood. Instead of repining let us up and go to work. Let us build up our churches—our schools—and our houses. If we can not live South, move west. Go out to Oregon, Colorado and Kansas. . . . If we . . . can not do this here in a country advanced in civilization—we can not do it in Africa.”91 Despite having earlier in his career petitioned the U.S. government for the state of New Mexico for black migrants, Turner ridiculed the lack of effectiveness of those who led and proposed a mass migration to the American West. “If these Anti-Africanists have other plans on foot, why don’t they execute them?” he wrote. “We do not object. None of our way of thinking are meddling with you. Do you want to colonize Kansas? We will bid you God speed in the work. Take 500,000 or more and go on; it’s a great State, rich soil, and a genial clime. . . . Now let the Anti-Africanists go to work, and we the Pro-Africanists will lend a helping hand and land your labors. But if you will do nothing, let us alone. . . . Now you buy a railroad and open a transit that will take your sons and daughters out of white men’s kitchens and horse stables, and we will believe you mean something. But do not tell us we are fanatics or that we are blind guides or traitors to our race simply because we are trying to do something to elevate our people, while you are doing nothing.”92 In disparate ways, each side offered the American West and Africa as a site of extreme sacri-

60 Western Zions fice that appealed to the most ardent missionaries. T. M. D. Ward testified, “You are familiar with my methods. The soil of Arkansas as well as that of California has drank my blood. Perhaps this time life may be the sacrifice demanded; if so, I shall pass up through the gates of the Southwest.”93 During a visit to San Francisco, Bishop T. M. D. Ward had the jar- ring trauma of experiencing an earthquake, but he remained steadfast in his faith. “Thus when strength and health have failed—when earthquakes have shaken the foundations of the world,” he declared, “my hope has been firm amid the convulsions of nature, and the din and strife of life’s fierce conflicts.” Ward saw a divine hand in the destruction that followed: “God has given this godless country an awful shake, and I trust the people will avert these dread judgments by turning to the Rock of Israel.” Yet Ward seemed pessimistic about any lasting spiritual development, writing, “Thank God none of our own people were destroyed in the day of visitation. The people seemed to be terribly frightened while the earth wave was sweeping on with unabated fury, but since then, it seems to me, they are more obdurate and wicked than ever before.”94 Ward’s transformation of the West as a site of hopeful expectation, fear, danger, redemption, and disappointment, all in the course of one letter, exemplifies the multiple meanings that African Americans ascribed to the region. For others still, the West was manifested in a cultivated farm, a rural community, harmonious race relations, a professional occupation, or a frontier church. In a compelling manner, the rhetoric surrounding westward expansion demonstrates the ways the spaces and places in which the authors resided shaped the narratives that they constructed.

Western Zions 61

Chapter 4

Should “African” Remain in Our Title? On October 4, 1883, Benjamin T. Tanner published the editorial “The Future Church,” which challenged the racial exclusivity found in congregations across the country and questioned the relevancy of keeping “African” in the denominational title of the AME Church. Tanner wrote that the church “must cease to be a church exclusively for colored people. As greatly as we revere the title ‘African,’ we must begin to get ready to put it aside, even as the old warrior puts aside his trusty sword after it shall have done its work. And who will say that the title ‘African’ has not almost, but entirely, done its work? It certainly has in so far as letting the great world know that this is purely and entirely a negro church. In these days of universal liberty, in these days of civil and political equality, the country and the people have no need for churches with a membership purely white nor for churches with a membership purely colored. What these days demand are churches ‘of the people, for the people, and by the people.’”1 While for Tanner the issues and solutions were clear, namely, integrating churches in the United States and retitling the denomination the American Methodist Episcopal Church, the debate over ecumenical mergers and the most appropriate referent for the race and denomination dominated the pages of the Christian Recorder in the final months of Tanner’s editorship. The transition from “African,” “people of color,” “colored people,” or “Colored American” to “Negro” from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century illustrates the growing consciousness about the importance of racial referents in American public discourse. The prominence of the term “African” in the early nineteenth century can be seen in the titles of benevolent societies, schools, educational organizations, and churches, including the AME Church. While the prevalence of the term “African” may have reflected a continued cultural resonance with the continent of their ancestors, by the nineteenth century most African Americans had been in Amer- ica for at least two generations, since the end of the Atlantic slave trade in 1808. Although white supporters often played a significant role in the establishment, financial support, and naming of early “African” institutions, naming practices in the nineteenth century reflected a conscious strategy to advance the race out of slavery and secure a brighter collective future. In the early nineteenth century, in many ways, “African” functioned as an ethnic marker much like those of other immigrant groups. The rise of the ACS in 1816 and the organization’s plans to repatriate blacks to Africa gave “African” an un-American and outsider connotation, a development that led to the rise of the term “Colored,” with its perceived respectability, and later to the rehabilitated term “Negro.”2 Yet if a consensus had been reached about the self-referent of “Colored American,” why would debate still be raging in the AME Church well into the late nineteenth century about the term “African” in their denominational title? The answer in part lies in the tradition of melding racial and sacred history in the AME Church. Not only were Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, Daniel Coker, and others cast in heroic terms in AME histories, but the narratives themselves became a type of sacred record and prescriptive literature upon which future leaders and members were to draw upon for future inspiration. To alter the past, even an adjustment in the title, marked an unacceptable departure for some from what bound them together as a denomination and a race. Even further, understandings of Christians as a “family” complicated black denominational identities, which both valorized the departure of African Methodism from white Christianity and troubled clergy and congregations over the lack of religious unity it represented. As concepts such as “survival of the fittest” and “natural selection” made their way into the intellectual climate of America, black religious leaders and laity challenged the burgeoning field of textual analysis, which at times called into question the origins of sacred writings while employing many aspects of social Darwinism to measure the progress of the race and assess those churches that exhibited an “organic” connection to their denominations. Once again, the Christian Recorder was uniquely suited for the type of ongoing, staggered, multilayered historical construction necessary to wrestle with the seeming incongruity among social Darwinian thought, biblical authority, “African” identity, and denominational loyalty. These tensions were most apparent in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the rise of ecumenical movements in the broader Methodist

64 Should “African” Remain in Our Title? community swept through AME congregations across the country and led many to question the message a divided black Methodist community sent to their white brethren. The National Baptist Convention threatened to sup- plant the AME Church as the largest black denomination in America in the early 1880s, which heightened the debate significantly.3 While the specific plans for merger within black Methodism varied widely, the seeming details of the strategies carried with them enormous implications for the racial and religious identity of black Americans. Even further, calls to reunite with the Methodist Episcopal Church invoked the conditions that catalyzed the initial exodus of African Americans from the predominately white St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. What would be the potential gains and losses from a return to the “mother” ME Church? If a merger were to take place, under which name should African Methodists unite? Each of these questions forced leaders and the laity alike to weigh the relative importance of racial and denominational significations. Through this process, one sees that what it meant to be African, American, and Methodist was far from settled in the late nineteenth century. The historiography of the rise of social Darwinism in America rarely lin- gers upon black responses to evolutionary thought in the nineteenth century. Yet moving the focus from the secular black press to denominational literature, one sees that questions that addressed not only issues of racial origin but also of biblical authority raised the stakes even further. Many black Americans vigorously championed both the abilities of the race and the validity of Christianity, and in some cases they viewed the defense of one as inseparable from the other. For these ministers and congregants, far from a passing consideration, the reconciliation of the inerrancy of the Bible with contemporary scientific thought was a top priority. By extension, Darwinian framings of the concept of race had profound ramifications on whether, moving forward, the AME Church should claim or discard its “African” identification. In 1854, Frederick Douglass stepped to the lectern at Western Reserve College in Hudson, Ohio, to deliver a talk titled “The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered.” He passionately challenged “polygenists” and those proponents of evolution who maintained that blacks and whites were separate species. “The credit of the Bible is at stake,” Douglass asserted, as was the validity of Paul’s statement that “God hath made of one blood all nations of men.” If polygenesis was correct, the “whole account of creation, given in the early scriptures” would take on an entirely new meaning or need to “be overthrown altogether.”4 Thirty years later, Douglass drastically

Should “African” Remain in Our Title? 65 shifted his critique from evolutionists to blacks who clung to religion in the light of scientific discoveries and “pursued what cannot be known [rather] than that which may be known”: “One sweep of the telescope around the heavens converts Genesis into a myth. The commonest stone on the earth does the work for the six days story. But one would be stoned if he said so in the presence of the religious crowd of colored people, yet all intelligent white men know this and know it none the less because they still cling to the Bible.”5 Douglass discussed his own philosophical outlook, noting, “I do not know if I am an evolutionist, but to this extent I am one. I certainly have more patience with those who trace mankind upward from a low condition, even from the lower animals, than with those who start him at a high point of perfection and conduct him to a level with the brutes.”6 Despite these strong but fluid stances expressed by Douglass, he is most often viewed as the exception rather than the rule regarding black commen- tary on the issue. This is surprising given the many detrimental applications of nineteenth-century Darwinian thought, which was employed to justify, among other things, black poverty and substantiate African American racial inferiority. These uses of the ideology seem to beg for a black response. Historians of the African American experience have tended to characterize Douglass’s statements as aberrations rather than trends in black religious thought. Studies have noted vague and abstract parallels between Douglass and Booker T. Washington’s theories of progress and conceptions of evolution, but, the historiography tells us, there was no sustained black commen- tary on social Darwinism.7 There are a number of reasonable explanations for this interpretation. Pragmatic concerns such as reconstituting families displaced during the Civil War, addressing socioeconomic hardships, and dealing with southern violence after Reconstruction preoccupied the minds of black Americans in the second half of the nineteenth century, leaving little time or energy to respond to abstract scientific theories. To a degree this is true, for many “secular” black thinkers such as Douglass paid only spo- radic attention to Darwin and his theories in their writings and oratories. However, shifting the focus from outspoken “race men” to black religious authors, one sees that, far from silent, African Americans felt compelled in sermons, speeches, and writings to respond to theories that they felt threatened to shake the foundations of their faith. Social Darwinism is a concept employed by historians to understand the late-nineteenth-century phenomenon in which scholars employed Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection and Herbert Spencer’s notion of “survival of the fittest” to understand social relations and the development of

66 Should “African” Remain in Our Title? certain people groups. As J. F. Burrow has shown, in the late eighteenth century, notions of race in scientific communities emerged out of a need for extensive “systematic classification” and “taxonomy” primarily by comparative anatomists who assigned intellectual and moral capabilities in the same way they assessed cranium size. Perhaps the best example of this is J. F. Blumenbach’s classification of the races based on the attractiveness of the skulls found among certain people groups (he ranked the “Caucasian” the most superior). By the mid-nineteenth century, physical anthropologists were confidently asserting that notions of human equality espoused in the Enlightenment and by Christian theology and the grounds on which they were based, were directly contradicted by science. Focusing less on environment and pigmentation, anatomical examination became the central criterion for evaluating races and, by extension, cultures.8 By the late nineteenth century, many social scientists postulated that conflicts between classes, races, and nations provided concrete examples of evolution through natural selection.9 Herbert Spencer’s notion of “survival of the fittest” seemed to be particularly persuasive in explaining why some people groups thrived while others failed.10 What began as a compelling social scientific theory became a tool to justify a number of prejudiced social policies and racist actions. As I. A. Newby put it, Darwin’s “emphasis upon physical differences between races and his theory of natural selection—in fact the whole idea that racial characteristics result from evolution—became cornerstones of scientific racism.” Indeed, by the close of the nineteenth century, Darwin’s notions had been used to blame the poor for their poverty, engage in military missions around the world, and rationalize a wide range of discriminatory behaviors.11 The rise of Darwinism also coincided with notions of European Mani- fest Destiny, which set its sights on expanding “civilization” through its colonization of the societies around the world. The “dark continent” of Africa exemplified the kinds of societies that needed white influence. If inherent racial traits determined one’s ultimate success or failure in the world, those who had ascended to power were in their rightful place, and so too were the downtrodden and less fortunate. Having yet to undergo industrializa- tion and reach the technological advances and economic prosperity of Eur- ope, on the ladder of developing nations, Africa was perceived as being on the bottom rung.12 By the 1880s, when Tanner had written his editorial, European colonization of Africa was well underway. Still reeling from the abrupt change in political climate in America following Reconstruction, and discouraged about the possibility of gaining

Should “African” Remain in Our Title? 67 full citizenship rights, emigration to Africa seemed to grow in its appeal as an option for African Americans. This increase in interest coincided with the rise of a number of black nationalist leaders, such as Martin Delany, Alexander Crummell, and Henry McNeal Turner, who could eloquently articulate their vision of a brighter future for the race in Africa and point out the unrealized America dream that lay ahead of many African Americans. As Lawrence S. Little has shown, in the late nineteenth century, the AME Church was embroiled in debates over the likelihood and timing of immigration and the feasibility of African emigration. The redemption of Africa, it was widely thought, would ultimately uplift all peoples of African descent. By establishing communities in Africa that fully lived up to the American ideals of democracy and Christian values, African Americans could finally reach their full potential and be a shining example of their progress, self-sufficiency, and abilities.13 This line of thinking runs directly counter to the uses of social Darwinism to oppress blacks and explain away their exploitation. Owing to a number of historical studies, we know much about white Chris- tian responses to social Darwinian thought in the nineteenth century. Dur- ing Reconstruction, the longevity of Darwin’s ideas and the scientific principles on which it was based were widely questioned in Protestant American circles, but many acknowledged that the issues engaged in his Origins of Species had direct implications for Christian principles. In the mid-1870s, many theologians contented themselves with picking holes in the theories of Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, and Tyndall, but as the scientific community increasingly embraced Darwin’s theory of evolution, Protestant leaders felt the need to systematically respond to the implicit challenge to Christian beliefs. By the end of the nineteenth century, many white ministers had formulated compromises that reconciled evolution and Christian views, although a vocal minority maintained that the two views were incompatible.14 But what did black ministers make of the ascension of Darwinism and its racial claims and interpretations of African American religions in the United States? Far from silent, the Christian Recorder provides a wealth of exchanges between prominent individuals as well as “ordinary” men and women weighing in on the impact of Darwinism on their Christian faith. Instead of outright rejection, AME Church leaders debated and parsed the details of Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer’s scientific theories. As Darwinian thought gained credibility in scientific circles, such as in white Protestant America, many of the deepest thinkers in the AME Church set about reconciling

68 Should “African” Remain in Our Title? their religious faith and evolutionary ideals. Yet they faced an additional dilemma. While white Protestants could rest easy sitting atop the racial caste system having been categorized as “Caucasian,” blacks, at the bottom of the chart, could have rejected racial classification out of hand. Instead, recognizing the growing influence of Darwin, they sought to reconcile a line of thought and reasoning that seemed to undermine both their religion and their self-identity as African Americans. As editor of the Christian Recorder, Benjamin T. Tanner was both par- ticipant and referee in these often-heated debates in the pages of the newspaper. Tanner contrasted scientific theory, which was subject to be updated with the next provable hypothesis, with the Bible, which he believed was God’s word and therefore inerrant and unchanging. Tanner used this viewpoint to undermine some of the sharpest critiques to Christian authority. In 1892, he asked in the AME Church Review, “Can evolution be accepted as true and the character of the Bible be maintained? We frankly answer: No.” According to Tanner, the dating of the “age of the world” and the creation story as literally six twenty-four-hour days, which supposedly disproved the Bible and was seen as the “gravest heresy,” in fact did not “disturb” their “faith in the character of the Bible.” While the truth of the Bible could withstand scientific scrutiny and the test of time, the same was not true of Darwinism. Like previous theories that scientists were “altogether as dog- matic” about but were later disproved, Tanner predicted, so too would evolutionary theories run their course.15 Tanner took issue with those who refused to pick a side in the evolution and biblical creation debate. In one editorial, he characterized the “good and learned men, pious but not wise,” who sought to reconcile the two as trying “hard to make it appear that the modern history of ‘Evolution’ is consistent with belief in the Christian idea of a Creator, a great First Cause.” When Herbert Spencer stated that the ideas were “mutually exclusive,” Tanner sarcastically agreed: “That is honest and intelligible and Christians can take their choice. If Evolution is God; worship it. If the Creator is God; worship him. We believe in the Creator and thank Mr. Spencer for stating the case so clearly and fairly. There are no two ways about it, and we heartily agree with Mr. Spencer in saying that Evolution and Creation are mutually exclusive.”16 Few issues catalyzed more public discussion about Darwinism than did Huxley’s lecture series in New York in 1876. The New York Times published the talks in their entirety. A few weeks later, T. G. Steward delivered his own perspective on the matter at his Bridge Street AME Church in Brooklyn, New York. He critiqued science for selectively acknowledging or rejecting

Should “African” Remain in Our Title? 69 evidence that contradicted their starting hypothesis. Scientists, and Huxley in particular, Steward asserted, tended to “predict according to his wishes and to investigate with enthusiasm over a pet theory, a theory in which he delights, and upon which he is ever ready to argue.” He also found the use of “circumstantial evidence” problematic. In his lectures, Huxley acknowledged its limitations, but he felt it was a “great deal better than testimonial evidence.” Steward challenged Huxley’s arguments against creation as a gradual process by questioning the credibility of the newly founded scientific field of geology, which was inconclusive in disproving the creation narrative. In his book Genesis Re-Read, Steward sought to find some middle ground between the scientific method and notions of biblical inerrancy. As such, he took on the most controversial issues of the day. Regarding a literal twenty-four-hour day in the creation story, Steward found it a moot point since “neither Moses nor any human being could have been present to determine the length of these days. Nothing is insisted upon with regard to the length of these periods here.” Laying the appearance of life in the Old Tes- tament side by side with evolutionary theory, Steward located more in common than was differentiated. Steward concluded that “there is nothing in evolution to interrupt our confidence” in the Genesis account of the world’s beginnings. Tanner challenged Steward for suggesting that Moses wrote Genesis from other previously written texts, thus implying that the books were not the product of divine revelation. Drawing on biblical criticism, Steward argued that Moses used “E” and “J” source materials to write Genesis. Steward also noted that the text was not infallible. “Errors may have occurred also in unimportant matters in transcribing,” he stated, “thus adding verbal difficulties to the unavoidable omissions.” Steward wrote, “I desire to have the reader consider that all that is urged here is that this matter is worthy of belief; not that we can really know it to be true.” Tanner responded that if the Bible was “false in part,” it was “false in whole.” Tanner took particular issue with what he perceived to be Steward’s relativistic stance, which held all viewpoints equal: “He endorses them all, or at least, declares each as probable.” For Tanner, it was an all-or-nothing proposition. Either the entirety of the Bible was divinely inspired or it was completely false; there was no compromise. The only “possible result” to conceding ground to the evolutionists, Tanner averred, was “to reduce Moses to the common rank of a secular historian. And Moses reduced to-day, Joshua and Samuel and the prophets will be reduced to-morrow.”17

70 Should “African” Remain in Our Title? Another front in the debate was the biblical applications advocated by polygenesis. On the whole, these proved to be more troubling for many African Americans because the proponents combined scientific theory and particular biblical passages to make a case that there were disparate origins of the races. When three white Methodists asserted that “Negroes” were not descended from Noah, Tanner characterized it as an “infidel remark”: “The Negro is a man. . . . He is of Adam. He is of Noah. The Negro is brother, and will be until science can demonstrate the Bible to be no more than a fable.” Tanner took issue with any and all theories based on polygenesis. From his examination of world history, he determined that while some white cultural groups lacked a creation narrative that included a flood, almost without exception African religions contained such a story. This evidence, Tanner asserted, made an airtight case for a universal flood. Tanner felt so strongly that he even defended Steward’s position as a plausible alternative reading just in case it was disproved that Africans and African Americans had “a tradition of the Deluge.” Tanner could see no way a logical person could conclude that blacks and whites emerged from different beginnings.18 Tanner’s reading of Spencer was that people groups passed on certain traits to their progeny that, given the interracial ancestry of many African Americans, complicated his assessment of the prospects for future racial harmony. By nature, Tanner asserted, black organizations would be characterized by disagreements and disunity because of the “blood that is in us.” Un- like the Irish, French, and Italians, who each were “of one blood, and in a sense the most restricted and particular, with one history, and largely with one condition of things, there is naught in them to bring about any very great discord; but on the contrary, everything to make them one harmonious whole. It is not so, however, with us. . . . Barring our slavery in the past, and our social ostracism in the present. . . . The fact is, our whole makeup is heterogeneous, and as we have remarked, were it not for our past bondage and present proscription, we have no reason to believe that any organization we might form would be more harmonious than [other ethnic groups]. . . . Were we of Negro-African descent pure and simple, then we would expect to find harmony among us. . . . But such is not the case. Instead of being of one blood, we are of many.”19 Despite their starkly different solutions to the race problem in America, Tanner and his emigrationist opponents were united in their desire to correct the public perception of the black race, particularly in the hostile political climate of post-Reconstruction America. Surprisingly, the interpretation of social Darwinism by many black nationalists posited much more

Should “African” Remain in Our Title? 71 optimistic prognostications for race relations in America than did Tanner. For example, Edward Blyden agreed with Tanner’s article, embracing his phrase “the Negro-African in exile,” and hoped that “the heterogeneous results produced by this accession of alien blood may give to the African the means of coping successfully with a race from whom in his pure state he dif- fers in almost every respect.” Blyden felt that one type of blood could bring “balance” to the other: “While the African substratum brings its ‘wonderful good nature,’ its powers of endurance, its large charity to give consistency, coherence and efficiency to the centrifugal elements.”20 However, Tanner struggled to meld competing themes and theories of race into a coherent understanding of the racialization process in the United States. Although Tanner supported racial uplift, in another article he took Blyden to task for his chosen methodology. Given the mixtures of African American blood, Tanner did not think it was possible to “work upon race lines” as Blyden suggested. Tanner argued that blacks could not “link their destiny to the Negro of Africa” because “the spirit in us is the spirit of our country [America], its civilization and its religion.” According to Tanner, African Americans “have lost everything that relates to Africa save our color, and have found everything that relates to America save the same.” He concluded, “To speak plainly . . . we are simply black white men.”21 Except for the final location for its fulfillment, the blending of race theory and the language of racial uplift for African Americans employed by Tanner and many Back to Africa advocates was almost identical. Tanner used scientific theories such as the “Survival of the Fittest” to predict the social and economic advancement of the races. “We are going to take our position among the substantial and ruling class,” he wrote. “Our strong men will stay up as do the strong men of any other class. Our weak men will go under, as do the weak always.”22 Tanner applied Darwin’s organic theory of “like producing like” to understand racial identity in America: “If, then, it be found that we are Africans, the sooner we beget ourselves to Fatherland, the better.” However, if African Americans were simply Americans, “will it be wisdom for us to accept unconditionally the accepted methods of American life?” If the latter was true, Tanner encouraged African Americans to get “land; build houses; [and] develop homes with no idea of Africa or any other country, than in so far forth as Christians, we are bound to bring them to Christ.” For Tanner, American was the foremost identity for blacks in the United States.23 The same “continental factors” that shaped the physical features of the races, Tanner argued, would be at work to catalyze the cultural American-

72 Should “African” Remain in Our Title? ization process for African Americans. He asked, “Whence comes the whiteness of the European, his gray eyes and auburn hair? Whence the blackness of the African, with his black eyes and crisp hair?” “But how [to] account for the existing difference, for the whiteness of one and the blackness of the other? For the goat-like hair of the man of the North; for the wool-like hair of the man of the South? Plainly on the score that the silent forces of each continent are at work, making everything, from man to molecule, homog- enous with itself.” Tanner continued, “As we have said, these can only be accounted for—at least, best accounted for—on the theory that continental laws are at work—for the differences recognized are mainly, if not entirely, continental—fashioning, moulding and coloring their subjects to suit their environment.”24 Tanner dissented from some nineteenth-century scientific assumptions about race. In particular, he took issue with the notion that blacks had a “superior suitability and adaptability” for mission work in Africa because they could endure the climate better than other racial groups: “We have no idea that the negro American of two, three or four generations can stand the African climate a whit better than the white American of two, three or four generations; or if there be any difference it will be of such an infinitesimal kind as to nullify all practical purposes.” This was the only conclusion because “a man’s physique is made up of the food he eats, the water he drinks, supplemented to a certain degree by his entire environment.” Having been in America for years, blacks had adapted to their new conditions. “The fact of our common manhood is the fact of all,” Tanner wrote. Remaining consistent, he also challenged theorists who suggested that the tempera- tures of the American West meshed best with African American biological sensibilities.25 While many African American leaders disagreed about issues of race advancement in the nineteenth century, it is perhaps the vehemence with which their positions were argued and the public nature of their disagreements that have led scholars to more easily dichotomize the perspectives of Tanner and black nationalists such as Blyden. In his introduction to one of Blyden’s letters, Tanner made the case that assimilation would alter the physical makeup of the “typical American”: “The outcome according to our theory, that the typical American is to be more of a bronze than either a blonde or black.” Blyden took issue with Tanner’s characterization of his position as advocating for “wholesale emigration” or a “Mosaic exodus.” On the contrary, Blyden declared, he recognized that facing the current conditions, such a move would be “extremely damaging to the progress of the

Should “African” Remain in Our Title? 73 race as a whole, disastrous to the emigrants and disastrous to the country to which they emigrated.” He also felt that Tanner overlooked his support for “qualified” missionaries and teachers who sought to spread the gospel in Africa. Yet Blyden concluded on a conciliatory note: “As I have written to you repeatedly, I do not object to your work and your efforts to check a head- long and pernicious emigration. Of course, you have your own way of putting things. The centrifugal and centripetal forces are both necessary in this world of ours.”26 The degree to which the redemption of Africa would be interwoven into the future of the church had an impact on discussions about whether the term “African” should be retained in the denomination’s title. The entry of the prominent black leaders Edward Wilmot Blyden and Alexander Crummell into the debate in the Christian Recorder drew another prominent spokesperson, Martin E. Delany, into the conversation. For his part, he framed the question of denominational nomenclature as a moral problem, advocating strongly for the retention of the “African” in the AME Church tradition, encouraging every race to “persistently adhere to their identity amid every disadvantage, till those who disfavored them were by reason of their persistence and self-respect forced to acknowledge and admire them.” Delany could not fathom why the issue was even in question. “Why should the word ‘African’ be dropped from our Church Connection; or, indeed, as some would advocate, even to drop the connection itself, and degrad- ingly bow in subordination to another church government, the Methodist Episcopal Church?” he asked. “Has our Church connection existed just long enough, and we just simply learn enough and no more, to become ashamed of ourselves? Is this the foundation stone that our fathers laid for us in 1816? Is this all of manhood, womanhood and self-respect that we have inherited to bequeath to our children?” Delany was aghast that he even had to raise these rhetorical questions, given the historical condition of African American slavery. From his reading of history, the term “African” had been chosen in the face of the moral bankruptcy and cruelty that many Europeans exhibited regarding the treatment of their slaves, a white Christian theology that said blacks had no souls, and a legal system that declared that they were an inferior race and had no rights. Despite the fact that many found the word “African” “obnoxious to the ear because it carried with it the association of color and race,” the founders of the church, “seeing the pernicious effects of these abominable teachings upon their own people among them— because many sincerely believe it—determined on a self reliant position for themselves, to prove to the world that they possessed the same faculties,

74 Should “African” Remain in Our Title? and were as intellectually susceptible as the white people.” The creation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church signaled that blacks had an “intellectual capacity” equal to that of any race. Delany brought credibility to the issue because he had led the way on the creation of black-only military regiments so that the African American contribution to the Civil War could not be ignored in the historical record. Just as black troops helped pave the way for citizenship, so would “the retention of the word ‘African’ ensure to our Connection its share of religious work done amidst the maze of religious bodies in this country. Since all this has been accomplished, is it now to be thrown away? Are we to [be] told that while this is essential to every other race, and the foundation of their progressive existence and equality with other races, that we, the African race, should have no love, preference and pride of race? Are we ashamed of our color because [we are] told that black is ugly?” Although acknowledging that “African” still conjured up images of “black skin and wooly hair,” Delany asked, “And shall the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which has so worthily and meritoriously espoused and come in possession of this name which would have been world wide, and has now been made so under other and entirely different auspices, change its title as advocated by some of the members, who cannot see the terrible consequences to us as a race and a people, not only in America, but all over the Christian world, should or could this be done?”27 These conversations about AME nomenclature were intensified around talks of merging all of black Methodism. For his part, Henry McNeal Turner refused to make the question of denominational merger solely about African American Methodism; rather, he saw the issue as impacting Methodism as a whole.28 To spur this ecumenical process along, Turner suggested that the ME Church accept and elect an AME bishop to their body, a motion that was swiftly and abruptly challenged by his fellow ministers. Richard H. Cain, who along with Turner was elected to the bishopric at the 1880 AME General Conference, argued that the proposition would “inject into our church every discordant element of believers, and the acceptance of ill-advised legislation, which will be destructive to our harmony and success.” He asserted that this new appointment would “swallow all the membership of this vast connection, and thus by absorption destroy the AME Church as a distinct organization.” Cain felt that the two hundred years of tense race relations, particularly the “natural prejudices gendered by slavery, making the one dominant, the other the subject race,” meant that the only outcome of a merger would be “destroying the identity of the weaker.” He characterized the ME Church as the “most advanced of all Christian denominations in

Should “African” Remain in Our Title? 75 this country, controlling greater moral forces and the religious agencies for lifting up humanity than any other religious denomination.” Cain concluded that “as long as the negro remains under their jurisdiction, they must accept whatever they are pleased to give them.”29 Past plans for denominational merger met with little success. In 1864, an attempted union between the AME Church and AMEZ Church fell through because of competing church disciplines and governance struc- tures. A central difference was the length of tenure for leadership positions. While AME bishops were ordained and elected for life, the AMEZ Church ordained only elders and deacons, and it elected superintendents for four- year terms. This arrangement, Cain commented, was “not Episcopal, but Congregational in spirit, if not in form.” According to Cain, the central source of discord was the refusal of the AMEZ Church to accept ordination by AME bishops by allowing “them to place their hands on the heads of their elders to create them bishops and thereby make them equal with our bishops. They took the ground that they must not be ordained by our bishops because to do so would imply and be an acknowledgement of their inferiority and they desired to ‘unite on terms of perfect equality.’” Cain also took issue that the trustees of the AMEZ Church “held” their property by a “different tenure” than the AME Church, which gave them the “power to close the doors on any preacher they may dislike, or refuse to accept [them] from the Superintendent’s appointment, each church being independent as to property relations.” The 1864 annual conferences of both the AME Church and AMEZ Church failed to pass a motion for merger. Despite the negative response, the 1868 General Conference took up the issue again, and according to Cain, it was the AMEZ Church that “broke off communication and utterly refused to hold any further action on the subject.” The AMEZ Church then went to the ME Church General Conference, where the ME members “also put them off and referred their proposition for a union with them to a committee” which never returned to the issue of union.30 Cain expressed skepticism about propositions to unite with the AME Zion Church, the Colored Church of America, and the Colored ME Church. Cain asserted that melding the denominations and recognizing all of their bishops would result in the “complete disintegration of the AME Church.” He suggested that there were a number of doctrinal and disciplin- ary differences between the churches as well as a lack of “unity of spirit,” and he found the creation of the Colored ME Church particularly problematic. He viewed the denomination as the product of white southern politi- cians’ ambitions to “regain control of colored voters.” As such, their efforts

76 Should “African” Remain in Our Title? to organize black churches masked their real agenda to lay claim to property owned by African Americans prior to the Civil War. The goal was to “drive out the AME Church and organize Southern Colored Churches under their guidance and fostering care” and begin “a system of warfare on the AME Church which has not yet fully ceased.” Yet despite this tense history, Cain remained hopeful about making “African Methodism so grand and refined and honorable that all men may see in it that to admire, and men will flock to it for its worth. This is the true way to unite.” He was also eventually conciliatory toward the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, in particular its first bishop, Richard Vanderhost, who had previously been ordained elder in the AME Church and thus each denomination had “their specific work to do.”31 In “African Methodist Union,” an article published in the Christian Recorder, P. M. Laws disagreed with Cain’s characterization. While he acknowledged that white and black Methodists may have “distinct destinies,” there was no good reason, he wrote, for the branches of African Methodism not to unite: “It may also be true that there are some slight doctrinal disagreements, and that in past efforts to unite with some of them, great misap- prehensions and mistakes were made; but by no means can they justify us in taking an obstinate stand not to seek or offer any further inducements for a consolidation, which stand would prove recreant to the cause of Christ and to our people as a distinct race in America and elsewhere.”32 Others felt an external pressure to unite the branches of African Ameri- can Methodism. Bishop Alexander W. Wayman anticipated that the ME and the ME South would unite in a few years, and in a similar way, he noted, “it must be clear to the mind of every reasonable and intelligent Christian man that it would be far better if there was one grand united colored Methodist Church in this country.” Wayman suggested a series of elections in which members from each denomination would be elected to the bishopric in the church of the other, beginning with the ME Church election of an African American bishop, until there was one “grand” Methodist organization.33 While he was a general supporter of ecumenism in Christianity and Meth- odism, in one editorial, Tanner, drawing on social Darwinian language, made the case that the only church that seemed to make an “organic union” with the AME Church was the British Methodist Episcopal (BME) Church of the Dominion of Canada and its bishop, Reverend R. R. Disney, who had consistently supported the denomination. Tanner was skeptical about a reunion between the AME and ME churches: The “‘Mother’ Church,” as “she loves to be called, does not very ardently desire the return of her black

Should “African” Remain in Our Title? 77 daughter. And if she did, we are not too sure that the daughter desires it sufficiently to vote for it.” Tanner found merger with other black Methodist churches impractical. The other Methodist bodies had a “very full bench of bishops, the aggregate number of which would be destructive to any one organization.”34 In a subsequent editorial, Tanner laid out even more thor- oughly why he favored union with the BME Church. First, he offered a general appeal that “all Christian people, in so far forth as possible ought to be united.” More specifically, he argued that the two churches were “essentially one already, both in doctrine and in practice,” that both were “one in blood and one in the eyes of whites,” and that a merger would unite African Americans and those in the West Indian islands, which would extend the efforts of the church into South America—and from there the denominational missionary work could be expanded to Africa.35 Tanner’s lobbying, as well as the speeches of other union advocates, proved successful, and in September 1880, by a majority vote in the AME Church and two-thirds support in the BME Church, the latter was reorga- nized into the new Tenth Episcopal District of the AME Church.36 The vote for union in the BME Church was overwhelmingly positive, with only one district (Ontario) voting a majority in opposition.37 In the same month, at the BME General Conference in Toronto, the officials of both denominations signed the articles and conditions of the merger between the communities.38 This success led to calls for even further unity between the other branches of African Methodism.39 However, the merger did not move forward without some dissent. Bishop Daniel A. Payne questioned the loyalty of the BME to America, suggesting that Bishop Nazrey “had moved to Canada and . . . had sworn eternal opposition to the U.S.” and insinuating that their motives for unifying were “mercenary.”40 Others were more hopeful, pointing out that the BME Church primarily consisted of former AME Church members who had fled to Canada after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850.41 The most ardent skeptics continued to question the legality of the process that led to the union of the two churches.42 Although enthusiastic calls for unification inundated the Christian Re- corder in the final decades of the nineteenth century, further movements for union between black denominations failed to gain traction. A planned meeting between six bishops of the AME and CME churches on April 26, 1882, served to increase denominational tensions when only Bishop Lucius Holsey appeared on behalf of the CME Church.43 If not through a formal union, Henry McNeal Turner made the case that the AME and AMEZ

78 Should “African” Remain in Our Title? churches should be united in cause, especially in the goal of missionizing Af- rica.44 The prevalence of personality conflicts, doctrinal differences, power struggles, and logistics undermined further plans for denominational unity. Apart from these unofficial efforts, additional mergers were not meant to be. However, as the plans for unification subsided, the question of the appropriateness of maintaining “African” in the AME Church title per- sisted. In February 1880, Reverend J. C. Embry of San Antonio, Texas, and Reverend T. H. Jackson engaged in a heated exchange of letters to the Christian Recorder over the future of the denominational title. Embry made the case that the “African” in the church’s title actually reinforced racial distinctions in America, writing, “I do not believe that the term is of the least benefit to the church, to any one in it, nor to the race. . . . I do not believe that the church of God should be employed or used in any way to build up caste, or pride of race.” T. H. Jackson spoke out against proposals for “absorption” by other denominations and rebuked Embry, declaring, “If pride of race is a crime it is one for which the church need not hang her head or blush in shame.” For Jackson, the term “African” was simply a means of distinguishing the AME from other denominations. “Hence, I hold that the term desired to be left out is here used in an ecclesiastical sense,” he wrote, “and not to mark a race, or to make race distinction.” Jackson noted that neither Daniel Payne’s nor Tanner’s histories of the AME Church suggested that the term was used “in the organization of the church to make a race distinction”: “Now that the sun is rising, let not the word ‘African’ pass away, but let it remain and let us, each and all, from head to foot, work energeti- cally, perseveringly and with full confidence in God for a greater success in the future than in the past, and to make the term ‘African’ a power for good, a synonym for all that is pure and God-like.”45 These were only a few of the many voices weighing in on the issue. Bishop Wayman argued that all black Methodist denominations should organize under the title “Second M.E. Church.” J. C. C. Owens wrote in support of Wayman’s proposed renaming after acknowledging that “the little word African, in the title of our church, has cut an important figure in securing to us a vast amount of church property, none will deny.” Others sought to recover Richard Allen’s original intent when naming the church. If Allen had called the church the “true ME Church in America,” some argued, just as much would have been accomplished. Other contributors argued that the name change would “affect the nature and mission of the church only for good.”46 A sizable contingent remained firm in their call

Should “African” Remain in Our Title? 79 for the removal of “African” from the denominational title, noting that the “sooner it is done and we content ourselves with being Americans, with an American destiny, the better.”47 Others made the case that simply because the “oppressor” used the term in a derogatory way, that was no reason to change the name of the church.48 Many ME ministers wrote letters voicing support for maintaining the AME title.49 Still more appealed to practicality, citing that the church property had been deeded under the name AME Church.50 Others felt that a name change would undo all the hard work of Allen and his legacy for those “sons and daughters of African descent” and that there was nothing to be ashamed of in the word since it was the name of “our mother country.” Even further, the term was interwoven in history, and to remove it would create “irrevocable harm.”51 Some found scriptural significance in the AME title. Jesse C. Banks wrote, “And the term ‘African,’ though cast off as inappropriate, will lie harmlessly amidst the rubbish of important facts, while our annoying con- sciences will demand an immediate research for that hidden treasure, in which is contained a correct amount of the first narrative in our Christian religion.” However, for Banks, the “first narrative” was not that of the exodus from the ME Church in 1787 but the story of Ham. “If we discard historical authority as it refers to Ham’s migration, if our characters are in any way blackened or degraded by an indirect connection with the scholastic training of Moses,” he wrote, “we can certainly point with pride to an incident ne plus ultra in significance.” He continued: “Our conscience is bathed in the happy assurance to know that it was Ethiopia, and not America, who first stretched forth her hands unto God.” “Remembrance of this incident” was sufficient reason not to change the title of the church. For Banks, the term “African” was “purely scriptural, and itself implies a signification more ancient than any heretofore adopted, is a conclusion which no truthful historian would remove by any degree of successful refutation.”52 While for some observers arguments over the denominational title seemed to involve mere semantics, the weight of the debates held important implications for understanding the American past and shaping the perceptions of the race into the future. On July 15, 1883, in St. Louis, the Negro Press Convention decided that the term “Negro,” in order to keep uniformity, would be capitalized in all African American publications. The convention defined “Negro” as “a distinct race of mankind” and found the word “African” to be too vague and too broad, encompassing such varied cultures as Egyptians, Nubians,

80 Should “African” Remain in Our Title? Guineans, or Zulu. The convention also felt the term “colored” was problematic. “It doesn’t mean anything at all, every race being considered a colored one except the Caucasian,” they declared. The official statement concluded, “Not only is Negro a distinctive name, but it is quite as honorable as any other, and gives the people bearing it an opportunity to make their own fixed place in the world.”53 Less than two weeks later, Tanner penned a long and passionate editorial condemning the decision. After acknowledging that the term “African” was used in early African American institutions, including the AME Church, he argued that “the fact that we were not Africans became so uni- versally conceded” that the term fell out of popular usage, except in reference to the earliest established organizations: “Not being ‘African,’ nor yet recognized as Americans, the people, and we among them, fell upon the word ‘negro,’ saying substantially that as you have no country after which to call you, we will call you after your color, negroes. But the cognomen was never very generally, much less kindly, received; and soon the designa- tion ‘colored’ was applied, indicating two things, a softening down of the brusque phrase ‘negro,’ as well as a recognition of the fact that we were really in a state of transition, the conclusion of which will only be seen when in common with the other peoples of the country we be recognized both by ourselves and others as Americans.” Tanner, who felt the use of the term “Negro” would do more harm than good, argued that the “project, then, to resuscitate the word almost dead, and give it not only a new lease of life, but in so far as is possible, crown it with glory and immortality, is to be resented; and for the reason that our nation is to be homogeneous, if indeed it is to remain united.” He concluded, “No power on earth can keep our country united if one part is to remain permanently white and the other part remain permanently black, with the colorline, both in letter and in spirit, in force. . . . Therefore do we denounce the effort made by both white men and black men to keep the people apart. We care nothing about the past of either the whites or the blacks. Our care is on the future.”54 In many ways, Tanner’s spirited engagement over the most accurate referent for African Americans was both the last major issue he addressed as editor of the Christian Recorder and the culmination of over sixteen years of making the case for the Americanness of people of African descent. From varied social issues to denominational mergers and the rise of social Darwinian classifications of race, Tanner eschewed the existential dilemma that plagued many of his peers: how to reconcile African and American identities. For Tanner, the influence of the race shown most brightly throughout

Should “African” Remain in Our Title? 81 American history, culture, and society, making the primacy of an American identity virtually self-evident. Yet for many, even a seemingly slight adjustment in the denominational title marked a sharp departure from a shared history and the legacy of revered founders. As much as AME ministers trumpeted their independence, the lack of Christian unity symbolized by the schisms within African Methodism remained troubling. Paradoxically, many leaders and laity deferred to social Darwinian claims about racial development while seeking to discredit its implications for ancient Judeo- Christian texts.

82 Should “African” Remain in Our Title? Chapter 5

The Rhetoric of African Emigration In 1878, the AME Church formed a number of denominational committees to investigate the issue of African emigration, presumably to put the question to rest once and for all. The Preachers’ Meeting of the AME Church in Philadelphia issued a statement against the “absurdity of the colored people of America attempting to build up a nationality in Africa.” From their position, the high poverty rate, the black “inexperience” with citizenship and leadership, the lack of a military, the previous colonization of the continent, and the greater opportunities in America all argued against emigration. The committee also made the case that blacks were “as truly American as any on the Continent.” Having landed at Jamestown, fought in wars, and become the indispensable labor force in the South, if not African Americans, they asked, “who is the true American?” In many ways, African Americans having been in America since the early seventeenth century, this was an odd question to still be raising within black communities in the post-Reconstruction era. However, increasingly in the late nineteenth century, AME leaders employed patriotic language as a rhetorical strategy to argue against African emigration and make a case for the unity of the African American race in the face of growing diversity and divisions. The grass-roots emigrationist movements of the 1870s utilized communication networks connecting plantations and farms spread across the countryside to voice ideas and spread their message to poorer laborers. Emigrationist sentiment increasingly resonated with rural blacks as the possibility of a unified African American community outside of the United States began to be seen as a real possibility. Print culture played a large role in disseminating emigrationist thought, including mediums such as handbills, pamphlets, and journals, particularly the African Repository, the journal of the American Colonization Society. The growing literacy rates and interest of African Americans can be seen in the hundreds of correspondences to the ACS inquiring about its programs.1 Facing the potential disintegration of their own churches if congregants left for Africa en masse, to stem this groundswell of emigrationist sentiment, many AME leaders again turned to print culture to make their case. In the late nineteenth century, the press had become firmly established as the medium through which national debates could be engaged and debated. Yet even the pages of black newspapers were not level ground. Editors, ministers, and the educated elite disproportionately contributed to almost every conversation in the Christian Recorder. However, in the concerns expressed by the dominant voices, one glimpses bits and pieces of African American experiences much different from the perspectives espoused by the AME hi- erarchy. The rhetoric of who were the “true Americans” masked the startling diversity of AME congregations, framing African emigration as “us” versus “them,” which allowed certain leaders and denominational committees to assert a definitive racial authority. That same Preachers’ Meeting felt it necessary to correct the public perception that there was widespread support among the AME leadership for emigration. The members wrote in their findings:

And whereas, this enterprise of African emigration is looked upon by many as having the support of the leading minds of our people by the interest manifested in it by persons holding high official positions in the A.M.E. Church, so much as to misguide the masses of the people by the suggestions of a few, therefore, Resolved, that we declare our unfaltering opposition to its knowing that if we could endure the hardships in the years of slavery, when we were only chattels, we can contend with the remaining prejudices, now [that] we have our liberty, and enjoy our rights as citizens. Resolved, That all such movements not only serve to unsettle and distress our people, but to encourage the hope in our enemies, that they may succeed in converting their former kidnapping into emigration, and thus beguile us away from your own country poor and penniless while they invite others to come. Resolved, That they who live and labor to perpetuate such a movement, and who have expressed a desire to have their bones buried there, had better show their faith by their works in going to that land, and staying there until they accomplish

84 The Rhetoric of African Emigration something and tell us from experience that it is a good land which the Lord our God giveth us. As it has been said by an eminent divine of the M. E. Church, that industry and skill will bring success in Liberia, it will also bring success in America. If God can make nobles, princes and senators of us in Africa, He can as easily do it in America, as there is no restraint to the Lord to work by many or few. Resolved, That until some such proof is given, we recognize all such efforts as coming from selfish motives, for causes unknown to us.2

Anti-emigrationists employed a number of strategies to sway public opinion, one of which was to paint Back to Africa movements as the pawn of whites seeking to rid the country of the black race. A month after the Preachers’ Meeting, the AME Committee on African Emigration con- vened, chaired by Benjamin T. Tanner and consisting of prominent ministers such as T. G. Steward. It expressed concerns about the organization of certain companies and saved its most strongly worded rebuke for white-run groups looking to deport black Americans. After noting that “an extensive interest is now awakened among the colored people of the land, with reference to emigrating to Africa,” the committee stated, “It is not a new question, but has of late assumed some new characteristics.” Having detailed the failure of past efforts of mass relocation to the West Indies, Central and South America, and Canada, which had been seen as “an asylum from oppression,” the committee members characterized the creation of Liberia as an effort by whites to relieve themselves of a “sense of guilt” over slavery: “Perhaps no one will deny that the first practical object which the slave- holder hoped to reach by Liberian emigration was the getting rid of that troublesome element described in their laws as ‘free negroes, mulattoes and persons of color,’ and thus render their pet institution more secure; while other men may have honestly believed it just to, and best for the negro. Considerations of this sort have always served to make the Colonization Society odious among large classes of the colored people.” The committee made an exception regarding the Azor project: “But there is now a Liberian Emigration movement headed by a minister of our church separate from the history and the odium of the Colonization Society; an emigration springing up voluntarily and seeking only means to reach its end. This movement has assumed organic form in the Liberia Exodus Association of South Carolina and a few other State organizations of less importance. . . . The committee is impressed with the spontaneous character and vastness of the movement,

The Rhetoric of African Emigration 85 and in view of the evils existing in this land and the peril attendant upon emigrating would hesitate to give any expression of opinion or advice which could be of general application. Caution as a matter of course should be exercised and every man should consider well for himself.” The committee members did express some concerns about the Liberian Exodus Asso- ciation, questioning its organization and management. However, they ended on a positive note, stating, “Yet its progress has been rapid and its achievements grand so far. The hope [is] that it may retain confidence and serve humanity.” But they renewed their objection to white-led efforts to rid the country of blacks: “In conclusion, however, your committee would beg to express its unqualified disapprobation of any organized effort to expatriate us from the country dear to us by every memory of our life.”3 But the issue was far from settled, as the fairly modest recommendations of the Preachers’ Meeting led to a contentious meeting at their next gathering. The Committee on African Emigration of the Philadelphia Annual Conference put forth a more sweeping resolution “against the emigration of or encouragement of the colored people to emigrate to those sunny shores.” At the meeting, Henry McNeal Turner challenged that official position and encouraged the committee to do as Bishop Brown and Campbell had done in the Southern Conference and “not tolerate its admission into her discussion by this conference.” He felt it “would cause undue agitation in the church.” Once attacked, the decorum of the previous meeting quickly vanished as Tanner defended the report of the committee and condemned emigration “as a speculative movement of thoughtless men.” Others, such as Rev. Joseph S. Thompson, felt Turner had “misstated” the position of Bishop Brown and the conference. Rev. J. C. Embry criticized the movement as one that “would result in no good to the colored race.” He felt both history and geography “demonstrated the impracticability of emigrating to any clime on the face of the globe where the influence and presence of the white race were not known.” From his reading of science, “all intelligent races inhabit the temperate and not the torrid zone.” Turner called Embry a “blasphemer” for his comments, a remark which Bishop Shorter quickly ruled out of order as a personal attack. Bishop Campbell maintained his position that these issues, including “all legislation,” should not be addressed at the conference level. He believed it “best to let that question take care of itself.” From his perspective, it “was plain that the solid thinkers of our race were opposed to African emigration.” Rev. J. W. Scott, presiding elder of the Florida Conference, endorsed the “sentiments” of the report and argued that the conference was “the proper place, an[d] . . . the fit time to

86 The Rhetoric of African Emigration speak out against this movement.” He believed the movement had “injuri- ous effects in the South unsettling the industrial pursuits among the colored people,” many of whom, he said, “hadn’t five dollars in their pockets, but were ready to emigrate to Africa.” Scott suggested that emigrationists would never put their money where their mouths were and actually go to Africa. “You may take my word for it,” he declared, “that those who make the lon- gest speeches and talk the loudest, will not be found ready to get on board of any ship bound to that land.”4 Those against a return to Africa questioned the viability of particular sites such as Liberia for holding the future of the race. The New Jersey Con- ference of the AME Church noted the growth of emigration movements and the strong desire among African Americans to find a site “free from persecution” and an “asylum—a place to rest.” Whether the location was Canada or Liberia, representatives observed, a growing contingency of African Americans sought to “build up a nationality,” either voluntarily or as a condition of their emancipation to Liberia. They commented on the great outlay of money for the movement and the strong desire to “colonize the free people, who were considered a dangerous element.” They placed the mortality rate of those who went to Liberia at more than 70 percent due primarily to the climate, the limited availability of clean water, food, and proper housing, and the “habits” of Africans and sickness that “few ever survive[d] its ravages.” For these many reasons, they argued, the most “intelligent” of the race viewed these movements as “mischievous; and as one that threatened the extermination of our race in this country, it being the policy of many that if we did live here it should be in a state of vassalage.” Rather than arising naturally from within African American communities, some made the case that it was outsiders who were constantly stirring up the question and taking advantage of the gullible. They took issue with the recently formed Liberian Exodus Association and a Liberian Joint Stock Steamship Company in South Carolina for proposing to transport African Americans to Liberia. They suggested that field agents were “agitating this question” and compelling people to sell their possessions at below market value for the pipe dream of investing in the company, which claimed to issue thirty thousand shares of stock at ten dollars per share. Those who invested received transportation to Africa, provided they were able to support themselves in Liberia for six months without assistance. These types of schemes, the conference lamented, did irreparable harm to black communities: “Oh how much damage the would-be leaders have done! Many of our poor people have been deterred from cultivating the soil and producing an honest

The Rhetoric of African Emigration 87 livelihood for themselves and families, and rising to respectability and honor in the community, simply because they have been unsettled through the chicanery of these leaders, upon whom we fear the curse of God will rest.” Some African Americans saw no need for blacks to emigrate, since the race had already secured citizenship, property, land ownership, legal rights, and had even held elected office in America. To emigrate was to lose the fruits of past hardships and struggles: “We should not emigrate for battles have been fought, lives lost, positions filed, and it is useless for us to step down and out, to make room for the Irishman, German, Italian, Chinaman, and others. Nay, nay! We were born here, toiled here, suffered here, multi- plied here, enriched this nation, and here will we live and die and be buried, and go to heaven from here.” The conference had no problem with the leaders of the Liberian Exodus Association emigrating if that was their choice since “they are the class that is most needed there. Educated, refined, shrewd business men, such as can instruct and enlighten the natives.” They did take issue with “persuading the ignorant and poor to go, for they would be blind teachers of the blind and both would remain in darkness.” They felt the tropical climate, sickness, lack of food, proper schools, and military protection were all deterrents. In addition, the leadership felt that African Americans would come up short in competition with the “native labor,” who were “strong and hardy.”5 The growing vehemence with which many AME ministers denounced African emigration exemplifies the increasing divide between leaders and laity, urban and rural, middle class and poor in African American communities. For many “ordinary” black Americans, America was far from a paradise and some sought a new life abroad. Prominent white and African Americans heralded black progress in America, particularly in the realm of education. In his commencement address to the Institute for Colored Youth at Association Hall in Philadelphia, which was reprinted in the Christian Recorder, J. W. Cromwell argued against emigration. “Educational progress of blacks is being made and chances for higher achievement are better in the U.S. than in Africa,” he argued. However, improving conditions in America was a matter of perspective. T. Thomas Fortune, editor of the New York Age, wrote, “Emigration may yet play a very important part in the solution of the question of our position in this country. We will say this much, that Dr. Tanner may speak, in his view, the prevailing opinion of northern colored men, while Bishop Turner may speak that of the South. Whatever may be the wishes of the thoughtful men of the race, the masses of our people in the South are growing fearfully restless.” Similarly, Bishop Cain

88 The Rhetoric of African Emigration wrote, “Many blacks in South Carolina and the interior of the country have been inquiring how they shall arrange and be ready to go to Liberia.” This disconnect between the viewpoint of the elite based in hypotheticals and abstract moral stands continued in stark contrast with the survival-driven practicality of many working-class African Americans. By the end of the nineteenth century, the “masses” were still pressing the issue of African emigration, especially in the South. Embry noted as much when he wrote, “In Tennessee, Arkansas, and Alabama, no little unrest disturbs the masses of our people. To whatever cause this general disquiet may be assigned, the fact remains that Africa and Mexico are being considered as never before by citizens of color in the states mentioned.”6 The voyages of blacks to Africa not only made it to the pages of black newspapers but were also used to argue against emigration more broadly. In the spring of 1878, in Charleston, South Carolina, 206 emigrants boarded the Azor, the ship that would transport them to Liberia. They were not alone as they embarked on their journey, as a crowd of ten thousand specta- tors and well wishers had gathered that morning to send them off. Bands and choirs performed songs, dignitaries gave speeches and presentations, ministers offered prayers and readings, and each emigrant was greeted with boisterous applause and celebration from ten in the morning until three in the afternoon.7 Twenty-three died on the voyage to Liberia and several more succumbed after arrival, but of those who remained, some went on to become successful in business and farming, and a small group established a mission church. On the one hand, the journey of two hundred emigrants to Liberia in 1878 is but a blip on the larger African American historical record in the second half of the nineteenth century. Yet the coverage of the event in the black press linked the fate of the African emigration movement to that of those passengers who boarded the Azor. So too did opponents and advocates of the Back to Africa efforts. Other newspaper accounts emphasized the dangers of the voyage to Africa, focusing on the mortality rate of those aboard the Azor and accounts of disease and sickness, as well as the profound disappointment experienced by those who resettled in Liberia. The not-so-subtle moral was that African emigration was foolhardy, doomed to failure, and would only be entertained by the simpleminded and easily manipulated. For others, the growth of industry and the spiritual progress made in Liberia were harbingers of a brighter future for blacks in Africa. Their example, then, could be held up to inspire the mass migration that Martin Delany and others hoped to catalyze.8

The Rhetoric of African Emigration 89 These multiple readings of the meaning of the Azor typify the rhetoric surrounding African emigration in the late nineteenth century. Each side read the evidence through the lens that supported their own position and discredited that of their opposition. Within this larger discourse, few voices in the denomination were more polarizing than Henry McNeal Turner. His own developing philosophies and the reactions to his public pronouncements are important gauges with which to trace the trajectory of AME sentiment regarding African emigration. Paradoxically, the post-Reconstruction era, one of the most trying times in African American history, witnessed one of the strongest backlashes against African emigration. Although the political and socioeconomic conditions facing African Americans appeared to be steadily deteriorating, the AME establishment asserted, blacks would not be compelled to leave or flee America but should embrace the challenges of the new age that was upon them—a sentiment that apparently was not shared by poor African American southerners experiencing the “nadir” first hand. The AME Church played a major role in the Azor endeavor from its inception. The Liberian Exodus Joint Stock Steamship Company, which sponsored the voyage, was the initial vision of B. F. Porter, a local AME pastor who became the company’s first president. R. H. Cain, a future bishop in the AME Church, was the strongest political ally for the movement, having served in both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. At least 30 of the first 206 emigrants who embarked on the initial voyage were African Methodists. The Christian Recorder was instrumental in gathering funds for the Azor. Martin Delany, who served as an officer in the steamship company, purchased advertising space and wrote letters encouraging African Americans to purchase stock in the nascent enterprise. Through these individual investors, Delany and others were able to cobble together enough funds to build the Azor and charter the Liberian Exodus Joint Stock Steamship Company. However, overwhelmed with debt, the Azor was auc- tioned off after its inaugural trip to Africa.9 Henry McNeal Turner wrote glowingly about the completion of the Azor and having it “consecrated to African civilization.” He characterized his experience at the ceremonial launching of the maiden voyage as “the grandest day I ever witnessed, or ever expect to. It was also a day of grand utterances; words were said, arguments presented, facts adduced, quotations made and historical illustrations were brought forward that were new, novel, irresistible and unanswerable.” He praised the Azor as “a splendid vessel, built on the clipper plan, and is said to answer to her rudder as well as any ship on the sea.” Having survived the storms and rough waters of Cape Horn, the craft

90 The Rhetoric of African Emigration was built for safety. He laughed off critiques of the leaders of the endeavor: “Some persons are weak enough to suppose the Directors of this movement, are a set of fragile, non-com-poops, who are as brainless as bats. I have heard persons refer to them as ‘poor ignorant creatures.’” Turner corrected the assertion and praised the founders’ independence: “I venture to say an abler body of colored men were never engaged in an enterprise in the history of this scheme, adventure, enterprise, or whatever you may call it . . . they are doing it themselves; not howling through the country for help.” In fact, the leaders turned away potential white investors. He described the combination of spiritual elation and racial pride exuded by those present. “It was amusing to witness some of the odd manifestations of joy by a few of the more impulsive of our people, while inspecting the ship,” he noted. “Some would go aboard and thank God; others raise their hands to heaven and bless God for the sight, others jump up a few times, and others would kiss the vessel, &c., but everybody would smile the moment their feet touched her decks. It might be called the ‘smiling ship.’ The smiles, however, were not so much incited by the exodus idea, as by the fact that the colored people had bought a vessel for several who look upon the measure with doubt and distrust, are heartily proud of the ship-purchase feature of it.”10 For his part, Tanner was concerned about the claims in the steamship company’s advertisements in the Christian Recorder, which he found to be puffery, particularly the seemingly modest cost of the voyage to passengers. “This is one of the suspicious features we have had occasion to mention,” he wrote. “Steamship Companies with great capitals at their back cannot afford in good faith to make any such proposition. The mischievous feature noticed, had been that of having the people sell off everything, and make no provision for the morrow.”11 Tanner also expressed skepticism about the Azor in general. “one would think that our South Carolina brethren with the ‘Azor’ experiment still before them, would look with suspicion upon all schemes of African emigration. It would seem not, if we are to judge from circulars sent to our office. As in the case of the ‘Azor,’ we say now: The project is doomed to failure and every man who invests a dollar in it will lose.”12 Although African American leaders often cast one another as either strict Back to Africanists or assimilationists, even the most staunch emigrationists changed and nuanced their positions over time and spoke with varying levels of intensity about the issue. In fact, Henry McNeal Turner’s views toward emigration vacillated over time. While consistently against full assimilation into European American culture, the rise of emigration

The Rhetoric of African Emigration 91 movements to Liberia and Haiti barely made Turner’s radar in the 1860s. Turner spoke out in favor of President Abraham Lincoln’s proposal to relocate blacks to Panama, which he felt was a potentially positive development, but because of his high public profile, the press quickly cast him as “the prime mover in the whole affair.” From this episode, Turner learned that he must be more selective in his support of movements or at least became cognizant that any offhanded comments he made might be reframed by the media. Over the next several years, Turner rarely addressed the issue of emigration publicly, only briefly acknowledging the possibility of establishing a separate black homeland in North America, possibly within the southern states. Barring the creation of an autonomous and sovereign nation within a nation, he was convinced that blacks needed to leave the South. In the early 1870s, he was not wedded to the idea of Africa as the location for black emigration. In his letters to the Christian Recorder from Savannah in 1871, Turner expressed a greater openness to the idea of emigrating to sites in the Caribbean such as Haiti. However, Turner could be taunted into taking a stronger stance. Although he had never previously publicly supported the ACS, in 1873, after being attacked by Frederick Douglass, who suggested that he supported the organization, Turner replied, “The Colonization Society has done good, is doing good, and will ultimately be adored by unborn millions.” In 1874, he officially petitioned the U.S. government for the state of New Mexico in order to form an independent black nation. Yet during the same time period, Turner gave a slight nod toward Africa while keeping the American West alive as another viable option: “We must have railroads, stock in telegraph companies, insurance companies, factories, etc. This is essential to our growth, upbuilding and material advancement. How are we to acquire it? Either by going to Africa or out West and settling on new territory.”13 The haphazard enforcement of the 1875 Civil Rights Act and what he understood to be a divine call for African Americans to evangelize Africans seemed to both crystallize Turner’s unbridled support for emigration and settle Africa in his mind as the ultimate destination for the race. In the same year, Turner wrote that Africa represented the African American Jamestown or Plymouth Rock.14 Those who opposed this destiny “will be blown like chaff before the wind in a few years, and the church will turn her attention to the fatherland, and plant the flag staff of the gospel on her plains, and force submission to her claims. . . . Africa, O Africa, thou land of Ham, thou shalt be redeemed.” While he would later advocate for mass emigration, in

92 The Rhetoric of African Emigration this formative period, he believed that African missions would succeed by “a slow and gradual operation,” with a small number of committed emigrants relocating at a time. Emigration and the success of mission went hand and hand. “The only way to civilize a people is to move into their midst and live among them,” he argued. Yet this measured approach to the issue would not be long lasting. On June 21, 1883, Turner was not shy about sharing his views on African emigration. “Now what is my opinion?” he asked. “Simply to found and establish a country or government somewhere upon the continent of Africa . . . where our young men and ladies can find a theater of activity and usefulness, and commence a career for the future that will meet the needs of posterity, at the same time build up a center of Christian civilization that will help redeem the land of our ancestry.”15 Not surprisingly, Turner’s most vocal opponent was Benjamin T. Tanner. While at times cast as a “conservative” or an “assimilationist,” Tanner was not fervently against emigration to Africa but, rather, was opposed to mass migration schemes, which he denounced in favor of what he termed “selective emigration.” Tanner supported Liberia but was against the best and the brightest African Americans leaving America to go across the Atlantic. After an entry from the African Repository, the official organ of the ACS, encouraging discharged soldiers to emigrate to Africa was reprinted in the Christian Recorder, Tanner challenged the sentiment, arguing that blacks should “settle down with what they got, and begin the mighty task of working up.” Wiley Lane, a professor of Greek at Howard University, concurred and stated that “blacks should stay in America because Africa’s climate is not good for them” and because “things will get better.” In 1885, when a newspaper suggested that blacks give one dollar each to end Liberian debt, Tanner wrote, “Agreed. Here is our dollar. Who is ready to receive it?” Tanner urged blacks to use their political power to influence the U.S. government’s relationship with Africa. “When we shall be able to speak with the authority a million votes will give us Africa will receive more attention than now,” he wrote. Tanner did, however, sharply reject most romantic notions of a nostalgic connection between African Americans and Africa. Rather than a land of his ancestry, Tanner viewed Africa as another land that needed the Christian Gospel.16 One of the more prominent critics of Tanner’s positions was Alexander Crummell, who espoused the type of presumed camaraderie between African Americans and Africans that Tanner found so problematic. In 1871, Crummell wrote that “African redemption should be carried out

The Rhetoric of African Emigration 93 by Africans, West Indians, and American blacks. . . . Educated American blacks can do the most good for their race by coming to Africa.” In an article titled “The Obligation of American Blacks for the Redemption of Africa,” Crummell called for blacks to draw upon a “feeling of brotherhood and nationalism for their brethren around the world.” One student countered Crummell’s call: “America, not Africa is my home . . . [and] whether this [America] is his home or not the black lives here. He will be here.” One contributor, identified only as “Henry,” questioned why the rhetorical invocation of Africa as the “fatherland” was presumed to inspire dedication to the continent: “Well what does that argue? Suppose it is his fatherland, does it necessarily follow that everybody must go back to his fatherland, England is the father-land of [a] great many white American[s],—Germany of German Americans—Ireland of Irish Americans—and so on—But is that any . . . just reason why they should go back to England,—Germany or Ireland? By no means. Nor is it, for the Colored American.”17 Turner also challenged Tanner on a number of issues, interpreting his relativistic approach to Africa as an ambivalence about Christian missions. In one letter, he bemoaned the fact that Tanner had not gone to Europe because he felt the church would be strengthened by his absence. Turner’s critique was a part of his larger concern over Tanner’s broad influence on the denomination as editor of the Christian Recorder. Tanner’s lack of coverage of events involving Africa could be interpreted as indicative of the place of Africa on the priority list of the AME Church, Turner argued, and therefore serve to squash the momentum of the fledgling emigration movement. “Do not try to make me responsible for your sins,” Turner wrote. “You, more than any . . . are culpable for the missionary apathy of our church.” Even for Turner, this attack on Tanner seemed to be misplaced. Tanner’s concern over missions was mostly driven by a realistic assessment of the denomination’s overcommitted finances, which at the time included struggling to maintain its churches across the country, schools such as Wilberforce, and the Christian Recorder, whose subscribers were in decline and whose delinquent customers were on the rise. Tanner showed surprising restraint in his response, simply continuing his advocacy for a focus on African American self-help rather than the barriers caused by white racism and pointing toward his eventual departure from the editorship. Although it is difficult to quantify, Tanner did seem to publish more Africa-related materials after the confrontation with Turner.18 This public exchange seemed to end the temporary accord that had existed between the two men while working on the Christian Recorder together.

94 The Rhetoric of African Emigration In these public encounters, Tanner clearly gave as good as he got. In one editorial, he took Turner to task for a speech he gave, “On to Africa,” in which Tanner felt he had failed to recognize “the weight of his words.” Tanner was particularly concerned about less-informed African Americans making rash decisions based on Turner’s rhetoric. “That he means no harm to his people, we know,” he wrote, “and if we could once get him to realize that whatever position he takes affects them, for weal or woe, he would stop such wild goose projects; but being the humble man described, he takes it for granted, we suppose, that he can take any position, or utter any word, and it will in no way bear upon the destinies of the race, we are convinced, he loves so well.” For Tanner, Turner’s strong stance was merely public posturing. He believed that, deep down, even Turner understood that the emigration of blacks to Africa was futile. “Now, in all sincerity, Doctor, we want you to stop your nonsense about emigrating to Africa,” Tanner wrote. “You know the millions of our people are not going, and that they ought not to go, if they would. No more certain doom would await them, if they were to walk right into the Atlantic. Going to Africa! We have got nothing to go on. Little money, less education, and not a whit more religion than could save us from lapsing into idolatry!” Tanner was particularly put out by any suggestion of a mass migratory movement to the continent: “But Dr. Turner advocates, likewise, a wholesale emigration. Not as in the case of the settlement of this country: but it would seem that he wants us to move as Israel moved up from Egypt, en masse; and we say to him frankly, that it is time to stop placing such willow o’wisps before our people; and he ought to know it. . . . What we want is, simply to settle down . . . [wherever] . . . we find ourselves. If among enemies, conquer their enmity by faithfulness and love. If among friends, make them the more friendly: and to such a degree, that they will conclude our presence absolutely necessary for the material and political welfare of the country.”19 There was some discussion of African emigration from the earliest pages of the denominational newspaper. As early as November 24, 1854, the editors of the Christian Recorder regularly published the “Twelve Articles of the Constitution of the African Colonization Society.” While the American Col- onization Society was led by northern whites, the African Colonization Society was led by African Americans, including Richard Cain of the AME Church. Martin Delany also held several offices in the organization. The African Colonization Society bylaws declared that the group did not seek to “encourage general emigration but will aid only such persons as may be practically qualified and suited to mechanical arts, agriculture, commerce,

The Rhetoric of African Emigration 95 and improvement; who must always be carefully selected and well recom- mended, that the progress of civilization may not be obstructed . . . [and] to put blacks where they could best use their civilized talents for the benefit of themselves and society.”20 For the most part, submissions to the Christian Recorder reveal a pervad- ing optimism during Reconstruction. The postbellum period heightened the expectations of many African Americans. The Reconstruction Act of 1867 raised hopes even further as northern and southern black Americans, including many preachers, entered politics at an unprecedented rate.21 While there were intermittent conversations about the possibilities of emigration to Africa, for the most part, there was little sustained debate about emigration during Reconstruction. As the prospects for the race brightened, there was a cautious sentiment that African Americans could soon receive full citizenship rights and equity in socioeconomic and educational opportunities, which would render the question of emigration to Africa moot. During Reconstruction, when the issue of emigration was raised, letters and articles in the Christian Recorder overwhelmingly made the case against such a move. Letters forecast a brighter future for the race in America. “Slav- ery is a thing of the past, and ostracism at the north is dying out, and it is within the power of the colored man to kill it out entirely,” one letter noted. While emigrationists held out Africa as the site of true freedom, others held on to an optimistic attitude about the political climate in America: “Well if he is only free in name—we hold that it is in his own power to make himself so in fact.” Just as immigrants had worked to overcome the Know-Nothing Party, so too could blacks show their “manhood” as soon as they gave up “talk of running away from difficulties to other equally as great, and assert his rights—takes his pleasure and make himself felt. It can be done, it might be done. He can do it here, as well as in Africa, nay better.” Any effort that would be expended to adapt to African culture would be better spent assimilating to America. One letter warned, “We say be careful that in persuading the Colored American to Africa, you do not make his condition worse instead of better.” Many lay the success or failure of the race squarely at the feet of African Americans. They suggested that members of the race derailed their own progress: “We complain that we can not do this, or have that—when in a great many instances we pull off to ourselves—instead of pushing to the front.” Many articles did not hesitate to speak for Africa. “What Africa wants is—not that all the colored people in this country should go over there—but that good—faithful—and learned missionaries should be sent over to work,” one writer argued.22

96 The Rhetoric of African Emigration William S. Scarborough made the case that blacks were first and foremost Americans. “It would be well for the advocate of en masse migration, self government, distinct nationality, etc., to put aside the trite theory that this is a white men’s government and endeavor to bring about a better state of things here upon this our own continent,” he wrote. The first step would be to seek to overcome the tensions that had historically divided segments of the black community, particularly in the South, and band together to advance the race through education and economic advancement. He characterized African emigration as an undertaking that would be “as wild as it is unreasonable.” Instead, he argued, African Americans needed to realize that they have a strong and continuing interest in America and its government, which was built on the back of slave labor. Although acknowledging that the African American future currently looked “dark and gloomy” and that blacks faced “political as well as social disabilities,” he maintained that even the suggestion of leaving the country was misplaced, pointing toward brighter days: “I hope for better things and sincerely believe my hope will not be in vain.”23 The cautious optimism of Reconstruction was soon replaced by appre- hension as the Compromise of 1876 and President Hayes’s removal of the federal troops from the South once again restricted the rights of African Americans and left them vulnerable to the violence of the southern “redeem- ers.” Racial and social boundary lines hardened once more.24 Rather than seeking support from white America, many contributors to the Christian Recorder argued, the times called for African Americans to rely on their own organizations for self-improvement and the elevation of the race. It was autonomy and not dependence that would propel African Americans to their rightful place among the other great races of the world. This introspective focus on racial self-reliance catalyzed the fledgling Back to Africa movements. The political climate of post-Reconstruction America signaled to some that the time to return to Africa was at hand. Daniel A. Payne had been strangely quiet on the emigration question until a letter from C. H. Pearce in 1878 called for him to comment as a “staunch friend of our race as well as the educator of our people.” Pearce wrote, “ I feel safe in asking your opinion, and am confident that I will get it. As a father in the gospel, your opinion will be regarded valuable, even though it may be adverse to my preconceived opinion of the subject. I am frank to acknowledge that I am in favor of the movement, and were I a young man I would not stand the insults of the American white people; and above all this we have a higher and grander object in view, namely, the

The Rhetoric of African Emigration 97 civilizing of benighted Africa. I am of the opinion that the African M.E. Church will not fill her mission until she has borne her part in raising up the standard of our blessed Redeemer in that land.”25 Payne responded by writing a series of letters to the Christian Recorder that outlined his position as well as the current state of Christian missions throughout Africa. He made the case that, given the state of European colonization in Africa, the continent could hardly be considered “an asylum, from the white man’s oppression nor the white man’s power.” Regarding Pearce’s optimism about the AME Church’s role in the redemption of Africa, Payne felt the time would likely come but did not lay in the immediate future. “What the A.M.E. Church will be able to do thirty-five or a hundred years hence, I know not,” he wrote. “But this I do know: she is not now in a condition to undertake a work so grand, so important, and involving so many and such great responsibilities as a mission in Africa would necessitate.” Payne felt that churches undertaking such an endeavor had to be “matured . . . in all manly virtues and in all the Christian graces, and secondly also matured in wealth, riches and in learning.” This was a criterion he felt his own denomination had not yet met: “That the A.M.E. Church has not attained such a condition is evident to every well informed and thinking mind. Now, the A.M.E. Church has just commenced to develop in all these directions—just begun to multiply these activities; but just at this delicate and hazardous point in her history, brethren more zealous than wise, are demanding that we shall [pull] up stakes and rush pell mell into the wilds of Africa; or else to pick out the best men and the best families we have, to go and plant the gems of civilization and Christianity in ‘our fatherland.’” He believed this position could only be maintained by those who were “ignorant of what is going on in Africa.” To drive home his point, Payne described the work of such “matured” churches in Christendom as the Church of England and Wesleyan Methodists in locations such as South Africa, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Cairo, and Niger.26 Although initially expressing his reticence to bring the “sensitive question” to the pages of the Christian Recorder because it would likely “prejudice” people to the issue, Turner felt compelled to respond to Payne’s bar- rage of letters and assertions. “But when the learned and Senior Bishop of our great church, comes down from the majesty of his exalted position [to] fling a slur at one so infinitely beneath him, I am compelled to raise a point of explanation,” he wrote. Turner took particular exception to the portion of Payne’s letter that suggested that African emigration was the “offspring of disappointed political ambition. I believe so, because just so

98 The Rhetoric of African Emigration long as the leaders of this ‘Exodus’ hold their seats in [the] legislature of Georgia and South Carolina, or played a successful part in the politics of these States, not a word was heard from their lips concerning African emigration.” Turner did not miss the not-so-subtle reference to himself: “I am the only member of the Georgia Legislature who has given any public sanction to the African emigration movement. The Bishop . . . virtually says that I never uttered a word in favor of Africa . . . since the overthrow of the Republican legislatures of the South.” Turner corrected Payne by crediting a missionary sermon by Dr. Thomas of Abbeville, South Carolina, in 1849, for convincing him that God wanted to use African Americans for the redemption and “civilization of Africa.” He also pointed to an 1861 Sabbath school address in Bethel Church in Philadelphia in which he stated that he “believed that American slavery would be destroyed if for no other purpose than to allow the colored people to return to their fatherland, and carry the Christian religion to their brethren.” He alluded to several other speeches in which he expressed like sentiments “to show that when a member of the legislature, I frequently spoke of Africa in connection with the future of the colored race.” He concluded with one final jab at Payne, expressing that he would “seriously regret to have as poor an opinion of the colored race as the learned Bishop has. Such a low estimate of their intellectual and moral worth (judging from his letter,) would lead me to believe he was not only cursed, but only fit for slavery or extermination.”27 AME leaders noted the change in the political climate regarding African emigration. Bishop Cain lamented that it had apparently “become essential to abuse Africa, and condemn all who advocate the elevation of the people of that country, in order to become popular and be considered wise.” From his perspective, the pages of the Christian Recorder itself had “teemed with the condemnatory expressions of the opponents of African civilization.” Cain was particularly bothered by the sketchy evidence upon which critics based their attacks of the movement: “Each of these writers seem to form their judgments from the circumscribed views drawn from the sufferings of a few improvident and consequently complaining people, who have gone to Africa without making proper provision to meet the demands of nature, climate and disease, which all demand forecast and pre-arrangement. The various opponents of African emigration do not seem to rise to a statesmanlike view of the subject of settlement of colonies and the building up of great states, and municipalities.” Relative to past obstacles awaiting those emigrating to Africa, Cain averred, contemporary emigrants did not face 10 percent of the perils and pain of the founders. Cain drew hope from the permanent

The Rhetoric of African Emigration 99 settlements, commercial relations, stable government, and the over twenty- two thousand English speakers that now characterized western Africa. The increasing numbers of churches, schools, and farms, and “Christian civilization” and its leaders, all combined to “advance refinement and virtue as the basis of social life.” Cain portrayed Africa as an inviting place in which all who came would receive a free home, land, and full citizenship upon declaring loyalty to Liberia. Cain described a utopia in which “there are no prejudices to intervene to destroy your happiness as a citizen. Every avenue is open to the man of enterprise who will make himself felt in the community.” He felt those who complained about the conditions in Africa should really look to their own failed ambitions rather than blaming the climate or the country. If Europeans could consistently make money on the continent, he argued, so too could African Americans. Unless, as some asserted, slavery had “completely destroyed every vestige of greatness in the negro character, and left him shiftless, thriftless and destitute of any spirit of great enterprise.” It might take “new generations of negroes” to “come upon the stage” to allow “a new manhood” to reach the “perfection” and produce “that class of men who shall begin enterprises.” Cain foresaw a day in which “the whole of the old race of the negro will pass away” and the “young generation will acquire education, refinement, intelligence, and with these will come the desire for wealth and science, art, sculpture, painting and all the appliances of a higher civilization.” In addition, competition from whites would “crowd him out” and force young African Americans to “go where he can be a man.” “When that good time comes,” he wrote, “the eyes of the manly will turn across the sea and to the land which shall be to them the most inviting, where every barrier will be swept away and every encouragement given to them.” Cain marveled at Africa’s mineral resources and agricultural potential. Those who wrote negatively about Liberia in the pages of the Christian Recorder, he asserted, “know nothing of the country of which they write; they certainly have not read up on the condition of the country nor of the future prospects which lie open to that great continent. None seem to speak of it from any other than the fever and sickly standpoint. They seem to have death always in view. Now, great enterprises are not carried forward by that class of people, nor are they wanted in that or any other country; they would be a hindrance to the march of civilization, just as laggards are in the ad- vancing army. The day demands a different and a better class of workers and thinkers, to lead the race to deeds of adventure and national greatness.” Trade with Africa, Cain concluded, would “open a chapter which the croak- ers have never dreamed was written in African history.”28

100 The Rhetoric of African Emigration Frederick Douglass weighed in strongly against emigration, seeking to discredit hyperbolic descriptions about life for blacks in the South. “The negro, in one form and complexion or another, may be counted upon as a permanent element of the population of the south,” he wrote. “The idea of his becoming extinct finds no support in this fact. But will he immigrate? No! Individuals may, but the masses will not.” Douglass cited the expense of transporting such large groups of people and expressed skepticism that a land existed in which the conditions would be more favorable than in America—a land that would have more sound “moral surroundings,” more hope for a brighter future, more educational opportunities, and a better opportunity to improve the character of the race. In addition, he felt locating a site that was free of a European presence and influence was impossible. He believed each of these considerations “conspire to keep the negro here, and compel him to adjust himself to American civilization.” Douglass felt African Americans had “a moral and political hold upon this country, deep and firm. . . . His religion and civilization are in harmony with those of the people among whom he lives. He worships with them in a common temple and at a common altar, and to drag him away is to destroy the temple and tear down the altar. Drive out the negro and you drive out Christ, the Bible, and American liberty with him.” Douglass was also skeptical about the possibilities of a separate black nation within the United States. “The thought of setting apart a State or Territory and confining the negro within its borders is a delusion,” he argued. “If the North and South could not live sepa- rately in peace, and without bloody and barbarous border wars, the white and black cannot. If the negro could be bottled up, who could or would bottle up the irrepressible white man? . . . Plainly enough, migration is no policy for the negro.” Just as Jews overcame hatred in Europe, Douglass asserted, “in like manner the negro will rise in the social scale.” Although the socioeconomic and political conditions facing blacks would initially get worse, over time the African American “will gain both by concession and self-assertion. Shrinking cowardice wins nothing from either meanness or magnanimity. Manly self-assertion and eternal vigilance are essential to negro liberty, not less than to that of the white man.”29 Many black intellectuals responded to the nadir as a challenge to be overcome rather than a call to reunite with the land of their ancestors. The passage of legislation such as the Louisiana Separate Car Act of 1890, the precursor to Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which codified the notion of “equal but separate” accommodations, sparked outrage in the pages of the black press. Readers parsed the wording of Plessy, which stated, “We consider the

The Rhetoric of African Emigration 101 underlying fallacy of the plaintiff’s argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.”30 As the efforts of the ACS gained increased renown, many prominent blacks framed emigration less in terms of “pull” factors that drew them to Africa than as the ramification of allowing themselves to be pushed out of the country. If African Americans were perceived to be an inferior race that could not survive in America, the last thing to do, some asserted, was to leave the country, confirming their lack of self-sufficiency and at the same time exhibiting cowardice in the face of adversity. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the discourse surrounding Back to Africa movements grew increasingly negative. Benjamin F. Lee, editor of the Christian Recorder, wrote, “It takes neither the learning of Dr. Blyden, however, nor the malice of the Negro-haters of the South, to figure the Negro out of this country. He is here to stay, and will never emigrate anywhere else.” T. M. D. Ward wrote, “We are free, too free to be forcibly shipped to the jungles of Africa. If we cannot make a name for ourselves in America, we cannot do it under the burning rays of an African sun.” Sen- ator John T. Morgan, a conservative Democrat from Alabama, was quoted as saying, “There is a natural incongruity and irrepressible conflict between the races which nothing could cure except their final separation. The return of the Negro race to Africa is the only solution to the problem.” This statement inspired a rash of heated responses rebuking the sentiment. It was one thing for African Americans to plan a return to Africa, but it was quite another to have whites try to rid the country of blacks. Others felt more planning was needed before further emigration took place. In another editorial, “Africa and the Afro-Americans,” Benjamin Lee wrote that he did not “maintain a running chain of inconsistent and impracticable talk, bluster and clutter about Africa. . . . Mark, we are speaking against a wholesale urging to move, move, move. We object to being urged to move in large numbers until preparations are made to accommodate us after moving.” J. C. Embry concurred, asserting that Turner had not supplied thorough statis- tics on African countries, including facts on soil, climate, industry, and agriculture. “We want to know, if we are to go back to Africa, what we may be going for and the resources that shall be at our command,” Embry added.31 Although some investors were defrauded of their money, the lore surrounding such naïve victims who had fallen into the hands of preying char- latans also served to deter African emigration. Stories abounded of mid-

102 The Rhetoric of African Emigration westerners and southerners who had sold their land and all of their possessions to secure passage to Africa from New York and arrived on the East Coast to find that their ship had already left or had never existed. C. S. Smith criticized groups, such as the International Migration Society, which seemed only to have the goal of separating people from their life savings: “The Society is organized solely for the purpose of making money out of the transportation of the emigrants to Africa without regard to the interests of those whom they may succeed in persuading to go.” One writer com- mended H. T. Johnson for his editorial titled “The Emigration Trickster,” writing, “These poor illiterate people in the Carolinas, Georgia, Arkansas, and other states, have been miserable victims of organized emigration tricksters, ever since the war.” In another editorial, “At It Again,” Johnson warned, “Reports have just reached us that in Arkansas the African emigration movement has been revived. . . . In the name of common sense and humanity, will not someone of influence stop this suicidal move and arrest these race enemies? We call upon our ministers and religious guides to do their duty in the name of all that’s true and sacred to humanity.” One letter warned potential emigrants that their land would likely be the central target of “frauds.”32 The editor of the Christian Recorder recalled the tale of a “would-be emigrant from Arkansas” who had been “caught in the trap of some well- baited African emigration scheme.” He noted that “after paying a moder- ate sum at home and defraying his passage to New York, of course, he was to be sent gratuitously and comfortably to the inviting fatherland across the ocean, which of course was a fraud of the oft-repeated and ever to-be- repeated kind. Indeed this fake has paid its manipulators so well, that the field is now gradually being usurped by white tricksters who can ply the black art with greater adeptness and work their victim to greater advantage.” The editor recalled another case in which a professor, also from Arkansas, received letters from a white philanthropist in New York who offered to do- nate a large amount of money to his school if he would send three hundred dollars in advance. Securing money from farmers, field hands, and other workers, the professor sent the money to his correspondent only to receive a box full of paper in return. “Surely of all race-varieties, we delight most in being humbugged,” the editor concluded. “When will our people cease to be destroyed for lack of knowledge? If not soon, what fools we mortals be!”33 The Christian Recorder reported the revival of African emigration movements predicting that Southerners would continue to be the “victims” as “designing men successfully ply their part among the ignorant classes of our

The Rhetoric of African Emigration 103 race in the South.” By holding out the hope of a small fee for transport to New York and then to Africa, the editor warned, “Negro sharks are devour- ing the thoughtless.” What made the situation an even greater tragedy was that blacks were bilked out of their property for a pittance. The paper called for widespread reform: “Are the silly members of our race to [travel] to New York to be told that they can get no further? Are they to be turned loose among the vagrants and paupers of an almost heartless city already flooded or glutted [by] tramps, vagrants and paupers of its own?”34 AME conferences encouraged ministers in the church to visit congregations across the country and inform them about potential fraud involving emigration schemes. They encouraged those who were able to purchase land and employ African Americans to farm it to do so and thereby create a mutually beneficial business arrangement. In response, one letter writer felt Embry’s suggestion was a pipe dream, since those with the means seemed adverse to interacting with southerners: “But the great difficulty is that you can’t get our representative men to come among us, or no nearer than these cities; hence the illiterate are left at the mercy of those who are disposed to cheat them. If the more intelligent of our people and those possessing means would combine their brains and meant for the elevation of our people generally, the race would soon be lifted to a higher plain of moral and intellectual elevation; and until the leading men of the race unite in this direction, there will not be much done.”35 Editorials warned that those advocating for emigration should be viewed with suspicion. “This class should be given a wide berth and regarded with almost universal distrust,” one such editorial noted. “Their entire history discloses an endless series of short-sightedness, fraud and folly, without one redeeming feature. This statement is not too strongly put when it is remembered to what extent the victims of their schemes have been numbered and the sufferings they have entailed. They have disturbed the peace of the public, robbed those who confided in their methods, broken up homes, sacri- ficed multitudes by their fool-catching snares. Well do they know where to find dupes to their schemes, since they seldom or never molest those who have minds of their own and the intelligence to think for themselves.” Most often these “sleek swindlers” operated in the South, seeking out “simple minded people.” Schemes in Arkansas, Georgia, and Mississippi charged between one and three dollars for passage to Africa and a certificate granting membership into “transportation organizations.” These “secret order mo- guls” established societies in small towns across the South and took the residents “for all they were worth on the plea and promise of doing them good

104 The Rhetoric of African Emigration by bettering their condition in some far-off country.” One editor pointed out that some of these fraudulent activities, the efforts of “sleek tricksters” to swindle African Americans, placed “the names of leading officers of the general government, leading representatives of the race and influential per- sonages of the church” to forged documents. The editor pointed out an incident in 1892 in which hundreds of emigrants came to New York, where they expected to leave for Africa, but were “stranded” in a city that was “the most stolid and heartless place in the world in which to be found penniless.” He described various other incidents in which the “fool-catchers” were successfully able to bamboozle black victims. The key to these schemes was to get the potential emigrants so excited about Africa that they would sell their positions for a “trifle.” One case in Arkansas reported that ten head of cattle were sold by “would-be African emigrants” for $7.50, and another report described nineteen hogs being sold for $6.00.36 These cautions were expressed not only with regard to white-run emigration societies but also for black-based organizations who purportedly did the bidding of “designing and unscrupulous white men.” The International Mi- gration Society (IMS) of Alabama, for example, was of particular concern because it was headed by “white-washed” African Americans. The Christian Recorder asserted that the “lines of dishonest human nature are not to be limited to any particular race,” characterizing the IMS as “the white wolf in black sheep’s clothing” and condemning the society as “a veritable shark- movement.” The article continued, “Such [has] been the case, unhesitat- ingly warn the shepherds who have the oversight of the masses and localities where this disguised adversary is headquartered, to beware of his wily methods.” While it appears the warnings were delivered from a sincere concern for the race, the cautions also reveal strong northern stereotypes and biases toward southerners. One editor wrote, “The Negro of the South is perse- cuted, weak and restless, and in this condition advantage can be easily taken of him.” The remedy lay in the black press taking a strong stand against predatory organizations such as the IMS and ministers speaking out against the groups from their pulpits to end this “anti-race confidence game.”37 By the 1890s, Turner, or at least his caricature, had become the stand-in for all proponents of emigration. A “J. P. T.” responded to a recent interview of Bishop Turner in the Louisville Courier Journal by first describing how much he admired Turner and how influential he had been in his own life then writing, “Now I am forced after so many years of mutual agreement, to differ from Bishop H. M. Turner as to the feasibility of African emigration, being unable to see the good to be obtained by the consummation of such

The Rhetoric of African Emigration 105 a scheme.” After all of the hardships that blacks had endured in America, he felt that now “the Negro stands a free American citizen of the greatest republic God ever gave man. Now, must he leave it? Oh, no. Where is he to go? To what country would you say, Africa? They have enough ignorance there now. To advise such a step is as though I should advise my four year old child to leave home and battle and strive for herself.” The author anticipated that a day would come in which the race would grow up and be able to assertively demand their rights and respect from white Americans. He felt Turner overstated the racial chasm between blacks and whites, which would be bridged as soon as blacks demonstrated their self-sufficiency. He was careful not condemn Africa but to simply point toward a later date for its civilization: “In all I have said, let it not be understood that I look with scorn upon Africa, for there is a grand future for that dark continent teem- ing with the vast stores of wealth. And as we become fully equipped we must go there and help our brother and develop the resources of that country and restore her former glory.” Like many who came before him, he saw a divine providence in the aftermath of slavery. “I firmly believe that much is expected of us,” he wrote. “It may be that God brought us here that we might be the instrument in his hand for the evangelization of that Continent; and I would rather see the race fall suddenly back to savagery and barbarity than that they should learn to look with a frown upon their Fatherland.” The time would come when African Americans would redeem Africa not as they escaped America, but as a fully matured people. “So Mr. Editor,” J. P. T. concluded, “we must be turning our attention to that country—not like whipped cowards fleeing from the country we have done so much to make great, but as men going forth to shed the light of a higher civilization and we who go first upon this mission, history must record as its noblest benefactors.”38 Turner was taken to task on a number of fronts. Theological arguments employed to justify the redemption of Africa, for example, came under greater scrutiny. J. W. Randolph noted the contradiction in assigning a divine hand upon slavery. “I heard him [Turner] denounce slavery as an institution, hell-born and conceived of the devil; now he has it heaven-devised, and sanctioned by God,” he declared. Citing past sermons in which Turner lambasted slavery as an evil that suppressed black manhood, readers took issue with the same institution being blessed for its role in African emigration and missionary work: “What a glaring inconsistency. But give him credit; he said sanctioned for a time. How long a time? I suppose until the war broke out and he joined the army of the U.S., as a chaplain and went

106 The Rhetoric of African Emigration down to break up this heaven-sanctioned institution.”39 Others who agreed with Turner that continued separation from Africa could only lead to racial “extinction” also found room for criticism. Contributors felt it was illogical to believe that African Americans could have happy and fruitful lives while living in “subordination” to whites. Readers hoped, through his letters from Africa, for more “light” from Turner on the issue and thorough descriptions of the continent as a possible site of relocation for African Americans; instead, they were disappointed with their content. “But what have we gained by the good Bishop’s visits?” one reader asked. “Well, we have a series of en- tertaining letters, to be sure; they have been keenly read and widely sought for, they have told us of many frivolous and amusing things, they have been brilliant, witty, and at times pathetic. . . . They have told us of color, hair, dress and no dress, of parades, gyrations and genuflections, etc. abun- dantly. . . . But we who are serious, and feel that our time is too precious to spend in the perusal of mere literary sport and fun, have no time at this stage to give for reading such matter.” Instead, the reader requested specific information about Liberia and Sierra Leone, industrial progress, soil, climate, rainfall, and agricultural data, as well as the availability of natural resources and labor systems. “These and many other questions arise in the minds of thoughtful men. Men who care nothing about how barbarous native women dress their hair, nor yet for the problem of a more placid ocean under a tropic sun” or other random items that Turner included in his correspondences. “We want to know, if we are to go back to Africa, what we may be going for and the resources that shall be at our command.” If Turner was unable to supply this information, another bishop or business person should be sent by the church to Africa to do so. If not, the cost of sending an AME bishop to Africa every year was a “wasteful extravagance.”40 One contributor went so far as to suggest that Turner was as “mean” as the white racists he denounced if he truly planned to lead “the best blood and intellect of the Negro race” to Africa and leave the “inferior element” that remained in America “helpless.”41 Many African Americans remained undecided on the issue of African emigration. J. S. Flipper wrote, “The agitation produced by African emigration, has indeed so perplexed the minds of some of our race as to leave them in an awful dilemma what course to pursue whether emigration to Africa will be profitable or an immovable position upon American soil.” Flipper suggested that blacks “stand still and Moses like see the Salvation of the Lord.” He rejected the idea that African American origins lay in Africa and asserted that its environment was unsuitable for the race: “Furthermore the

The Rhetoric of African Emigration 107 climate of Africa is filled with a pestilential malaria which will be destructive to the race; we know of no continent through which the equator passes almost centrally but Africa, and while she may boast of her civilization upon her borders her interior is uncivilized, her savage tribes would be more fatal than even the pestilential miasmas, which pervades the interior.”42 For others, the solution to the “Negro Problem” rested with an eventual realiza- tion among whites that the participation of all races in all aspects of society would uplift the nation as a whole.43 While still others maintained that blacks were the quintessential Americans, drawing comparisons between the current African American experience and the violence directed towards Native Americans: “If they have lynched our people in some of the states, we should not become discouraged, it is the same experience of the Pilgrim fathers and their contact with the Indians.”44 On July 4, 1895, the bishops of the AME Church issued a joint written and signed statement on the issue of African emigration. Those who signed the statement included Alexander Wayman, Wesley J. Gaines, Benjamin W. Arnett, Benjamin T. Tanner, Benjamin F. Lee, Moses B. Salter, and James A. Handy. The address was less a definitive pronouncement on the issue than a window onto the current tenor of the discussions in the denomination. After expressing a profound interest in the “welfare of Africa” and a concern for the “sufferings of the race,” the bishops wrote, “We do not sustain, endorse nor encourage the efforts of individuals nor associations to distract the people from their moorings—poor though they are—only to launch them upon the rough and uncertain seas of promiscuous and indiscriminate African emigration.” They took issue with emigrationists who tried to convince poor African Americans to choose a course of action they themselves had not taken. Yet, they added, this in no way implied that the spiritual conquest of the continent would not take place: “Africa, under God, is to be redeemed; let not a single African Methodist forget this nor be indifferent to it. We must contribute of our means and our lives largely to this great work. But temperate utterances, careful movements and wise methods cannot be dis- pensed with in this work more than in the Lord’s work everywhere. The gathering of the people will come ‘in the day of his power.’”45 Warning of the perils of emigration, implying an underlying hypocrisy among those who had not ventured to Africa but were encouraging others to do so, while pointing toward a vague future moment when the time might be right for a Back to Africa movement, the bishops’ statement aptly sketches the trajectory of the discussions that dominated the second half of the nineteenth century in the AME Church. A decade earlier the cautions might

108 The Rhetoric of African Emigration have been reversed, hailing a bright future in the land of their ancestors, predicting the imminent civilization and evangelization of the continent, and framing those who chose to remain in America as the ones disloyal to the race. While advocates and opponents alike framed the debates along a series of binaries, positing that one was either African or American, loyal to ancestry or to nationality, and either for or against emigration, the relationship of African Americans to Africa was never as dichotomous as either side sought to make it. For all the satisfaction gained in labeling someone a race patriot or traitor, the terms were constantly in flux, mask more than they reveal, and ultimately tell us more about the person who used the term than those they sought to define. Placing visions of sacred spaces, Zions, and sites of redemption in concert with other forms of historical imaginings, such as letters, articles, editorials, and news reports in the black religious press, reveal new voices and perspectives inherent in the diversity of black communities and open up whole new areas of inquiry into the interconnectedness of racial authority and notions of place and homeland in African American religious history.

The Rhetoric of African Emigration 109

Conclusion

In March 1934, W. E. B. Du Bois reflected on the importance of the AME tradition in African American history. After heralding the role of Richard Allen and Absalom Jones during the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 and sum- marizing the exodus narrative from St. George’s ME Church after black members refused to be pulled from their knees during the prayer, Du Bois asked his audience, “Under these circumstances, what would you have done, Dear Reader of 1934?” “Segregation was compulsory,” Du Bois concluded, “the only answer was inevitable in 1787 [and] is just as inevitable in 1934.” At first reading, Du Bois’s presentist analysis and questioning of his audience seems out of place for a preeminent scholar of the African American experience in America. However, as we have seen, Du Bois was engaging in a rhetorical strategy that stretched back to pamphleteers, editors, historians, and letter writers in the early AME Church tradition. Locating particular historical moments within broader narratives of peoplehood as a means of determining the progress of the race and evaluating potential future actions had a long and rich legacy in the denomination. At the turn of the twentieth century, Du Bois, Carter G. Woodson, Richard Wright Jr., and other emergent scholars further professionalized African American historical writing and elevated the importance of black print culture and the analysis of slave narratives, biographies, and other early writings as “methods of appeal and propaganda.” This trend was spurred on by a new generation of historians who emerged from black colleges as well as the growing number of publishing outlets for African Amer- ican academics, including the Association for the Study of Negro Life and His- tory, the Journal of Negro History, and the black academic presses.1 Previously, AME historians examined individual and communal experience as data to be strung together in an orderly manner along an imagined time line that served as a type of prognostication about the future. The past modeled and provided lessons for African American behavior in the present. “What would you have done in 1787 and how will you respond now?” was a similar trope that was asked about other time periods. Could you have been a frontier missionary? What did it mean to be “African” for the church founders? Would you have emigrated to Africa like Daniel Coker? The unfolding of history, AME historians argued, occurred repeatedly in the lives of present congregations as they wrestled with contemporary issues and concerns. This shared communal remembrance by the AME Church, which Du Bois referred to as the “greatest Negro organization in the world,” helped shape the trajectory of African American historical writings well into the twentieth century. Du Bois himself regularly celebrated Richard Allen and the AME tradition in his own writings. As Richard S. Newman has shown, Du Bois called his contemporaries to “channel” Allen’s “insurgent mentality” “in hopes of achieving universal equality.”2 During the 1880s, AME historians wrote during a time of unprecedented developments in the publishing industry as the emergence of national companies and the tools of mass production led to a flood of readily available books and magazines. Publishing houses printed multiple editions of black histories, gave out sample copies, and launched wide-reaching advertising campaigns. African American works were eclectic, from William Wells Brown’s Rising Son; or, Antecendents of the Colored Race (1874) to slave narratives, race histories, and biographies. For many authors, emancipation provided fertile ground for imagining a future in which black potential was limitless. African American scholars stayed abreast of the latest literary devices and directions in American intellectualism and incorporated them in their own writings. African American ministers were a central part of the phenomenon as they attended college in increasingly larger numbers and sought to illumine the sacred in what was presumed to be secular history. Many protest pamphleteers transformed their skills within the context of historical writing in the second half of the nineteenth century.3 The black press played a key role in this process by creating a space for the construction of collective history. Black newspapers were particularly rich sites for engaging the voices of both the elite and the less educated. Editors and contributors framed and interpreted events for their readers as a type of ongoing historical construction that changed with the perceived needs of the larger community. No place was this more true than in the pages of the Christian Recorder. The conversion of available print culture and the rhetorical process of historicization allowed AME leaders to bring a comparative lens to a variety

112 Conclusion of regions and people groups. On June 12, 1869, Tanner changed the masthead of the newspaper to include a globe surrounded by the phrase “Ethiopia Shall Soon Stretch Out Her Hands Unto God.” This new version of the paper was not just a stylistic alteration; rather, it reflected a growing emphasis on foreign missions and identification with the continent of the readers’ ancestors. Accompanying this change in format was an increased coverage of global events. Tanner introduced a section titled “Our Swivels,” which conveyed news from around the world, particularly in matters involving religion, including the spread of Roman Catholicism; concerns about the Pope, Mormons, and Muslims; missionary activities among people of African descent; and international reports regarding the condition of Jews. In one news account, “The Poor Jews,” published on January 23, 1873, Tanner described the prejudice and discrimination that Romanian Jews were facing and added, “Of course we can sympathize with them.” Having experienced oppression in America, Tanner seemed to imply, African Americans could relate to the plight of Jews in varied locations. Tanner was not alone in his fascination with the plight of Jews around the world. Black ministers throughout the nineteenth century framed the development of the African American race through the spiritual and cultural lens of the progression of Jews throughout history. Whether identifying with the ancient Israelites of the Hebrew Bible or aspiring to the perceived economic achievements of contemporary Jews, many African American Christians believed that their relationship to Africa was analogous to that of Jews to Israel. Even further, many black leaders asserted that closely ex- amining the survival and growth of Jewish communities around the globe provided the most accurate forecast of the likely success or failure of African American emigration to and evangelization of Africa. Slavery, diaspora, and Zionism marked the lineages of both Jewish and African American history. However, beyond parallels, this comparative history seemed to suggest a sacred affinity between the two communities and therefore provided an apt paradigm through which to assess and portend African American and AME Church history. The life and legacy of key figures in the church, such as Richard Allen, also served as rich material for historical construction. After his death in 1831, newspapers sought to sum up Allen’s significance in American history. The African Sentinel proclaimed, “In the death of Richard Allen . . . religion has lost one of her brightest, most talented, and distinguished or- naments. . . . Humanity throughout the world becomes a mourner.” Allen “walked like the Saviour upon troubled waters, in favor of African Religious

Conclusion 113 Independence,” and “his noble deeds will remain, cherished in the memory of mankind, imperishable monuments of eternal glory.” Abolitionist Benjamin Lundy lamented the “irreparable loss,” and the Liberator mourned this “extraordinary man” who “labored incessantly, through his long life, for the temporal and spiritual happiness of his colored brethren.” However, seams in the wall of reverence toward Allen began to show in the public record only a few decades later. In 1855, Mother Bethel in Philadelphia officially celebrated Richard Allen’s birthday for the first time. At the event, Rev. J. J. G. Bias praised Allen for his commitment to his people, abolition, and his work toward the “elevation of the race,” but he also pointed to dissent from the grand narrative surrounding Allen: “There are a great many men in the ministry, and eminent ones too, standing at the head of the list, who think the sainted Allen too ignorant to mention his many virtues.”4 Yet by the publication of Payne’s History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1891, Allen had been fully canonized as the preeminent leader in the tradition. The road to an orthodox history is often a bumpy ride, and the historicization process itself can go on in perpetuity. Diverse constituencies within the AME tradition had varied investments, commitments, and agendas that influenced the narrative of the church they advanced. At times, the activist energy was directed outward to a critical white audience, as the church corrected the public record and demonstrated the intellectual prowess and substantial achievements of the race. At other times, history centered on internal debates about the best course of action for the race and the denomination. On occasion, some in the church sought to do all at once. However, what these disparate individuals and groups shared was a commitment to the production of print literature that would document something of the past and have a direct impact on the future. While a consensus about racial authority and AME history may never have been reached, constructing and retelling stories of the past were clearly requisite marks of citizenship as a true race patriot.

114 Conclusion Notes

Introduction 1. Henry McNeal Turner, “The African Question Again,” Christian Recorder, June 21, 1883. 2. Richard Allen, The Life Experience and Gospel Labors of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen (1880; reprint, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1960), 21–23. 3. Ibid.; Daniel A. Payne, History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (Nash- ville: Publishing House of the AME Church Sunday School Union, 1891; reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint, 1968), 318; Gary B. Nash, Forging Free- dom (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1988), 192–99, 228–29; James T. Campbell, Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995), 11–12. 4. Allen, Life Experience and Gospel Labors, 24. 5. Ibid., 28. 6. Ibid., 30. 7. Ibid., 19, 24; David Smith, Biography of Rev. David Smith of the AME Church (Xenia, Ohio: Xenia Gazette Office, 1881), 31–33; Payne, History, 3–10; Charles H. Wesley, Richard Allen: Apostle of Freedom (Washington D.C.: As- sociated Publishers, 1935), 161–77; Campbell, Songs of Zion, 13. 8. John Ernest, Liberation Historiography: African American Writers and the Chal- lenge of History, 1794–1861 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2004), 28; Elizabeth McHenry, Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of Afri- can American Literary Societies (Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 2002), 20; Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, Setting Down the Sacred Past: African-American Race Histories (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 2010), 85. 9. Stephen Ward Angell, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and African-American Religion in the South (Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1992); William Seraile, Fire in His Heart: Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner and the A.M.E. Church (Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1998); William Seraile, Voice of Dissent: Theophilus Gould Steward (1843–1924) and Black America (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson, 1991); James T. Campbell, Songs of Zion: The African Method- ist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa (Chapel Hill: Univer- sity of North Carolina Press, 1998); Albert G. Miller, Elevating the Race: Theophilus G. Steward, Black Theology, and the Making of an African Ameri- can Civil Society, 1865–1924 (Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 2003); Richard S. Newman, Freedom’s Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers (New York: New York Univ. Press, 2008); Edgar Canter Brown Jr. and Larry Eugene Rivers, For a Great and Grand Purpose: The Beginnings of the AMEZ Church in Florida, 1864–1905 (Gainesville: Univ. Press of Florida, 2004); Julius H. Bailey, Around the Family Altar: Domesticity in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1865–1900 (Gainesville: Univ. Press of Florida, 2005); Lawrence S. Little, Disciples of Liberty: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the Age of Imperialism (Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 2000). 10. David D. Hall, Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice (Prince- ton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1997); Anne C. Loveland and Otis B. Wheeler, From the Meetinghouse to Megachurch: A Material and Cultural History (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press, 2003). 11. Angell, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, 3–4. 12. Thomas A. Tweed, Retelling U.S. Religious History (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1997), 10; Richard Newman, ed., Pamphlets of Protest: An Anthology of Early African American Protest Literature, 1790–1860 (New York: Routledge, 2001), 1–3. 13. Ernest, Liberation Historiography, 332. 14. Seraile, Fire in His Heart, 20–22. 15. Fay Botham and Sara M. Patterson, Race, Religion, Region: Landscapes of En- counter in the American West (Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press, 2006), 8–10. 16. Patrick Rael, Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2002), 82–117. 17. Steven Hahn, A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 2003), 321–26.

Chapter 1 Public Protest and the Emergent Black Religious Press 1. Porter, Negro Protest Pamphlets, iii–vii. 2. Newman, Pamphlets of Protest, 33, 38. 3. Ibid., 42. 4. Daniel Coker, “A Dialogue between a Virginian and an African Minister,” in Negro Protest Pamphlets: A Compendium, ed. Dorothy Porter (New York:

116 Notes to Pages xvi–2 Arno Press, 1969), 39–40; Will B. Gravely, “The Rise of African Churches in America (1786–1822),” in African-American Religion: Interpretative Essays in History and Culture, ed. Timothy E. Fulop and Albert J. Raboteau (New York: Routledge, 1997), 135–36. 5. Coker, “Dialogue,” 4–5. 6. Ibid., 5–8. 7. Ibid., 9–11, 14 8. Ibid., 16–17, 20, 22. 9. Ibid., 23–25. 10. Ibid., 26–28. 11. Ibid., 28–30. 12. Ibid., 28–30. 13. Ibid., 31–34. 14. Ibid., 34–36. 15. Ibid., 36–39. 16. Payne, History, 14; Little, Disciples of Liberty, 67. 17. Nash, Forging Freedom, 231; Wesley, Richard Allen; Campbell, Songs of Zion (1995), 13; Smith, Biography of Rev. David Smith, 25–36. 18. Rhondda R. Thomas, “Exodus and Colonization: Charting the Journey in the Journals of Daniel Coker, a Descendant of Africa,” African American Re- view 41, no. 3 (2007): 507–19. 19. Daniel Coker, Journal of Daniel Coker, a Descendant of Africa (Baltimore: Edward J. Coale, 1820), 9–12, 14–16. 20. Ibid., 11, 17, 19–21. 21. Ibid., 21–25. 22. Ibid., 25, 28. 23. Ibid., 25–36. 24. Ibid., 36–40. 25. Ibid., 42–43. 26. Ibid., 43–44. 27. Ibid., 44 – 47. 28. Penelope L. Bullock, The Afro-American Periodical Press, 1838–1909 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1981), 39–43. 29. Ibid., 43–49. 30. Payne, History, 278. 31. Gilbert A. Williams, The Christian Recorder, Newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church: History of a Forum for Ideas, 1854–1902 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996), 17–18. 32. Angell, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, 1992), 3–4. 33. Stephen W. Angell, Social Protest Thought in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1862–1939 (Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 2000), xiii–xxxi;

Notes to Pages 3–17 117 Williams, Christian Recorder; Frances Smith Foster and Chanta Haywood, “Christian Recordings: Afro-Protestantism, Its Press and the Production of African-American Literature,” Religion and Literature 27, no. 1 (1995): 15–33.

Chapter 2 The Christian Recorder and the Cultivation of a Reading Culture 1. Bristor, “Reading People,” Christian Recorder, Mar. 5, 1870, 1. 2. Seraile, Fire in His Heart, 20–22. 3. Elisha Weaver, “Pay Up—Pay Up All,” Christian Recorder, Jan. 18, 1868, 2; Elisha Weaver, “Warning,” Christian Recorder, Jan. 18, 1868, 2. 4. Elisha Weaver, “To Correspondents,” Christian Recorder, Apr. 25, 1868, 2. 5. Elisha Weaver, editorial, Christian Recorder, Dec. 30, 1865. 6. Elisha Weaver, “An Editor’s Farewell,” Christian Recorder, June 20, 1868, 2. 7. Ibid. 8. Benjamin T. Tanner, “The New Editor,” Christian Recorder, June 20, 1868, 2. 9. Benjamin T. Tanner, “Editorial Wants,” Christian Recorder, Oct. 16, 1869, 2. 10. Benjamin T. Tanner, “Tanner’s Apology for African Methodism,” Christian Recorder, Aug. 15, 1868, 4. 11. Benjamin T. Tanner, “To Our Contributors,” Christian Recorder, Aug. 9, 1877, 4. 12. Benjamin T. Tanner, editorial, Christian Recorder, Apr. 15, 1871, 2. 13. Benjamin T. Tanner, “Our Magazine,” Christian Recorder, Feb. 7, 1884, 2. 14. Benjamin T. Tanner, “Information Wanted: Not Wanted,” Christian Recorder, Dec. 14, 1882, 2. 15. Benjamin T. Tanner, “Our Work,” Christian Recorder, Apr. 11, 1878, 2. 16. Williams, Christian Recorder, 99. 17. J. S. A. Murphey, “Colored Editors Denounced,” Christian Recorder, Nov. 8, 1883, 1. 18. Williams, Christian Recorder, 36. 19. Ibid., 39. 20. Ibid., 41–42, 53. 21. Ibid., 66–68. 22. Ibid., 42. 23. Ibid., 43. 24. “Our Enlarged Recorder,” Christian Recorder, Oct. 8, 1870, 2; Benjamin T. Tanner, “The Size of the ‘Recorder,’” Christian Recorder, May 21, 1870, 2. 25. A. L. Stanford, “Now Is the Time to Subscribe!” Christian Recorder, Jan. 29, 1870, 3. 26. Tanner, “Size of the ‘Recorder,’” 2. 27. Benjamin T. Tanner, editorial, Christian Recorder, June 26, 1869, 2.

118 Notes to Pages 19–27 28. Benjamin T. Tanner, “Important Notices to Subscribers,” Christian Recorder, July 9, 1870, 4; Benjamin T. Tanner, “Kettell’s History,” Christian Recorder, Oct. 22, 1870, 4. 29. Henry McNeal Turner, “Our Present Issue,” Christian Recorder, Apr. 19, 1877, 1. 30. Benjamin T. Tanner, “Don’t Read the Recorder,” Christian Recorder, Aug. 2, 1877, 2. 31. Christian Recorder, Dec. 10, 1891; Christian Recorder, Apr. 3, 1884. 32. Wesley J. Gaines, African Methodism in the South; or, Twenty-Five Years of Freedom (Atlanta: Franklin Publishing House, 1890), v–vi. 33. Henry McNeal Turner, The Genius and Theory of Methodist Polity, or the Machinery of Methodism (Philadelphia: Publication Department of the AME Church, 1885), v. 34. Payne, History, iii–ix. 35. Stephen G. Hall, A Faithful Account of the Race: African American Historical Writing in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 1–16, 125, 151–52. 36. Christian Recorder, Mar. 4, 1886; Christian Recorder, Dec. 10, 1891. 37. H. T. Kealing, History of African Methodism in Texas (Waco, Tex.: C. F. Blanks, 1885), 38. 38. Benjamin T. Tanner, An Apology for African Methodism (Baltimore, 1867), 123, 134, 145; Kealing, History of African Methodism, 33. 39. Kealing, History of African Methodism, 6 –7. 40. Tanner, Apology for African Methodism, 127. 41. “Book Notices,” Christian Recorder, Oct. 26, 1867. 42. “Apology for African Methodism,” Christian Recorder, Nov. 16, 1867. 43. Alpha, “Letter from Norfolk,” Christian Recorder, Nov. 16, 1867. 44. Hannibal, “Letter from Hannibal,” Christian Recorder, Nov. 16, 1867. 45. “A New Book,” Christian Recorder, May 25, 1867. 46. C. S. Smith, “‘Outlines of History and Government’ Briefly Reviewed,” Christian Recorder, Apr. 3, 1884, 1. 47. John W. Stevenson, “Colored Authors,” Christian Recorder, July 13, 1867. 48. “The Plaindealer,” Christian Recorder, Feb. 14, 1889. 49. T. G. Steward, “Bishop Wayman’s Book,” Christian Recorder, May 19, 1881, 1. 50. William H. Yeocum, “Bishop Wayman’s ‘My Recollections,’” Christian Recorder, June 2, 1881, 1. 51. “A Great Book, Entitled ‘My Recollections of African Methodism,’” Christian Recorder, Jan. 6, 1881. 52. “A New Book,” Christian Recorder, Jan. 31, 1878, 4. 53. L. J. Coppin, “The Review,” Christian Recorder, Dec. 11, 1890. 54. Wesley J. Gaines, “The Sixth Episcopal District,” Christian Recorder, Jan. 1, 1891.

Notes to Pages 27–35 119 55. “Book Review,” Christian Recorder, Jan. 15, 1891. 56. Christian Recorder, Sept. 8, 1887. 57. J. E. Edwards, “History of African Methodism in Texas,” Christian Recorder, Sept. 3, 1885. 58. Christian Recorder, Dec. 22, 1866. 59. C. T. Shafefr, “Bishop Payne’s Latest Book,” Christian Recorder, Dec. 13, 1888. 60. Jas. A Handy, “The Rise of the African M.E. Church,” Christian Recorder, Feb. 27, 1873. 61. Benjamin T. Tanner, “How the A.M.E. Church Review Came into Being,” Church Review 25, no. 2 (1909): 361; Bullock, Afro-American Periodical Press, 92–98. 62. Rev. I. F. Aldridge, “Our Church Review,” Christian Recorder, July 24, 1884, 1. 63. Henry McNeal Turner, “The A.M.E. Church Review,” Christian Recorder, Oct. 2, 1884, 1. 64. Benjamin T. Tanner, “The A.M.E. Church Review,” Christian Recorder, Nov. 13, 1884, 1. 65. Levi J. Coppin, “The A.M.E. Review,” Christian Recorder, Aug. 30, 1888, 5; Rev. J. M. Cargill, “The A.M.E. Church Review,” Christian Recorder, Apr. 14, 1887, 1. 66. W. G. Alexander, “Fraternal Address,” Christian Recorder, July 24, 1890, 1.

Chapter 3 Western Zions 1. Benjamin T. Tanner, “Go West, Young Men,” Christian Recorder, Mar. 2, 1882. 2. Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986); Michele Mitchell, Righteous Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny After Reconstruction (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2004). 3. Henry Highland Garnet, “Pioneers of the AME Church—No. III,” Christian Recorder, Mar. 13, 1869, 1. 4. Tanner, Apology for African Methodism, 135, 130, 138. 5. Donald E. Byrne Jr., No Foot of Land: Folklore of American Methodist Itinerants (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1975), 301. 6. David Leverenz, Manhood and the American Renaissance (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cor- nell Univ. Press, 1989), 4. 7. Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1995), 8–27. 8. R. R. Wright Jr., The Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (Nash- ville: Publishing House of the AME Church Sunday School Union, 1963),

120 Notes to Pages 35–44 115–26, 350–61; Levi J. Coppin, “The Late Bishop John M. Brown,” Church Review 10, no. 1 (1893): 192; Levi J. Coppin, “Biographical Sketch of the Rt. Rev. T. M. D. Ward, D.D.,” Church Review 12, no. 2 (1895): 296; John G. Mitchell, “Bishop Payne’s Last Words,” Church Review 10, no. 4 (1894): 483– 86; Levi J. Coppin et al., “Bishop Daniel A. Payne–Symposium,” Church Review 10, no. 3 (1894): 393–414; Bishop Wayman, “Notes By the Way: The Death of Bishop Payne,” Christian Recorder, Dec. 7, 1893, 1; H. T. Johnson, “Bishop Payne Dead,” Christian Recorder, Dec. 7, 1893, 2; A. W. Wayman and Benjamin W. Arnett, “In Memoriam to Bishop Payne,” Christian Recorder, Jan. 18, 1894, 4. The entire January 25, 1894, edition was the “Payne Mem- orial Number” and consisted of articles reflecting on Payne’s life and meaning to the AME Church. 9. Benjamin Lee, “The Late Bishop W. F. Dickerson, D.D.,” Christian Recorder, Jan. 15, 1885, 1; Benjamin Lee, “Prof. W. S. Scarborough,” Christian Re- corder, Nov. 25, 1886, 1; Benjamin Lee, “Memorial Services,” Christian Recorder, Feb. 12, 1885, 1; Dean Wilbur P. Thirkield, “A Tribute to the Memory of Bishop Dickerson,” Christian Recorder, Mar. 26, 1885, 2; Rev. T. W. Haigler, “Extracts from Bishop Dickerson’s Address,” Christian Re- corder, Mar. 26, 1885, 3; W. S. Scarborough, “The Late Rt. Rev. Bishop W. F. Dickerson, D.D.,” Christian Recorder, Jan. 29, 1885, 1; John T. Burgett, “Bishop Allen of the A. M. E. Church,” Christian Recorder, Feb. 18, 1886, 1. 10. Rev. J. J. Morant, “Will the A.M.E. Church Attain the Intended End of the Fathers?” Christian Recorder, Oct. 8, 1896, 6. 11. Mrs. J. P. Sampson, “Ideal Culture Essential to Exalted Character,” Church Review 8, no. 3 (1892): 280; Miss P. A. Clements, “A Word to Young Men,” Christian Recorder, Aug. 2, 1894, 6. 12. Rev. William H. Yeocum, “Special Counsel to the Young,” Christian Recorder, Mar. 5, 1885, 1; Rev. T. D. Small Jr., “How Shall the Young, Defiled in the Way, Be Purified?” Christian Recorder, Nov. 25, 1886, 1; Benjamin T. Tanner, “The Responsibility of Our Young Men,” Christian Recorder, May 16, 1889, 5; Belle B. Dorce, “Our Boys and Girls,” Christian Recorder, Mar. 3, 1887, 1; Augustus Watson, “Help the Young Men,” Christian Recorder, Feb. 5, 1891, 1. 13. H. T. Johnson, “Young Ministers, Wise or Otherwise,” Christian Recorder, Aug. 9, 1894, 2; Rev. W. G. Stewart, “Why Are the Young People Leaving the Church?” Christian Recorder, July 30, 1896, 6. 14. Rev. A. L. Gaines, “Our Young Men,” Christian Recorder, Mar. 12, 1891, 3. 15. H. Henderson Smith, “Manhood Essential to the Negro’s Elevation,” Chris- tian Recorder, Oct. 5, 1893, 1. 16. Benjamin Lee, “Tanner’s Outlines of the History of African Methodism,” Chris- tian Recorder, Oct. 6, 1887, 4; Benjamin Lee, “Morgan’s History of the New Jersey Conference of the A. M. E. Church,” Christian Recorder, Mar. 8, 1888, 4; Shafefr, “Bishop Payne’s Latest Book,” 1; Rev. J. P. Sampson, “Morgan’s History and the New Jersey Conference,” Christian Recorder, May 2, 1889,

Notes to Pages 44–45 121 3; “African Methodism in the South,” Christian Recorder, Jan. 15, 1891, 3; Benjamin Lee, “Conference Historian,” Christian Recorder, Dec. 10, 1891, 4. 17. T. G. Steward, “Dr. Steward’s New Book,” Christian Recorder, Jan. 26, 1888, 3; T. G. Steward, “The Review’s Notice of My New Book,” Christian Recorder, Apr. 19, 1888, 5; Benjamin Lee, “Bishop Turner’s Great Book,” Christian Recorder, May 2, 1889, 4; Benjamin Lee, “Turner’s Methodist Polity,” Christian Recorder, May 9, 1889, 4; Rev. J. P. Sampson, “Methodist Polity,” Christian Recorder, May 23, 1889, 4; Rev. J. C. Ayler, “Methodist Polity,” Christian Recorder, June 27, 1889, 2; Daniel A. Payne, “What the Bishops Say About Methodist Polity,” Christian Recorder, July 4, 1889, 4; Rev. I. W. S. Roundtree, “Bishop Turner’s Methodist Polity,” Christian Recorder, May 16, 1889, 2; “Methodist Polity Compliments,” Christian Recorder, May 16, 1889, 8; Henry McNeal Turner, “Bishop H. M. Turner Reviews ‘The Divine Logos’ Just Published by Prof. H. T. Johnson,” Christian Recorder, Aug. 28, 1890, 1; I. H. Welch, “Dr. Welch on Dr. Embry’s Book,” Christian Recorder, Dec. 4, 1889, 4; J. P. Campbell, “Dr. Coppin’s Book on ‘The Relation of Baptized Children to the Church,’” Christian Recorder, Sept. 4, 1890, 1; Henry McNeal Turner, “Rev. J. E. Hayne’s Book,” Christian Recorder, Oct. 2, 1890, 1; Daniel A. Payne, “A Review of Rev. L. J. Coppin’s Book Entitled ‘The Relation of Baptized Children to the Church,’” Christian Recorder, Oct. 23, 1890, 2; Daniel A. Payne, “What They Say of the Digest,” Christian Recorder, Feb. 5, 1891, 3; J. E. Hayne, “Dr. Embry’s Digest of Christian Theology,” Christian Recorder, May 7, 1891, 2. 18. Rev. J. D. Barksdale, “Our Bishops,” Christian Recorder, Apr. 14, 1887, 1; Benjamin Lee, “Death of Bishop Cain: The Long Battle Ended at Last,” Christian Recorder, Jan. 20, 1887, 2; Rev. I. S. Grant, “Rt. Rev. R. H. Cain,” Christian Recorder, May 12, 1887, 1; Benjamin Lee, “The Rt. Rev. Richard Allen: First Bishop of the AME Church,” Christian Recorder, Feb. 17, 1887, 1; Benjamin Lee, “Rt. Rev. D. A. Payne, D.D.,” Christian Recorder, Feb. 24, 1887, 1; Benjamin Lee, “Bishop James Shorter,” Christian Recorder, Mar. 17, 1887, 1; Benjamin Lee, “Rev. J. T. Jenifer, D.D.,” Christian Recorder, Mar. 31, 1887, 1; Benjamin Lee, “Rev. Wm. D. Johnson, D.D.: Secretary of Educa- tion,” Christian Recorder, May 5, 1887, 1; Benjamin Lee, “Rev. J. H. A. Johnson, D.D.,” Christian Recorder, May 12, 1887, 1; Benjamin Lee, “Rev. Theodore Gould of the Philadelphia Conference,” Christian Recorder, May 26, 1887, 1; Benjamin Lee, “Rev. Moses B. Salter,” Christian Recorder, June 2, 1887, 1; Benjamin Lee, “Rev. J. S. Thompson, D.D.,” Christian Recorder, June 9, 1887, 1; Faustin S. Delany, “Bishop Shorter,” Christian Recorder, July 8, 1887, 2; Benjamin Lee, “Rev. Wm. H. Yeocum of the New Jersey Conference,” Christian Recorder, Aug. 25, 1887, 1; Rev. A. T. Hall, “Bishop Shorter,” Christian Recorder, Sept. 8, 1887, 2; Alice S. Felts, “The Early

122 Notes to Page 45 Fathers,” Christian Recorder, Oct. 13, 1887, 2; Benjamin Lee, “Rev. J. H. Morgan,” Christian Recorder, Oct. 20, 1887, 1; Benjamin Lee, “Rev. W. H. Heard,” Christian Recorder, Aug. 16, 1888, 1; Benjamin Lee, “Rev. C. S. Smith, D.D.: Secretary of the Sunday School Union,” Christian Recorder, Oct. 25, 1888, 1; Benjamin Lee, “Rev. L. J. Coppin: Manager A. M. E. Church Review,” Christian Recorder, Nov. 8, 1888, 1; William Jenifer, “Rev. Joshua Goins,” Christian Recorder, May 16, 1888, 1; Benjamin Lee, “Rev. C. T. Shafefr,” Christian Recorder, May 23, 1889, 2; Benjamin Lee, “Rt. Rev. Jabez P. Campbell, D.D., LL.D.,” “Rt. Rev. John M. Brown, D.D.,” “Rt. Rev. Benjamin W. Arnett, D.D.,” “Rev. Wm. D. Johnson, D.D.,” and “Rt. Rev. James A. Shorter,” Christian Recorder, July 18, 1889, 2; Alice S. Felts, “The Recognition of Early Heroes,” Christian Recorder, Nov. 13, 1890, 7; Rev. S. R. Williams, “To the Memory of the Late J. P. Campbell,” Christian Recorder, Sept. 17, 1891, 1; Benjamin Lee, “The New Bishops,” Christian Recorder, June 21, 1888, 1. 19. Kealing, History of African Methodism, 3–4, 33, 150, 165, 170. 20. Ibid., 139. 21. Ibid., 178, 193, 226, 231–32. 22. Ibid., 185. 23. Ibid., 150. 24. Ibid., 117. 25. Ibid., 157–58. 26. Tanner, Apology for African Methodism, 123, 145. 27. Kealing, History of African Methodism, 170. 28. Tanner, Apology for African Methodism, 312–13. 29. Tu r ner, Genius and Theory of Methodist Polity, 113. 30. Theodore L. Flood, Lives of Methodist Bishops (New York: Phillips & Hunt, 1882), 662–63. 31. Garnet, “Pioneers of the A.M.E. Church—No. III,” 1; R. A. Johnson, “Bishop Quinn,” Christian Recorder, Feb. 20, 1873, 2. 32. Smith, Biography of Rev. David Smith, 62–68. 33. Payne, History, 171–72; Tanner, Apology for African Methodism, 146. 34. Daniel A. Payne, The Semi-Centenary and the Retrospection of the African Meth- odist Episcopal Church in the United States of America (Baltimore: Sherwood, 1866), 59–60. 35. Daniel Payne, Recollections of Seventy Years (Nashville: Publishing House of the AME Church Sunday School Union, 1888), 101–2. 36. Tanner, Apology for African Methodism, 144–45. 37. Payne, History, 12. 38. Tanner, Apology for African Methodism, 322. 39. Ibid., 322–23.

Notes to Pages 46–50 123 40. Payne, History, 416–18. 41. T. M. D. Ward, “Letter from Bishop Ward,” Christian Recorder, Jan. 23, 1869, 2. 42. Editorial, “Bishop Ward in Life and Death,” Christian Recorder, June 14, 1894. 43. Ibid. 44. T. M. D. Ward, “Our California Letter,” Christian Recorder, Sept. 7, 1861. 45. Christian Recorder, June 21, 1862. 46. T. M. D. Ward, “Our California Correspondence,” Christian Recorder, Sept. 24, 1864. 47. T. M. D. Ward, “Our California Letter,” Christian Recorder, May 27, 1865. 48. Ward, “Our California Correspondence.” 49. “News from the AME Churches,” Christian Recorder, May 19, 1866. 50. “Colored State Convention,” Christian Recorder, Nov. 25, 1865. 51. “Reception of Bishop Ward,” Christian Recorder, Aug. 14, 1873. 52. T. M. D. Ward, “Echoes from the Pacific and Rocky Mountains,” Christian Recorder, Sept. 30, 1880. 53. M. M. Clark, editorial, Christian Recorder, June 1, 1867. 54. T. M. D. Ward, “No Bishop in Texas for Six Months,” Christian Recorder, Aug. 16, 1877. 55. T. M. D. Ward, “George W. Bryant: His Treachery, His Hypocrisy,” Chris- tian Recorder, Nov. 8, 1877. 56. Vindex, “Notes from Texas,” Christian Recorder, Oct. 24, 1878. 57. “Change in Discipline,” Christian Recorder, May 11, 1876. 58. Minutes from AME Church General Conference, May 24, 1880, Christian Recorder, May 25, 1880. 59. “Episcopal Notes and Meetings,” Christian Recorder, July 15, 1880; Christian Recorder, July 29, 1880; Christian Recorder, Aug. 5, 1880; Christian Recorder, Aug. 12, 1880; Christian Recorder, Aug. 19, 1880; Christian Recorder, Aug. 26, 1880; Christian Recorder, Sept. 2, 1880; Christian Recorder, Sept. 9, 1880; Christian Recorder, Sept. 16, 1880; Christian Recorder, Sept. 23, 1880; Chris- tian Recorder, Sept. 30, 1880; Christian Recorder, Oct. 14, 1880; Christian Recorder, Oct. 28, 1880; Christian Recorder, Nov. 11, 1880; Christian Recorder, Nov. 25, 1880. 60. “Bishop Campbell,” Christian Recorder, Nov. 12, 1864. 61. A. B., “Bishop Campbell in the Sabbath School,” Christian Recorder, Sept. 24, 1864. 62. “Bishop Campbell’s Arrival,” Christian Recorder, May 20, 1865. 63. T. M. D. Ward, “Our California Letter,” May 27, 1865. 64. T. M. D. Ward, letter, Christian Recorder, May 25, 1861. 65. “AME Items,” Christian Recorder, July 21, 1866. 66. T. M. D. Ward, “A Word to the Fourth District,” Christian Recorder, Dec. 16, 1880.

124 Notes to Pages 50–55 67. Benjamin T. Tanner, “The Country Filling Up,” Christian Recorder, Apr. 20, 1882, 2. 68. Benjamin T. Tanner, “The Refugees,” Christian Recorder, Jan. 6, 1881, 2. 69. Benjamin T. Tanner, “Hard on the Irish,” Christian Recorder, June 8, 1882, 2. 70. Benjamin T. Tanner, “The German Element in the United States,” Christian Recorder, Apr. 12, 1883, 2. 71. Reverend T. M. G. Copeland, “Reply to Who Are We,” Christian Recorder, Mar. 31, 1881, 2. 72. Benjamin T. Tanner, “A Savage Nation,” Christian Recorder, Mar. 1, 1877, 4. 73. Benjamin T. Tanner, “California and the Chinese,” Christian Recorder, June 19, 1873, 4. 74. Benjamin T. Tanner, “The New Outrage,” Christian Recorder, Mar. 23, 1882, 2. 75. Benjamin T. Tanner, “Chinese Slavery,” Christian Recorder, June 22, 1882, 2. 76. Benjamin T. Tanner, editorial, Christian Recorder, Apr. 17, 1869. 77. Benjamin T. Tanner, “Native Chinese Methodist Preachers,” Christian Recorder, Sept. 25, 1869. 78. Benjamin T. Tanner, “Silver Weddings,” Christian Recorder, Aug. 30, 1883, 2. 79. Benjamin T. Tanner, “Black States,” Christian Recorder, Aug. 21, 1873, 4. 80. A Dallas Citizen, “Emigration,” Christian Recorder, July 14, 1881, 2. 81. H. Price Williams, “The Exodus,” Christian Recorder, Jan. 22. 1880, 2. 82. Painter, Exodusters, vii–xv, 256–61. 83. Quintard Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528–1990 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998). 84. Benjamin T. Tanner, “The Present and Future Outlook of the Exodus,” Christian Recorder, Feb. 10, 1881, 2. 85. A. Farmer, “Things in the West,” Christian Recorder, Feb. 5, 1880, 1. 86. “Permit Me to Remark,” Christian Recorder, Jan. 29, 1880, 2. 87. “A Letter of Great Interest to Emigrants,” Christian Recorder, Apr. 8, 1880, 3; Benjamin T. Tanner, “Western Kansas,” Oct. 28, 1880, 3. 88. Tanner, “Present and Future Outlook of the Exodus,” 2; Benjamin T. Tanner, “Temperance in Kansas,” Nov. 25, 1880, 2. 89. Benjamin T. Tanner, “The Exodusters,” Christian Recorder, Feb. 17, 1881, 3. 90. Benjamin T. Tanner, “Kansas,” Christian Recorder, July 9, 1870, 2. 91. Henry, “Be Careful,” Christian Recorder, Dec. 20, 1877. 92. Henry McNeal Turner, “African Movement,” Christian Recorder, Apr. 18, 1878. 93. T. M. D. Ward, “The Southwest to the Front,” Christian Recorder, June 26, 1884. 94. Ward, “Letter from Bishop Ward.”

Notes to Pages 55–61 125 Chapter 4 Should “African” Remain in Our Title? 1. Benjamin T. Tanner, “The Future Church,” Christian Recorder, Oct. 4, 1883, 2. 2. Rael, Black Identity and Black Protest, 82–117. 3. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920 (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1993). 4. Ronald L. Numbers and John Stenhouse, eds., Disseminating Darwinism: The Role of Place, Race, Religion, and Gender (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999), 247–48. 5. Miller, Elevating the Race, 58–69. 6. Numbers and Stenhouse, Disseminating Darwinism, 247–48. 7. Ibid. 8. J. F. Burrow, The Crisis of Reason: European Thought, 1848–1914 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 2000), 68, 92, 103–8. 9. George M. Frederickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914 (Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1987), 230. 10. Ibid., 230–35. 11. Burrow, Crisis of Reason, 92; I. A. Newby, Jim Crow’s Defense: Anti-Negro Thought in America, 1900–1930 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1965), 12–13; Numbers and Stenhouse, Disseminating Darwinism, 248; Robert C. Bannister, Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1979), 3–4, 9–10. 12. Tunde Adeleke, UnAfrican Americans: Nineteenth-Century Black Nationalists and the Civilizing Mission (Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1998), 13–19. 13. Ibid., 41–42; Little, Disciples of Liberty, 66 –67. 14. Numbers and Stenhouse, Disseminating Darwinism, 145– 46. 15. Ibid., 254. 16. Christian Recorder, Aug. 27, 1874; Miller, Elevating the Race, 60. 17. Miller, Elevating the Race, 58–69. 18. Numbers and Stenhouse, Disseminating Darwinism, 254–55. 19. Benjamin T. Tanner, “The Blood that Is in Us,” Christian Recorder, Aug. 17, 1882, 2. 20. Edward W. Blyden, “Letter from Dr. Blyden,” Christian Recorder, Sept. 7, 1882, 1; Benjamin T. Tanner, “Dr. Blyden’s Position,” Christian Recorder, Sept. 21, 1882, 2. 21. Benjamin T. Tanner, “Dr. Blyden’s Letter,” Christian Recorder, Sept. 8, 1882, 2. 22. Benjamin T. Tanner, “Our Employment,” Christian Recorder, July 12, 1883, 2. 23. Benjamin T. Tanner, “Who Are We?” Christian Recorder, Jan. 13, 1881, 2.

126 Notes to Pages 63–72 24. Benjamin T. Tanner, “The Coming American Race—What Is It to Be?” Christian Recorder, May 15, 1884, 1. 25. Benjamin T. Tanner, “That Conference,” Christian Recorder, Dec. 7, 1882, 2. 26. Edward W. Blyden, “Letter from Dr. Blyden,” Christian Recorder, Feb. 15, 1883, 2. 27. Faustin S. Delany, “An Indisputable Moral Problem,” Christian Recorder, Apr. 28, 1880. 28. Bailey, Around the Family Altar, 65. 29. Rev. R. H. Cain, “The Bishop Question,” Christian Recorder, Jan. 1, 1880, 1. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. P. M. Laws, “African Methodist Union,” Christian Recorder, Jan. 29, 1880, 2. 33. A. W. Wayman, “The Union of All the Colored Methodism,” Christian Re- corder, Jan. 1, 1880, 2. 34. Benjamin T. Tanner, “African Methodist Union,” Aug. 5, 1880, 2. 35. Benjamin T. Tanner, “African Methodist Union,” Sept. 9, 1880, 2. 36. Benjamin T. Tanner, “The Union,” Sept. 23, 1880, 2. 37. “The B.M.E. Convention,” Christian Recorder, July 28, 1881, 1. 38. W. H. Hunter, “The Union of the AME and BME Churches,” Christian Re- corder, Nov. 10, 1881, 2. 39. Isaiah F. Aldridge, “Organic Union,” Christian Recorder, Dec. 23, 1880, 1. 40. Benjamin T. Tanner, “Bishop Payne’s Arguments, Insinuations and State- ments,” Dec. 23, 1880, 2. 41. Rev. C. Woodyard, “Union,” Christian Recorder, Mar. 31, 1881, 1. 42. Rev. G. M. Lewis, “Organic Union,” Christian Recorder, Mar. 17, 1881, 1. 43. Benjamin T. Tanner, “The Episcopal Council,” Christian Recorder, May 3, 1882, 2. 44. Henry McNeal Turner, “An Appeal for Union,” Christian Recorder, Apr. 12, 1883, 2. 45. Rev. T. H. Jackson, “Let It Remain,” Christian Recorder, Feb. 26, 1880, 4. 46. Rev. J. C. C. Owens, “Subjects of Interest,” Apr. 22, 1880, 1. 47. Rev. John D. Bagwell, “Why Not?” Christian Recorder, Mar. 10, 1881, 1. 48. Rev. B. L. Brooks, “Our Church Title,” Christian Recorder, Apr. 22, 1880, 1; Rev. E. Ferguson, “The Word ‘African’ and Consolidation,” Christian Re- corder, Apr. 22, 1880, 1. 49. “What an ME Preacher Says,” Christian Recorder, Apr. 2, 1880, 1. 50. “Jno. F. Brown, M.D.,” Christian Recorder, May 27, 1880, 1. 51. T. A. Bush, “Our Church Title,” Christian Recorder, May 13, 1880, 2. 52. Jesse C. Banks, “Church Titles,” Christian Recorder, May 13, 1880, 1. 53. Tanner, “That Big N,” Christian Recorder, July 26, 1883, 2. 54. Ibid., 2.

Notes to Pages 73–81 127 Chapter 5 The Rhetoric of African Emigration 1. Hahn, Nation Under Our Feet, 321–26. 2. George C. Whitfield, “Emigration: What Thought of It,” Christian Recorder, Apr. 11, 1878. 3. T. Gould, “An Emigration,” Christian Recorder, May 16, 1878. 4. “A Lively Discussion,” Christian Recorder, May 23, 1878. 5. “Report of African Emigration—New Jersey Conference,” Christian Recorder, May 30, 1878. 6. Williams, Christian Recorder, 87–89, 100. 7. Henry McNeal Turner, “Wayside Dots and Jots,” Christian Recorder, Apr. 18, 1878. 8. Campbell, Songs of Zion (1998), 79–80; Angell, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, 135. 9. Campbell, Songs of Zion (1998), 79–80; Angell, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, 135. 10. Henry McNeal Turner, “Wayside Dots and Jots,” Christian Recorder, Apr. 18, 1878. 11. “The Emigration Movement,” Christian Recorder, Apr. 18, 1878. 12. “One Would Think,” Christian Recorder, Dec. 27, 1883. 13. Angell, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, 47, 119–21. 14. “African Emigration,” Christian Recorder, Oct. 21, 1875. 15. Angell, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, 120; Williams, Christian Recorder, 81. 16. Williams, Christian Recorder, 87; Seraile, Fire in His Heart, 85. 17. Williams, Christian Recorder, 85; Henry, “Be Careful.” 18. Seraile, Fire in His Heart, 83–87. 19. “African Emigration.” 20. Williams, Christian Recorder, 84–85. 21. Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 575–601. William E. Montgomery, Under Their Own Vine and Fig Tree: The African-American Church in the South, 1865–1900 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1993), 190, 193. 22. Henry, “Be Careful.” 23. W. S. Scarborough, “A Nationality,” Christian Recorder, Apr. 13, 1876. 24. Foner, Reconstruction, 575–601; Montgomery, Under Their Own Vine and Fig Tree, 190–93. 25. C. H. Pearce, “Letter to the Bishop,” Christian Recorder, July 25, 1878. 26. Daniel A. Payne, “Bishop Payne’s Second Letter,” Christian Recorder, Aug. 8, 1878; Daniel A. Payne, “Letter Third—By Bishop Payne,” Christian Re- corder, Aug. 22, 1878; Daniel A. Payne, “Bishop Payne’s Fourth Letter,” Christian Recorder, Sept. 12, 1878; Daniel A. Payne, “Bishop Payne’s Fifth

128 Notes to Pages 84–98 Letter,” Christian Recorder, Sept. 26, 1878; Daniel A. Payne, “Bishop Payne’s Seventh Letter,” Christian Recorder, Dec. 5, 1878. 27. Henry McNeal Turner, “Answer to Bishop Payne,” Christian Recorder, Aug. 22, 1878. 28. R. H. Cain, “Africa,” Christian Recorder, July 12, 1883. 29. Frederick Douglass, “The Future of the Negro,” Christian Recorder, June 26, 1884. 30. Timothy Davis, Kevin R. Johnson, and George A. Martinez, A Reader on Race, Civil Rights, and American Law: A Multicultural Approach (Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 2001), 7, 211, 214, 230, 234, 248, 393, 405, 411, 530–31, 567, 700, 776. 31. Williams, Christian Recorder, 97–98. 32. Ibid., 99. 33. “Destroyed for Lack of Knowledge,” Christian Recorder, Mar. 3, 1893. 34. “At It Again,” Christian Recorder, Jan. 18, 1894. 35. A. Jackson, “Migration,” Christian Recorder, Apr. 1, 1875. 36. “The Emigration Trickster,” Christian Recorder, Jan. 12, 1893. 37. “Cheek and Jaw,” Christian Recorder, Mar. 1, 1894. 38. J. P. T., “Reply to Bishop H. M. Turner,” Christian Recorder, Mar. 20, 1890. 39. J. W. Randolph, “Dr. Randolph Criticises Bishop Turner,” Christian Recorder, Oct. 15, 1891. 40. J. C., “We Want More Light from Bishop Turner on Western Africa,” Chris- tian Recorder, July 15, 1893. 41. Anonymous, “Bishop Turner on African Migration,” Christian Recorder, Sept. 4, 1891. (“It is fair to say that the author of the above article probably forwarded his name on a separate note to the editor, but it has been mislaid.”) 42. J. S. Flipper, “Stand Still and See the Salvation of the Lord,” Christian Recorder, Nov. 8, 1877. 43. Jas. H. A. Johnson, “An Attempt to Get the Ear of the South,” Christian Recorder, July 3, 1890. 44. J. P. S., “Going to Africa,” Christian Recorder, Dec. 21, 1893; Christian Recorder, Feb. 7, 1895. 45. “The Episcopal Address,” Christian Recorder, July 4, 1895. Conclusion 1. Hall, Faithful Account of the Race, 191; Hahn, Nation Under Our Feet, 332. 2. Henry Lee Moon, The Emerging Thought of W. E. B. Du Bois: Essays and Editorials from The Crisis with an Introduction, Commentaries and a Personal Memoir (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 198; Philip S. Foner, ed. W. E. B. Du Bois Speaks: Speeches and Addresses 1920–1963 (New York: Path- finder Press, 1970), 92; Newman, Freedom’s Prophet, 294–95; Jonathan S.

Notes to Pages 99–112 129 Kahn, Divine Discontent: The Religious Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2009); W. E. B. Du Bois, Writings (New York: Library of America, 1986), 1115; W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Kraus-Thomson Organization, 1973), 197. 3. Hall, Faithful Account of the Race, 1–16, 125, 151–52. 4. Liberator, May 14, 1831; Marcia Mathews, Richard Allen (Baltimore: Helicon, 1963), 151; Liberator, Apr. 9, 1831; Christian Recorder, Mar. 4, 1856.

130 Notes to Pages 112–14 Bibliography

Adeleke, Tunde. UnAfrican Americans: Nineteenth-Century Black Nationalists and the Civilizing Mission. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1998. African Methodist Episcopal Church Conferences, South Carolina. Some Moun- tain Peak Characters in the Early Days of African Methodism and the Daniel Payne Memorial Chautauquas. Columbia, S.C.: Allen Univ. Press, n.d. Ahlstrom, Sydney. The Religious History of the American People. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1972. Allen, Richard. The Life Experience and Gospel Labors of the Rt. Rev. Richard Allen. 1880. Reprint, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1960. Allmendinger, Blake. Imagining the African American West. Lincoln: Univ. of Neb- raska Press, 2005. Angell, Stephen Ward. Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and African-American Religion in the South. Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1992. Angell, Stephen Ward, and Anthony Pinn, eds. Social Protest Thought in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1862–1939. Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 2000. Aptheker, Herbert. The Correspondence of W. E. B. Du Bois. Vol. 1, Selections, 1877– 1934. Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1973. ———. A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States. New York: Citadel Press, 1969. ———. The Negro in the Abolitionist Movement. New York: International Publish- ers, 1941. Ariel, Yaakov. Evangelizing the Chosen People. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2001. Arnett, Benjamin W. The Budget. Xenia, Ohio, 1890. ———. Episcopal Handbook for 1900. Philadelphia: A.M.E. Book Concern, 1900. ———. Papers. Carnegie Library. Wilberforce University, Wilberforce, Ohio. ———, ed. Proceedings of the Quarto-Centennial Conference of the African M.E. Church of South Carolina, at Charleston, S.C., May 15, 16 and 17, 1889. Charleston, S.C., 1890. ———. The Wilberforce Alumnal: A Comprehensive Review of the Origin, Develop- ment, and Present Status of Wilberforce University. Xenia, Ohio: Xenia Gazette Office, 1885. Articles of Association of the AME Church of the City of Philadelphia in the Common- wealth of Pennsylvania, 1799. Philadelphia: John Ormrod, 1799. Athearn, Robert G. In Search of Canaan: Black Migration to Kansas, 1879–80. Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1978. Baer, Hans A. The Black Spiritual Movement: A Religious Response to Racism. Knox- ville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1984. Bailey, Julius H. Around the Family Altar: Domesticity in the African Methodist Epis- copal Church, 1865–1900. Gainesville: Univ. Press of Florida, 2005. Bailey, Kenneth K. “Protestantism and Afro-Americans in the Old South: Another Look.” Journal of Southern History 41 (1975): 451–72. Baird, Robert. Religion in America. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1856. Bannister, Robert C. Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1979. Beasley, Delilah L. Negro Trail Blazers of California. Los Angeles: Times Mirror, 1919. Becker, William H. “The Black Church: Manhood and Mission.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 40 (Spring 1972): 316–33. Bederman, Gail. Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1995. Bell, Howard H., ed. Minutes of the Proceedings of the National Negro Conventions, 1830–1864. New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1969. ———. Search for a Place: Black Separatism and Africa. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Mich- igan Press, 1969. Berry, L. L. A Century of Missions of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1840– 1940. New York: Gutenberg Printing, 1942. Berwanger, Eugene. The West and Reconstruction. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1981. Blassingame, John W. The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1972. Boahen, A. Adu, ed. Africa Under Colonial Domination, 1880–1935. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1985. Boles, John B., ed. Masters and Slaves in the House of the Lord: Race and Religion in the American South, 1740–1870. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1988. Botham, Fay, and Sara M. Patterson. Race, Religion, Region: Landscapes of En- counter in the American West. Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press, 2006. Bracey, John H., Jr., August Meier, and Elliot Rudwick, eds. Black Nationalism in America. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970.

132 Bibliography Brauer, Jerald C. “Regionalism and Religion in America.” Church History 54 (Sept. 1985): 366–78. Bredahl, A. Carl, Jr. New Ground: Western American Narrative and the Literary Canon. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1989. Broussard, Albert S. Black San Francisco: The Struggle for Racial Equality in the West, 1900–1954. Lawrence: Univ. Press of Kansas, 1993. Brown, Edgar Canter, Jr., and Larry Eugene Rivers. For a Great and Grand Pur- pose: The Beginnings of the AMEZ Church in Florida, 1864–1905. Gainesville: Univ. Press of Florida, 2004. Brown, William Wells. The Rising Son, or, the Antecedents and Advancement of the Colored Race. Boston: A. G. Brown, 1876. Bruce, Dickson D. “Ancient Africa and the Early Black American Historians, 1883–1915.” American Quarterly 36 (Winter 1984): 684–99. ———. “Religion, Society, and Culture in the Old South: A Comparative View.” American Quarterly 26 (Oct. 1974): 399–415. Bullock, Penelope L. The Afro-American Periodical Press, 1838–1909. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1981. Burrow, J. F. The Crisis of Reason: European Thought, 1848–1914. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 2000. Burt, Olive. Negroes in the Early West. New York: Messner, 1969. Butchart, Ronald E. Northern Schools, Southern Blacks, and Reconstruction: Freed- men’s Education, 1862–1875. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980. Byrne, Donald E., Jr. No Foot of Land: Folklore of American Methodist Itinerants. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1975. Campbell, James T. Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995. Carnes, Mark C., and Clyde Griffen, eds. Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1990. Carroll, H. K., ed. Proceedings, Sermon, Essays, and Addresses of the Centennial Methodist Conference Held in Mt. Vernon Place Methodist Episcopal Church, Baltimore, Md., December 9–17, 1884. New York: Phillips & Hunt, 1885. Centennial Historical Souvenir of “Mother” Bethel AME Church. Philadelphia: His- torical Society, 1916. Chirenje, Mutero. Ethiopianism and Afro-Americans in Southern Africa, 1883–1916. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1987. Christian Recorder. Philadelphia: AME Publishing House, 1854–1900. Church Review. Philadelphia: AME Publishing House, 1884–1900. Coan, Josephus R. Daniel Alexander Payne—Christian Educator. Philadelphia: A.M.E. Book Concern, 1935. Coker, Daniel. Journal of Daniel Coker, a Descendant of Africa. Baltimore: Edward J. Coale, 1820.

Bibliography 133 Coppin, Levi J. Collection. Carnegie Library. Wilberforce University, Wilber- force, Ohio. ———. The Key to Scriptural Interpretation, or, Expository Notes on Obscure Passages. Philadelphia: AME Publishing House, 1895. ———. The Relation of Baptized Children to the Church and Key to Scriptural Inter- pretation. Philadelphia: AME Publication Dept., 1890. ———. Unwritten History. New York: Negro Univ. Press, 1968. Crummell, Alexander. Civilization: The Primal Need of the Race. Occasional Papers, No. 3. Washington, D.C.: American Negro Academy. Cummings, Melbourne S. “The Rhetoric of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner.” Journal of Black Studies 12, no. 4 (June 1982): 457–67. Daniels, Douglas Henry. Pioneer Urbanites: A Social and Cultural History of Black San Francisco. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1990. Davis, Timothy, Kevin R. Johnson, and George A. Martinez. A Reader on Race, Civil Rights, and American Law: A Multicultural Approach. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 2001. De Graaf, Lawrence B., eds. Seeking El Dorado: African Americans in California. Seattle: Univ. of Seattle Press, 2001. De Leon, Arnoldo. Racial Frontiers: Africans, Chinese, and Mexicans in Western America, 1848–1890. Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 2002. Dickerson, Dennis C. “The Black Church in Industrializing Western Pennsyl vania, 1870–1950.” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 64, no. 4 (1981): 329–44. Du Bois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction in America. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1935. ———. Du Bois: Writings. New York: Library of America, 1986. ———. The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylva- nia Press, 1899. ———. The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Kraus-Thomson Organization, 1973. ———. The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part which Africa Has Played in World History. New York: International Publishers, 1965. Dvorak, Katherine L. An African-American Exodus: The Segregation of Southern Churches. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson, 1991. Embry, James Crawford. Digest of Christian Theology Designed for the Use of Be- ginners in the Study of Theological Science. Philadelphia: A.M.E. Book Con- cern, 1890. Ernest, John. Liberation Historiography: African American Writers and the Chal- lenge of History, 1794–1861. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2004. Finkelman, Paul. “The Law of Slavery and Freedom in California, 1848–1860.” California Western Law Review 17 (1981): 437–64. Flood, Theodore L. Lives of Methodist Bishops. New York: Phillips & Hunt, 1882.

134 Bibliography Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. New York: Harper & Row, 1988. ———. A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863–1877. New York: Harper & Row, 1990. Foner, Philip., ed. W. E. B. Du Bois Speaks: Speeches and Addresses, 1920–1963. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970. Foner, Philip, and Robert James Branham, eds. Lift Every Voice: African American Oratory, 1787–1900. Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1998. Foster, Frances Smith. “A Narrative of the Interesting Origins and (Somewhat) Surprising Developments of African-American Print Culture.” American Literary History 17, no. 4 (Winter 2005): 714–40. ———, ed. Minnie’s Sacrifice, Sowing and Reaping, Trial and Triumph: Three Re- discovered Novels by Frances E. W. Harper. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994. Foster, Frances Smith, and Chanta Haywood. “Christian Recordings: Afro- Protestantism, Its Press and the Production of African-American Litera- ture.” Religion and Literature 27, no. 1 (1995): 15–33. Frazier, E. Franklin. The Negro Church in America. New York: Schocken Books, 1964. Frederickson, George M. The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro- American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914. Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1987. Fulop, Timothy E., Jr., and Albert J. Raboteau, eds. African-American Religion: Interpretative Essays in History and Culture. New York: Routledge, 1997. Gaines, Kevin. Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1996. Gaines, Wesley J. African Methodism in the South; or, Twenty-Five Years of Freedom. Atlanta: Franklin Publishing House, 1890. Gardner, Eric., ed. Jennie Carter: A Black Journalist of the Early West. Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2007. Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Pantheon, 1972. George, Carol V. R. Segregated Sabbaths: Richard Allen and the Rise of Independent Black Churches, 1760–1840. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1973. Glasrud, Bruce, and Laurie Champion, eds. The African American West: A Century of Stories. Boulder: Univ. of Colorado Press, 2000. Glazener, Nancy. Reading for Realism: The History of a U.S. Literary Institution, 1850–1910. Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1997. Goode, Kenneth G. California’s Black Pioneers: A Brief Historical Survey. Santa Barbara, Calif.: McNally & Loftin, 1974. Goodyear, Frank H. “‘Beneath the Shadow of Her Flag’: Philip A. Bell’s The Elevator and the Struggle for Enfranchisement.” California History 78, no. 1 (1999): 26–39, 71–73.

Bibliography 135 Grant, Abraham. Deaconess Manual of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. N.p.: African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1902. Gravely, William B. “African Methodism and the Rise of Black Denominational- ism.” In Rethinking Methodist History: A Bicentennial Historical Consultation., edited by R. Richey and K. Rowe. Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1985. ———. “Early Methodism and Slavery: The Roots of a Tradition.” Wesleyan Quarterly Review 2 (1965): 84–100. Green, Augustus R. The Life of the Rev. Dandridge F. Davis, of the African Methodist E. Church. Pittsburgh: B. F. Peterson, 1853. Gregg, Howard D. History of the AME Church: The Black Church in Action. Nash- ville: AME Church Sunday School Union, 1980. Gregg, Robert. Sparks from the Anvil of Oppression: Philadelphia’s African Methodists and Southern Migrants, 1890–1940. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1993. Habermas, Jürgen. “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article (1964).” New German Critique 1 (Fall 1974): 49–55. Hahn, Steven. A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2003. Hall, David D. Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1997. Hall, Stephen G. A Faithful Account of the Race: African American Historical Writing in Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2009. Hamilton, Kenneth M. Black Towns and Profit: Promotion and Development in the Trans-Appalachian West, 1877–1915. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1991. Handy, James A. Scraps of African Methodist Episcopal History. Philadelphia: A.M.E. Book Concern, 1902. Handy, Robert. A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities. 2d. ed. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1984. Harrell, David E., ed. Varieties of Southern Evangelicalism. Macon, Ga.: Mercer Univ. Press 1981. Harvey, Paul. Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities Among Southern Baptists, 1865–1925. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1997. Hatch, Nathan O. The Democratization of American Christianity. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1988. Hayden, Dolores. “Biddy Mason’s Los Angeles, 1851–1891.” California History 68, no. 3 (Fall 1989): 86–99. Heyrman, Christine L. Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt. New York: Knopf, 1997. Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks. Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1993.

136 Bibliography Hildebrand, Reginald. The Times Were Strange and Stirring: Methodist Preachers and the Crisis of Emancipation. Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1995. Hill, Samuel S., Jr. Religion and the Solid South. Nashville: Abingdon, 1972. Hofstadter, Richard. Social Darwinism in American Thought. New York: Braziller, 1959. Hutchison, William R. The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1976. Hutton, Frankie. The Early Black Press in America, 1827 to 1860. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1993. Isaac, Rhys. The Transformation of Virginia, 1740–1790. New York: W. W. Norton, 1982. Jacobs, Sylvia M. The African Nexus: Black American Perspectives on the European Partitioning of Africa, 1880–1920. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981. ———, ed. Black Americans and the Missionary Movement in Africa. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982. James, Joy. Transcending the Talented Tenth: Black Leaders and American Intellectuals. New York: Routledge, 1997. Johnson, Michael K. Black Masculinity and the Frontier Myth in American Literature. Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 2002. Jones, Pat. “Nevada County’s Black Pioneers.” Nevada County Historical Bulletin 39, no. 3 (July 1985): 19–24. Jordan, Winthrop D. White over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550– 1812. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1968. Journal of the 18th Session and 17th Quadrennial Session of the General Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the World. Philadelphia, 1884. Joyner, Charles. “‘Believer I Know’: The Emergence of African-American Chris- tianity.” In African-American Christianity: Essays in History, edited by Paul E. Johnson. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1994. Kahn, Jonathan S. Divine Discontent: The Religious Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2009. Katz, William Loren. The Black West: A Documentary and Pictorial History of the African American Role in the Westward Expansion of the United States. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996. Kealing, H. T. History of African Methodism in Texas. Waco, Tex.: C. F. Blanks, 1885. Killian, Charles. “Daniel A. Payne and the A.M.E. General Conference of 1888: A Display of Contrasts.” Negro History Bulletin 32, no. 7 (1969): 11–14. King, Andrew A. “Rhetorical Legacy of the Black Church.” Central States Speech Journal 22 (Fall 1971): 179–85. King, Wilma. Stolen Childhood: Slave Youth in Nineteenth Century America. Bloom- ington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1995. Kirby, James E. The Methodists. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996.

Bibliography 137 Kowalewski, Michael, ed. Reading the West: New Essays on the Literature of the American West. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996. Kurtz, Ernest. “The Tragedy of Southern Religion.” Georgia Historical Quarterly 66 (Summer 1982): 217–247. Lammers, Ann C. “The Rev. Absalom Jones and the Episcopal Church: Christian Theology and Black Consciousness in a New Alliance.” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 51, no. 2 (1982): 159–84. Lape, Noreen Groover. West of the Border: The Multicultural Literature of the Western American Frontiers. Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 2000. Lapp, Rudolph. Blacks in Gold Rush California. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1977. Leverenz, David. Manhood and the American Renaissance. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1989. Levine, Lawrence. Black Culture, Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1977. Lewis, Nathaniel. Unsettling the Literary West: Authenticity and Authorship. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2003. Lincoln, C. Eric, and Lawrence H. Mamiya. The Black Church in the African Amer- ican Experience. Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1990. Little, Lawrence S. Disciples of Liberty: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the Age of Imperialism. Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 2000. ———. “Ideology, Culture, and the Realities of Racism in the AME Foreign Agenda Toward Events and Issues in Britain and France, 1885–1905.” Western Journal of Black Studies 22, no. 2 (Summer 1998): 128–40. Litwack, Leon F. Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. ———. North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790–1860. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1961. Litwack, Leon F., and August Meier, eds. Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1988. Logan, Rayford W., and Michael R. Winston, eds. Dictionary of American Negro Biography. New York: W. W. Norton, 1982. ———. The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir, 1877–1901. New York: Dial, 1954. Loveland, Anne C., and Otis B. Wheeler. From the Meetinghouse to Megachurch: A Material and Cultural History. Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press, 2003. Luker, Ralph E. “The Social Gospel and the Failure of Racial Reform, 1877– 1898.” Church History 46 (Mar. 1977): 80–99. ———. The Social Gospel in Black and White: American Racial Reform, 1885–1912. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1991. Machor, James L. Readers in History: Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Contexts of Response. Baltimore: John Hopkins Univ. Press, 1993.

138 Bibliography Maffly-Kipp, Laurie F. “Denominationalism and the Black Church.” In Reimag- ining Denominationalism: Interpretive Essays, edited by Russell E. Richey. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1994. ———. Religion and Society in Frontier California. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1994. ———. Setting Down the Sacred Past: African-American Race Histories. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 2010. Marks, George P., III, ed. and comp. The Black Press Views American Imperialism, 1898–1900. New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1971. Martin, Sandy D. For God and Race: The Religious and Political Leadership of AMEZ Bishop James Walker Hood. Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1999. Martin, Waldo E., Jr. The Mind of Frederick Douglass. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1984. Martinez, Katherine, and Kenneth L. Ames, eds. The Material Culture of Gender, the Gender of Material Culture. Hanover, N.H.: Univ. Press of New England, 1997. Mathews, Donald G. “Charles Colcock Jones and the Southern Evangelical Cru- sade to Form a Biracial Community.” Journal of Southern History 41 (1975): 299–320. ———. “Christianizing the South B Sketching a Synthesis.” In New Directions in American Religious History, edited by Harry S. Stout. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997. ———. Religion in the Old South. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago, 1977. Mays, Benjamin E., and Joseph W. Nicholson. The Negro’s Church. New York: Russell & Russell, 1969. McHenry, Elizabeth. Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African Amer- ican Literary Societies. Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 2002. Meier, August. Negro Thought in America, 1880–1915: Racial Ideologies in the Age of Booker T. Washington. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1963. Miller, Albert G. Elevating the Race: Theophilus G. Steward, Black Theology, and the Making of an African American Civil Society, 1865–1924. Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 2003. Miller, Floyd. The Search for Black Nationality: Black Emigration and Colonization, 1787–1863. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1975. Milner, Clyde A., II., ed. A New Significance: Re-Envisioning the History of the American West. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1996. Mitchell, Michele. Righteous Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny After Reconstruction. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2004. Mixon, Winfield Henri. History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Alabama: with Biographical Sketches. Nashville: AME Church Sunday School Union, 1902.

Bibliography 139 Montesano, Philip M. “San Francisco Black Churches in the Early 1860s: Politi- cal Pressure Group.” California Historical Quarterly 52, no. 2 (Summer 1973): 145–52. Montgomery, William E. Under Their Own Vine and Fig Tree: The African American Church in the South, 1865–1900. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1993. Moon, Henry Lee. The Emerging Thought of W. E. B. Du Bois: Essays and Editorials from The Crisis with an Introduction, Commentaries and a Personal Memoir. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972. Moore, R. Laurence. Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1986. Moos, Dan. Outside America: Race, Ethnicity, and the Role of the American West in National Belonging. Hanover, N.H.: Dartmouth College Press, 2005. Morgan, Joseph H. Morgan’s History of the New Jersey Conference of the A.M.E. Church, from 1872 to 1887. Camden, N.J.: S. Chew, 1887. Morris, Calvin S. Reverdy C. Ransom: Black Advocate of the Social Gospel. Lanham, Md.: Univ. Press of America, 1990. Moses, Wilson Jeremiah. Alexander Crummell: A Study of Civilization and Discontent. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989. ———, ed. Classical Black Nationalism: From the American Revolution to Marcus Garvey. New York: New York Univ. Press, 1996. ———. The Golden Age of Black Nationalism. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1978. Moss, Alfred, Jr. The American Negro Academy: Voice of the Talented Tenth. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1981. Mulder, John M., and John F. Wilson. Religion in American History: Interpretive Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1978. Mungen, Donna. The Life and Time of Biddy Mason. Los Angeles: MC Printing, 1976. Nash, Gary B. Forging Freedom. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1988. Newby, I. A. Jim Crow’s Defense: Anti-Negro Thought in America, 1900–1930. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1965. Newman, Richard S. Freedom’s Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers. New York: New York Univ. Press, 2008. ———, ed. Pamphlets of Protest: An Anthology of Early African American Protest Literature, 1790–1860. New York: Routledge, 2001. Numbers, Ronald L., and John Stenhouse, eds. Disseminating Darwinism: The Role of Place, Race, Religion, and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999. Painter, Nell Irvin. Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction. New York: W. W. Norton, 1986. Payne, Daniel A. History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Nashville: Publishing House of the AME Church Sunday School Union, 1891; New York: Johnson Reprint, 1968.

140 Bibliography ———. Papers. Levi J. Coppin Collection. Carnegie Library. Wilberforce Univer- sity, Wilberforce, Ohio. ———. Recollections of Seventy Years. Nashville: Publishing House of the AME Church Sunday School Union, 1888. ———. The Semi-Centenary and the Retrospection of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States of America. Baltimore: Sherwood, 1866. ———. Sermons and Addresses, 1853–1891. Edited by Charles Killian. New York: Arno Press, 1972. ———. A Treatise on Domestic Education. Cincinnati: Cranston & Stowe, 1885. Payne, Daniel A., et al. Laws and Historical Sketch of Wilberforce University. Cincinnati: Robert Clark, 1876. Penn, I. Garland. The Afro-American Press and Its Editors. New York: Arno Press, 1969. Peskin, Allan. North into Freedom: The Autobiography of John Malvin, Free Negro, 1795–1880. Cleveland: Press of Western Reserve Univ., 1966. Porter, Dorothy, ed. Negro Protest Pamphlets: A Compendium. New York: Arno Press, 1969. Potter, Kenneth Wiggins. The Negro on the American Frontier. New York: Arno Press, 1971. Quarles, Benjamin. Black Abolitionists. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1975. Raboteau, Albert J. “African-American, Exodus, and the American Israel.” In African-American Christianity: Essays in History, edited by Paul E. Johnson. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1994. ———. A Fire in the Bones: Reflections on African-American Religious History. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995. ———. Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1978. Rael, Patrick. Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2002. Ransom, Reverdy C. School Days at Wilberforce. Springfield, Ohio: New Era, 1892. Ravage, John W. Black Pioneers: Images of the Black Experience on the North American Frontier. Salt Lake City: Univ. of Utah Press, 1997. Redkey, Edwin S. Black Exodus: Black Nationalist and Back-to-Africa Movements, 1890–1910. New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1969. Richardson, Harry V. Dark Salvation: The Story of African Methodism as It Devel- oped Among Blacks. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976. Richardson, Joe M. Christian Reconstruction: The American Missionary Association and Southern Blacks, 1861–1890. Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1986. Savage, W. Sherman. Blacks in the West. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1976. Schneider, Gregory A. The Way of the Cross Leads Home: The Domestication of American Methodism. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1993. Senna, Carl. The Black Press and the Struggle for Civil Rights. New York: Franklin Watts, 1993.

Bibliography 141 Seraile, William. Fire in His Heart: Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner and the A.M.E. Church. Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1998. ———. Theophilus Gould Steward (1843–1924) and Black America. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson, 1991. Sernett, Milton C. Black Religion and American Evangelicalism: White Protestants, Plantation Missions, and the Flowering of Negro Christianity. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1975. ———. Bound for the Promised Land: African American Religion and the Great Migration. Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1997. Simmons, Charles A. The African American Press: A History of News Coverage During National Crisis, with Special Reference to Four Black Newspapers, 1827– 1965. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1998. Simmons, William J., ed. Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising. New York: Arno and the New York Times, 1968. Singleton, George A. The Romance of African Methodism: A Study of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. New York: Exposition Press, 1952. Skinner, Elliott P. African Americans and U.S. Policy Toward Africa, 1850–1924: In Defense of Black Nationality. Washington, D.C.: Howard Univ. Press, 1992. Smith, Arthur L. Language, Communication, and Rhetoric in Black America. New York: Harper and Row, 1972. Smith, Charles Spencer. A History of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Philadelphia: A.M.E. Book Concern, 1922. Smith, David. Biography of Rev. David Smith of the AME Church. Xenia, Ohio: Xenia Gazette Office, 1881. Smith, H. Shelton. In His Image but . . . : Racism in Southern Religion, 1780–1910. Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press, 1972. Smith, Theophus. Conjuring Culture: Biblical Formations of Black America. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1994. Snorgrass, J. William. “The Black Press in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1856– 1900.” California History 60, no. 4 (1981–82): 306–17. Sobel, Mechal. Trabelin’ On: The Slave Journey to an Afro-Baptist Faith. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979. ———. The World They Made Together: Black and White Values in Eighteenth- Century Virginia. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1987. Stampp, Kenneth M. The Era of Reconstruction, 1865–1877. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965. Sterling, Dorothy. The Making of an Afro-American: Martin Robinson Delany, 1812– 1885. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996. Steward, Theophilus G. Memoirs of Mrs. Rebecca Steward. Philadelphia: Publica- tion Department of the AME Church, 1877. ———. My First Four Years in the Itinerancy of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Brooklyn, N.Y., 1876.

142 Bibliography Stuckey, Sterling. The Ideological Origins of Black Nationalism. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972. Suggs, Henry Lewis. The Black Press in the Middle West, 1865 to 1985. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996. Sweet, William Warren. The Story of Religion in America. New York: Harper, 1930. Szasz, Ferenc Morton. Religion in the Modern American West. Tucson: Univ. of Arizona Press, 2000. Talbert, Horace. The Sons of Allen: Together with a Sketch of the Rise and Progress of Wilberforce University, Wilberforce, Ohio. Xenia, Ohio: Aldine Press, 1906. Tanner, Benjamin T. An Apology for African Methodism. Baltimore, 1867. ———. The Descent of the Negro. Philadelphia: AME Publishing House, 1898. ———. The Dispensations in the History of the Church. Philadelphia: AME Publishing House, 1898. ———. Hints to Ministers, Especially Those of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Wilberforce, Ohio: Industrial Student Printers, 1900. ———. The Negro in Holy Writ. Philadelphia: n.p., 1902. ———. The Negro’s Origin: And Is the Negro Cursed? Philadelphia: African M.E. Book Depository, 1869. ———. Papers. Manuscript Division. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. ———. Theological Lectures. Nashville: AME Church Sunday School Union, 1894. Taylor, Quintard. In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the Ameri- can West, 1528–1990. New York: W. W. Norton, 1998. Thomas, Rhondda R. “Exodus and Colonization: Charting the Journey in the Journals of Daniel Coker, a Descendant of Africa.” African American Review 41, no. 3 (2007): 507–19. Townsend, Vince M. Fifty-Four Years of African Methodism. New York: Exposition, 1953. Turner, Henry McNeal. The Genius and Theory of Methodist Polity, or the Machinery of Methodism. Philadelphia: Publication Department of the AME Church, 1885. Tweed, Thomas A., ed. Retelling U.S. Religious History. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1997. Walker, Clarence E. A Rock in a Weary Land: The AME Church During the Civil War and Reconstruction. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1982. Washington, James Melvin. Frustrated Fellowship: The Black Baptist Quest for Social Power. Macon, Ga.: Mercer Univ. Press, 1986. Washington, Joseph R., Jr. Black Religion: The Negro and Christianity in the United States. Boston: Beacon Press, 1964. Wayman, Alexander W. Cyclopaedia of African Methodism Baltimore: Methodist Episcopal Book Depository, 1882.

Bibliography 143 ———. Manual, or Guide Book for the Administration of the Discipline of the African M.E. Church. Philadelphia: A.M.E. Book Rooms, 1886. ———. My Recollections of African M.E. Ministers or Forty Years Experience in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Philadelphia: A.M.E. Book Rooms, 1881. Weisenfeld, Judith. “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks: Margins, Center, and Bridges in African American Religious History.” In New Directions in American Religious History, edited by Harry S. Stoudt and D. G. Hart. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997. Wentz, Richard. “Region and Religion in America,” Foundations 24 (Apr. 1981): 148–55. Wesley, Charles H. Richard Allen: Apostle of Freedom. Washington D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1935. Wessinger, Catherine, ed. Religious Institutions and Women’s Leadership: New Roles Inside the Mainstream. Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina Press, 1996. Wheeler, Edward L. Uplifting the Race: The Black Minister in the New South, 1865– 1902. Lanham, Md.: Univ. Press of America, 1986. White, Charles F. Who’s Who in Philadelphia. Philadelphia: A.M.E. Book Concern, 1912. White, Ronald C. Liberty and Justice for All: Racial Reform and the Social Gospel, 1877–1925. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990. Williams, George Washington. History of the Negro Race in America, from 1619 to 1880. New York: George Putnam’s Sons, 1885. Williams, Gilbert A. The Christian Recorder, Newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal Church: History of a Forum for Ideas, 1854–1902. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996. Williams, Walter. Black America and the Evangelization of Africa, 1877–1900. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1982. Wills, David. W. “Aspects of Social Thought in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1884–1910.” Ph.D. diss., Harvard Univ., 1975. Wills, David W., and Richard Newman., eds. Black Apostles at Home and Abroad: Afro-Americans and the Christian Mission from the Revolution to Reconstruction. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982. Wilmore, Gayraud S. Black Religion and Black Radicalism: An Interpretation of the Religious History of African Americans. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972. Winch, Julie. Philadelphia’s Black Elite: Activism, Accommodation, and the Struggle for Autonomy, 1787–1848. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1988. Woodson, Carter G. The History of the Negro Church. 3d ed. Washington, D.C.: Associated Publishers, 1985. Woodson, Carter G., and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1915–1950. Papers. Manuscript Division. Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University.

144 Bibliography Wright, Richard R., Jr. The Bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Nashville: Publishing House of the AME Church Sunday School Union, 1963. ———, comp. Encyclopedia of African Methodism. 2d ed. Philadelphia: A.M.E. Book Concern, 1947

Bibliography 145

Index

ACS. See American Colonization Soci- Church: “African” in title debated, ety (ACS) xix, 63–64, 74–75, 79–82; denomi- Africa: African Americans’ identifi- national merger discussions, 64–65, cation with, 46, 64, 113; Coker’s 75–79, 81; diversity and divisions descriptions of, 9–14; European in, 83, 84, 88–89; emigration move- colonization of, 67, 98; redemption ment and, 68, 83–90, 98–99, 108– by African Americans, 68, 73–74, 9; First General Conference of, 8; 79, 92–93, 98–100, 106, 108–9; growth of, xvi, 17, 50; histories of, slave trade in, 12, 13–14. See also xiii–xvi, 8, 14-15, 28–38, 40–42, emigration movement; Liberia; 49–50, 64, 79, 111–14; literature of, missionaries, AME 1, 14–16, 17, 37–38, 64; merger with African, debate over use of term, xix, BME Church, 77–78; New Jersey 63–64, 74–75, 79–82 Conference, 87; origins of, xi–xiv, African Americans: Americanness of, 28, 32–34, 41, 65, 75, 80, 111; print 39–40, 55, 58, 72–73, 81–83, 97, culture of, xii, xviii, xix, 1, 83–84, 101, 106, 108; in Civil War, xii, xvii, 111–14; racial exclusivity of, 63–64; 75; education’s effects on, 2, 15, 31, role in redemption of Africa, 74, 78, 88, 96; heterogeneity of, 71–72; his- 79, 98–99; Tenth Episcopal District, tories of, xv, xvii–xviii, 33, 111–12, 78; westward expansion of, xviii– 113; identities of, xv, 46, 63–64, xix, 40, 47, 50–61. See also Christian 65, 69, 74, 113; industriousness of, Recorder (newspaper, AME) 55–56, 58–59; poverty among, 15, African Methodist Episcopal Church 66, 83; racial upliftment of, 17, 44, Magazine, 14–15, 19, 23 59–60, 68, 72–73, 93–94, 97, 101–2, African Methodist Episcopal Zion 106, 111–12, 114; white treatment (AMEZ) Church: establishment of, of, xiii, 23, 56–57, 59, 101. See 30–31; proposed AME merger with, also Africa, redemption by African 76–77, 78–79 Americans; mulattoes; slavery African Repository (journal, ACS), African Colonization Society, 95–96 83–84, 93 African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Aldridge, I. F., 38 Alexander, W. G., 38 Bederman, Gail, 43 Allen, Richard: as first AME bishop, Bias, J. J. G., on Richard Allen, 114 8, 48; formation of AME by, xii, Bible: justifying slavery through, 4–5; xiii–xiv, 28, 31, 32, 41, 79; legacy scientific method contrasted with, of, xvi, 64, 111, 113–14; Narrative 70, 71 of the Proceedings of the Black People biographies, 28, 35, 48, 111, 112. See During the Late Awful Calamity in also autobiographies Philadelphia, 1, 2; publishing house biracial heritage. See mulattoes established by, 14 bishops, AME, xvi, 8, 21–22, 76, 78; AME. See African Methodist Episcopal passing of, 43–44, 45 (AME) Church black nationalism, xv, 58, 68, 71–72, AME Book Concern (publishing 73, 92, 101 house), 14 blacks. See African Americans AME Church Review (newspaper), 14 Blumenbach, J. F., racial classification American Colonization Society (ACS), by, 67 8, 64, 83–84, 85, 92, 93, 95, 102 Blyden, Edward Wilmot, 72, 73–74, American Missionary Association, 24 102 AMEZ. See African Methodist Episco- book reviews, in Christian Recorder, pal Zion (AMEZ) Church xviii, 20 AME Zion Quarterly Review (periodical, book steward: AME, 14; Christian AMEZ), 14 Recorder, 20, 21, 27, 29 Arkansas, 61; African emigration move- Bradley, J. F. P., 46 ment in, 89, 103, 104, 105 British Methodist Episcopal (BME) Arnett, Benjamin W., 47 Church (Canada), AME’s merger assimilation, 58, 73, 91, 93 with, 77–78 “Atlanta Compromise” speech, Booker Brown, Canter Jr., For a Great and T. Washington, 25–26 Grand Purpose, xvi authority: Biblical, 64, 65–66, 70, 71; Brown, John Mifflin, 51; on emigra- of manhood, 43, 45; racial, xii, 84, tion to Africa, 86; passing of, 43 114 Bryant, George W., 54 autobiographies, xiv, xvii, 8, 32. See also Burrow, J. F., 67 biographies Byrne, Donald, 42 Azor project, 85–86, 89–91 Cain, Richard H., 23; on denomina- Back to Africa movement, 39, 40, 72, tional merger, 75–77; on emigration 89, 91, 97, 102; AME’s position on, to Africa, 88–89, 90, 95, 99–100 85, 107, 108–9. See also emigration California: African American emigra- movement tion to, xviii, 39; AME Church in, Banks, Jesse C., on name controversy, 21, 50–55, 57, 61 80 Campbell, Jabez Pitt, 30–31, 34; in Beavor, Philip, 6 California, 53, 54–55; as Christian

148 Index Recorder editor, 17; on emigration to George’s Methodist Episcopal (ME) Africa, 86; passing of, 43 Church (Philadelphia); and individu- Campbell, James T., Songs of Zion, xvi al denominations Canada, African American emigration Church Review (periodical, AME), to, 40, 77–78, 85, 87 xviii, 23, 37–38, 43, 69 Carey, Matthew, 1 citizenship, 83, 114; American, 52, 57, Central America, African American 75, 88, 96, 106; Liberian, 100 emigration to, 85 Civil Rights Act of 1875, 92 Chinese immigrants, discrimination Civil War, African Americans in, xii, against, 57 xvii, 75. See also Reconstruction, ef- Christian Herald (newspaper, AME), 16. fects on African Americans See also Christian Recorder (newspa- Clark, Molliston M., 15, 16–17, 53 per, AME) clergy, African American, importance Christianity and Christians, xv, 4–5, of, 2. See also bishops, AME; minis- 64–65, 68–70. See also individual ters, AME; missionaries, AME denominations Coker, Daniel, xviii; A Dialogue between Christian Recorder (newspaper, AME): a Virginian and an African Minister, book reviews in, xviii, 20; contribu- 2–8; fall from prominence in AME, tors to, 22, 111, 112–13; on denomi- 8–9; journal of voyage to Africa, national merger, 75–79; develop- 9–14; legacy of, 64 ment of, xviii, 19–24; on emigration colored, use of term, 63, 64, 81 to Africa, xi, 84, 88, 90–108; on Colored Catholic (periodical), 14 evolution, 68–75; on exoduster mi- Colored Church of America, proposed gration, 59–60; financial problems, AME merger with, 76–77 20, 26, 27–28, 94; format changes, Colored Citizen (newspaper), 26–27 26–27, 113; as historical narrative, Colored Methodist Episcopal (CME) xii–xiii, xv, xvii, 17, 20; on man- Church, proposed AME merger hood, 43, 44, 47–48; origins of, 14, with, 76–77, 78 16–17; on retention of term “Afri- Committee on African Emigration can,” 63–64, 74–75, 79–82; reviews (AME), 85, 86 of church histories in, 33–38; social Compromise of 1876, 97. See also justice issues in, 23–24, 81–82; Reconstruction, effects on African subscribers to, 15–16, 20, 21, 27, 94; Americans on westward migration, 39, 40–41, Copeland, T. M. G., 56 55–59. See also Tanner, Benjamin T. Coppin, Levi J., 35, 37 Christian Statesman (periodical), 26 Cromwell, J. W., 88 Church Advocate (periodical, Protestant Crummell, Alexander, on emigration to Episcopal Church), 14 Africa, 68, 74, 93–94 churches, African American, importance of, 2. See also Mother Bethel Darwin, Charles. See evolution; natural Church (AME, Philadelphia); St. selection; social Darwinism

Index 149 Delany, Martin, 33; on emigration to Ernest, John, xvii; Liberation Historiog- Africa, 68, 89, 90, 95; on retention raphy, xv of term “African,” 74–75 ethnicity, Western reality of, 55–56 denominations: histories of, xvi, 17, 20, evangelization, AME. See Africa, 38, 111, 114; loyalty to, xvi, 31, 64. redemption by African Americans; See also individual denominations missionaries, AME discrimination: against African Ameri- evolution, 65–75. See also natural selec- cans, xi, xviii, 19, 23–24, 43, 44, tion; social Darwinism; survival of 101; against Chinese immigrants, the fittest 57; against Jews, 101, 113. See also exodusters, 39, 59–60 racism; segregation Disney, R. R., 77 Ferguson, Plessy v., 101–2 Doctrines and Discipline of the African Flipper, J. S., on emigration to Africa, Methodist Episcopal Church (1817), 107–8 xiv–xv Fortune, T. Thomas, 88 Douglass, Frederick: on emigration to Freedom Journal (newspaper, African Africa, 92, 101; on evolution, 65–66; American), 14 North Star, 14 frontier. See West, American Du Bois, W. E. B., xix; on AME tradition, 111, 112 Gaines, A. L., 44 Gaines, Wesley J., African Methodism in ecumenism, 63, 64–65, 75–76, 77 the South, 29, 35 education: African Americans’ need Garnet, Henry Highland, 47–48; “Pio- for, 2, 15, 31, 88, 96; AME’s promo- neers of the AME Church,” 40–41 tion of, 14, 19, 36, 47 Genesis (Bible), Moses as author of, Edwards, Jarrett Edward, 46 70 emancipation, 36, 112; arguments for geology, 70 and against, 3–8 Georgia, African Methodism in, 29 Embry, J. C.: on emigration to Africa, Goins, Joshua, 45 86, 89, 102, 104; on retention of Gold Rush, African American partici- term “African,” 79 pation in, 39, 50–51 emigration movement, xix, 64; AME’s Great Migration, 39, 59 involvement in, 83–90, 108–9; Green, Augustus R., 16 Christian Recorder’s coverage of, xi, 84, 88, 90–108; Coker’s promotion Hahn, Steven, xix of, xviii, 9–14; fraud associated with, Haiti, African American emigration 23, 102–5; Tanner’s opposition to, to, 92 57, 72–74, 85, 88, 91, 93, 94–95; Ham, Biblical story of, 80, 92 West as alternative to Africa, 39, 40, Handy, James A., 37 55–56, 60–61, 92. See also Africa, Hayes, Benjamin, 97 redemption by African Americans; Haywood, Richard Robert, 46–47 Back to Africa movement histories: African American, xv,

150 Index xvii–xviii, 33, 111–12, 113; AME Methodism in Texas, 29, 31, 32, 36, denominational, xvi, 28–38, 42–52, 45–47 111–12. See also narratives, historical Hogarth, George, 14–15; on William laity, AME: in Christian Review, xviii, Paul Quinn, 48 15, 16, 20, 30; on emigration to Holsey, Lucius, 78 Africa, 88; histories of, 34; social Hood, J. W., 30–31 Darwinism and, 64, 65, 82; on west- Huxley, Thomas Henry, on evolution, ward migration, 38, 40, 52 68, 69, 70 land ownership. See property ownership identities: African, 46, 64, 113; African Lane, Wiley, on emigration to Africa, American, xi–xii, xv, 63–64, 65, 93 69, 74, 83; racial, xvi, 9, 31, 32, 44, Langston, John M., 26 47, 65, 69, 72, 74. See also African, Laws, P. M., on denominational debate over use of term; African merger, 77 Americans, Americanness of; man- Leake, William, 47 hood, African American Lee, Benjamin F.: as Christian Recorder immigrants, Western, treatment of, editor, 44; on emigration to Africa, 55–58 102 injustice. See social justice issues Leverenz, David, 43 International Migration Society (IMS), Liberia: African American emigration 23, 103, 105 to, 40, 87–88, 89, 92, 93, 100; creation of, 85–86 Jackson, A. F., 46 Liberian Exodus Association, 85–86, Jackson, Fanny M., 26 87, 88 Jackson, T. H., 79 Liberian Exodus Joint Stock Steamship Jews, discrimination against, 101, 113 Company, 87, 90, 91 Johnson, H. T., on emigration to Af- Lincoln, Abraham, African American rica, 103 relocation proposal, 92 Jones, Absalom: legacy of, xii, 64, 111; literacy. See reading culture, AME’s Narrative of the Proceedings of the promotion of Black People During the Late Awful literary societies, African American, xv, Calamity in Philadelphia, 1, 2. See 15, 30 also African Methodist Episcopal literature: African American, xvii, 39, (AME) Church, origins of 111–12; AME, 15, 20, 31, 34–38, journals. See newspapers, African Amer- 49, 60, 64–65, 114. See also autobi- ican; periodicals, African American ographies; biographies; newspapers, African American; periodicals, Af- Kansas, African American migrants to, rican American; protest pamphlets; 59–60 Repository of Religion and Literature Kealing, Hightower T.: as Church Re- and of Science and of Art (newspaper, view editor, 37; History of African AME)

Index 151 Little, Lawrence S., 68; Disciples of ministers, AME: critiques of, 24–25; Liberty, xvi education of, 15, 29–30, 47, 112; locations. See spatial locations histories of, xvi, 29, 31–32, 33, 35; Louisiana Separate Car Act of 1890, 101 manhood qualities of, 41–42, 43, Love, William F., 46 44, 45–50; required to read Chris- Lundy, Benjamin, 114 tian Recorder, 28. See also bishops, lynchings, 23, 108 AME; missionaries, AME Mirror of Liberty (newspaper, African Maffly-Kipp, Laurie, xv American), 14 magazines. See periodicals, African miscegenation, 6 American missionaries, AME, 31; in American manhood, African American: AME’s West, 50–55, 61; Coker’s promotion concern over, xi, 41–50; emigration of, 9–14; manhood exhibited by, 41, movement and, 96; of ministers, 41– 42–43, 45–50; redemption of Africa 42, 43, 44, 45–50; slavery’s effects by, 73–74, 78, 79, 93, 96, 98–99, on, 100, 106; westward migration as 113. See also ministers, AME means to, 60–61 Mitchell, Michele, Righteous Propaga- Manifest Destiny, 67, 98 tion, 39 Marshall, Texas, murder of African Morgan, John T., 102 Americans in, 23 Moses, 70, 80 masculinity. See manhood, African Mother Bethel Church (AME, Phila- American delphia), xiii, 31 McHenry, Elizabeth, Forgotten Read- mulattoes, 6, 8, 9, 12, 46, 85. See also ers, xv African Americans; whites Methodism, Wesleyan, xiv. See also Murphey, J. S. A., 23 individual denominations Methodist Episcopal (ME) Church: name controversy, AME, xix, 63–64, AME’s separation from, xiii, xiv, 80; 74–75, 79–82 California Conference of, 53, 54, 57; narratives, historical: AME, xii–xviii, histories of white, 31; merging of all 28–38, 64, 114; in Christian Re African American denominations, corder, xii–xiii, xv, xvii, 17, 20; re- 64–65, 66, 75–79, 81, 82. See also garding spatial locations, xii, St. George’s Methodist Episcopal xvi, xvii, 61; slave, 111, 112. See Church (Philadelphia), African also histories American exodus from; and indi- National Baptist Convention, 65 vidual denominations National Baptist Magazine (periodical), Mexico, African American emigration 14 to, 89 National Watchman (newspaper), 14 migration. See emigration movement; Native Americans, violence toward, South, the, African American 56–57, 108 migration out of; West, American, natural selection, 64, 66–67, 71 African American migration to Nazrey, Willis, 78

152 Index Negro, use of term, 63, 64, 80–81 phia); yellow fever epidemic of 1793 Negro Press Convention, 80–81 (Philadelphia) Negro Problem, solutions to, 108. See Philadelphia Preacher’s Association, 24 also race(s), relations between pioneers, African American, xviii, Newby, I. A., 67 31, 39, 46, 47, 50. See also West, Newman, Richard S., 112 American New Mexico, proposed to become Pittsburgh Christian Advocate (newspa- black nation, 92 per), 26 newspapers, African American, 1, Plessy v. Ferguson, 101–2 14–15, 23, 26–27, 89, 112, 113. See politics: post-Reconstruction, 71–72, also individual newspapers 90, 96, 97, 99, 101; of racial identity, 32, 34, 39; of respectability, 43 Owens, J. C. C., on name controversy, polygenesis, 65, 71 79 Porter, B. F., 90 Porter, Dorothy, 2 Painter, Nell Irvin, 59; Exodusters, 39 postbellum period. See Reconstruction, Panama, relocation of African Ameri- effects on African Americans cans to, 92 poverty, among African Americans, 15, past, effects on present and future, xi– 66, 67, 83 xii, 23, 42–43. See also histories Preachers’ Meeting of the AME patriotism. See race patriotism, use of Church, 83, 84–85, 86 term prejudice. See discrimination; racism; Patton, Steven, 46 segregation Payne, Daniel Alexander, xvi, 19, 34; press, African American, xv, 14–15, 84; on AME-BME merger, 78; on emi- AME, xviii, 14–15, 17; on emigra- gration to Africa, 97–98, 98–99; as tion to Africa, 89; growth of, 30, example of ideal manhood, 44; His- 111–12; protests in, xii, xvii–xviii, tory of the African Methodist Episcopal 1–2. See also newspapers, African Church, 8, 15, 28, 30, 36–37, 38, 50, American; periodicals, African 79, 114; passing of, 43, 120n8; Recol- American lections of Seventy Years, 28, 29, 34, print culture, AME, xii, xviii, xix, 1, 35–36; The Semi-Centenary and the 83 –84, 111–14 Retrospection of the African Method- Progressive American, 23 ist Episcopal Church, 14, 28, 36; on property ownership, 4, 11, 77, 88 William Paul Quinn, 48–49 Protestant Episcopal Church, 14 Pearce, C. H., on emigration to Africa, protest pamphlets, xii, xvii, 1–8, 15, 97–98 111, 112 peoplehood. See identities; race(s) public sphere, African American en- periodicals, African American, 1, 14– gagement in, xii–xiii, xvii, 8, 71–72, 16, 17. See also individual periodicals 114 Philadelphia. See St. George’s Meth- publishing industry. See press, African odist Episcopal Church (Philadel- American

Index 153 Quinn, William Paul, 40–41, 47–49 Shorter, James, 51; on emigration to Africa, 86 race(s): contested notions of, 47, 48; Sierra Leone, Coker’s descriptions of, origins of, 65, 71; relations between, 10–12 64, 71–72, 79, 101–2, 106, 108; skin color, 8, 46. See also mulattoes scientific classifications of, 67, 69, slavery, 97, 99; arguments for and 72–73, 81–82; Western reality of, against, xviii, 3–8; effects on Afri- 55–56. See also African, debate over can Americans, xi, xii, 2, 5–6, 100, use of term; African Americans; 106; opposition to, 9, 36 identities, racial; mulattoes; whites slave trade: abolition of in U.S., 4, 64; race patriotism, use of term, xi, xii, xix, in Africa, 12, 13–14 83, 109, 114 Smith, C. S., 34; on emigration to race traitor, use of term, 25, 60, 109 Africa, 103 racism, 25, 56, 67, 94. See also discrim- Smith, David, 8; biography of William ination; segregation Paul Quinn, 48 Rael, Patrick, xix Smith, H. Henderson, 44 Randolph, J. W., 106 social Darwinism, xix, 64, 65–70, reading culture, AME’s promotion of, 71–72, 77, 81, 82 xviii, 14, 19, 20, 27, 36–37, 38, 84 social justice issues, xiii, 1; in Christian Reconstruction, effects on African Recorder, 23–24, 25, 81–82 Americans, xii, 39–40, 96, 97. See socioeconomics, xix, 58–59, 90, 96, also Civil War, African Americans in 101 Reconstruction Act of 1867, 96 South, the: African American migra- repatriation. See emigration movement tion out of, 39, 59–60, 92; AME Repository of Religion and Literature and church in, 2–3, 17, 29; emigration of Science and of Art (newspaper, movement in, 87, 88, 90; fraudu- AME), 14, 15–16 lent emigration schemes in, 103–5; Rivers, Larry Eugene, For a Great and whites’ treatment of African Ameri- Grand Purpose, xvi cans in, 59, 97, 101 South America, African American Sampson, Mrs. J. P., 44 emigration to, 85 Scarborough, William S., 25–26; on spatial locations: African Americans’ emigration to Africa, 97 loyalty to, xi–xii; historical narra- scientific method: Biblical authority tives of, xii, xiii, xvi, xvii, 61 contrasted with, 70, 71; racial Spencer, Herbert. See survival of the theories based on, 67, 69, 72–73, fittest theory 81–82 St. George’s Methodist Episcopal (ME) Scott, J. W., on emigration to Africa, Church (Philadelphia), African 86–87 American exodus from, xii, xiii, xiv, segregation, 23, 25, 101, 111. See also 28, 41, 65, 80, 111 discrimination; racism Stanford, A. L., 27 Shafefr, C. T., 35, 36–37 Stevenson, John W., 34

154 Index Steward, Theophilus G., xvi, 85; on manager, 27–28; on denominational evolution, 69–70, 71; Genesis Re- merger, 75, 78–79; on emigration to Read, 70; Memoirs of Mrs. Rebecca Africa, 60, 68, 86, 88, 90–95, 98– Steward, 35 99, 105–7; The Genius and Theory of Stewart, W. G., 44 the Methodist Polity, 29–30 strength, bodily, as sign of manhood, Tweed, Thomas A., Retelling U.S. Reli- 43, 45, 46–47, 48 gious History, xvii survival of the fittest, 64, 66–67, 68, 69, 71, 72 Vanderhost, Richard, 77 violence, racial, 23–24, 25, 56–57, 108 Tanner, Benjamin T., xvi; An Apology Virginia, slavery in, 3 for African Methodism, 22, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32–34, 37, 42, 49–50, 79; as Ward, Thomas Marcus Decatur, 25, Christian Recorder editor, xviii, 17, 102; in California, 50–55, 61; pass- 19–24, 26–28, 39, 40, 113; Church ing of, 43 Review started by, 14, 37–38; on Washington, Booker T., xix, 24–26, 66 denominational mergers, 77–78; Wayman, Alexander W.: on denomina- on emigration to Africa, 57, 72–74, tional merger, 77, 79; My Recollec- 85, 88, 91, 93, 94–95; on evolution, tions of African M. E. Ministers, 29, 68–75; on exoduster migration, 35; passing of, 43–44 59–60; on manhood, 43; on mis- Weaver, Elisha, 17, 20–21 sionaries, 47; Outlines of History and Weekly Anglo-African (newspaper, Afri- Government, 34; on retention of term can American), 14 “African,” 63, 67, 81–82; on treat- West, American: African American mi- ment of Chinese immigrants, 57; on gration to, 38–40, 58, 89, 92; AME westward migration, 39, 55–58; on expansion into, xviii–xix, 47, 50–61. William Paul Quinn, 48, 49 See also pioneers, African American; taxonomies of race. See race(s), scien- and individual western states tific classifications of West Indies, African American emigra- Taylor, C. H., 25 tion to, 85 Taylor, Quintard, 59 Whipple, Henry Benjamin, 56 Tenth Episcopal District of the AME whites: roles in emigration to Africa, Church, 78 85–86, 103; treatment of African Texas, AME in, 29, 31, 32, 36, 45–47 Americans by, xiii, 23, 56–57, 59, theology, xiv, 30, 52, 67, 74 97, 100, 108; views on manhood, Thomas, J. R. V., 46 42–43. See also mulattoes; race(s), Thompson, Joseph S., on emigration to relations between; race(s), scientific Africa, 86 classifications of; social Darwinism; Turner, Frederick Jackson, frontier violence, racial thesis of, xviii–xix Wilhitte, H., 46 Turner, Henry McNeal, xi–xii, xvi, 25, Williams, H. Price, 58–59 38; as Christian Recorder business Woodlin, Joshua, 21

Index 155 Woodson, Carter G., 111 Wright, Richard, Jr., 111 writings, historical. See histories; literature; narratives, historical writings, sacred. See authority, Biblical; Bible yellow fever epidemic of 1793 (Phila- delphia), xii, 1, 2, 111 Yeocum, William H., 35

156 Index