Taking Pause for Black History Month
By Dr. Kevin HIggins
At the risk of seeming to disagree with Morgan Freeman, who makes an important and valid case that giving only a month to Black History is a meager step, I want to acknowledge and invite us to this important month...and while I agree with Freeman that we should give more than a month, in the interest of not giving less, I am posting some highlights that may especially be of interest in the WCIU world of mission... that is, the contributions to the advance of the world mission movement made by African Americans.
Starting from: Who was really the first Protestant missionary from America?
Most would suggest it was Adoniram Judson and his wife Ann, who left for Burma in 1812. However, we should recognize that George Liele, a freed slave started a church in Jamaica 30 years before the Judsons left New England, as "America's First Missionary." By the way: George Liele was born the same year (1751) that James Madison was fighting to have the Bill of Rights become part of the Constitution.
George Liele
“America’s Frist Missionary”
And then, more....
Lest we think this is a "one off", see below for a lot more (though also an incomplete list, and for transparency, I drew this from Howard Culbertson accessed today at http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/black.htm)
I highlighted in bold one example of special connection to us here....
February 1, 1823 — Betsey Stockton, a young black woman in company with 13 white missionaries, was on board a ship rounding the southern tip of South America. The missionaries were on their way to the Sandwich Islands (present-day Hawaii). They had left New Haven, Connecticut in November, sent out by the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, an agency at the forefront of American Protestantism's burgeoning interest in foreign missions. Betsey Stockton was in the second group of missionaries to go to Hawaii, the first having arrived two years before. Besides Stockton, there were six couples and a single man, plus three Hawaiian men and a Tahitian. The trip took five months by sea with no stopovers. Like others on board, Stockton kept a journal of the voyage and of her first couple of months in Hawaii. She had joined the company partly as a missionary and partly as a servant to one of the couples, Rev. and Mrs. Charles S. Stewart, who were expecting a child. However, Betsey's contract with the American Board did make clear that she was not to be simply a servant but was also to share in the mission's primary work.
February 4, 1786 — John Marrant, a free black from New York City, preached at Green's Harbour, Newfoundland, to from 2 Corinthians 13:5 "a great number of Indians and white people." Marrant ministered cross-culturally, preaching to the American Indians. He eventually carried the gospel to the Cherokee, Creek, Catawar, and Housaw tribes.
February 7, 1930 — In a service commemorating fifty years of Congregational missions in Angola, the Galangue mission choir, under the leadership of Bessie McDowell, introduces a new song. It is Bessie's own Ovimbundu translation of "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing." African-Americans called "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing" — which had been composed in 1900 by the brothers James Weldon and J. Rosamond Johnson — the "Negro National Anthem." On this date, February 7, Henry Curtis McDowell, Bessie's husband, wrote to African-American supporters to say that "Galangue has made the first step, so far as I know, in making 'Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing' the international anthem." The McDowells had gone to Angola in 1917. Also, on this date (February 7) in 1878, Andrew Cartwright from North Carolina organized the first American Methodist Episcopal Zion church on the African continent at Brewerville in Liberia.
February 8, 1847 ‐ African-American Robert Hill had been appointed to accompany some white missionaries to Africa for the purpose of assisting them. On December 17, 1846, they had sailed for the coast of Africa, from Providence, Rhode Island. On this day, February 8, they arrived in Monrovia, Liberia.
February 10, 1819 — Around this time Moses Henkle becomes acquainted with what John Stewart, "Man of Color," was doing to found a mission among the Wyandott Indians at Upper Sandusky, Ohio. Stewart, the first Methodist missionary to the Indians, had been converted in 1815 while drunk in a Methodist meeting in Ohio. Henkle's work with Stewart gave credibility to Stewart's ministry. The resulting publicity led to the organization of a Methodist missionary society in 1819 in New York City.
February 12, 1865 -- Presbyterian minister Henry Garnet becomes the first African American to preach a sermon in the U.S. House of Representatives. Born into slavery in Maryland in 1815, Garnet escaped to New England with his father when he was nine years old. In 1852 Garnet went to Jamaica as a Presbyterian missionary. Ill health forced his return to the U.S. in 1855 where he became very active in the abolitionist movement. On this same date (February 12) in 1847, William Colley was born in Virginia as a slave. In 1875 he was sent as a Southern Baptist Missionary to Lagos and Nigeria.
February 13, 1824 -- One hundred and five black emigrants from the U.S. arrive in Liberia on the ship Cyrus. They were received by Lott Cary and Colin Teague who had arrived three years earlier to begin an era of missionary expansion by American Negro Baptists. They were the first missionaries sent out by a black group, the Richmond African Baptist Missionary Society.
February 14, 1760 -- Birth of Richard Allen, founder in 1816 of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) denomination. By 1886, the Church was the world's largest denomination of African-Americans. It had more than four hundred thousand members, nearly three thousand ordained ministers, more than three thousand church buildings, and had sent missionaries to Haiti, San Domingo, and Africa. In 1893 AME headquarters received a request from a group of Afro-Cubans to send missionaries to their island.
February 15, 1859 -- Death of John Day (born: 1797), Southern Baptist missionary to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Central Africa as well as one of the founding fathers of the country of Liberia. During his thirteen years in Africa, Day estimated he had preached to about 10,000.
February 16, 1922 -- About this date, Jamaican-born Montrose Waite received a letter from the Christian and Missionary Alliance mission board saying they wanted to send him as a missionary to Africa. Waite had won the battle against prejudice and rejection and even friends who urged him to the stay in the U.S., his adopted country. Waite would serve as a missionary in Sierra Leone and Liberia and would be instrumental in the founding of the Afro-American Missionary Crusade (1947) and the Carver Foreign Missions organization.
February 18, 1797 -- Birth of John Day, a "free person of color" who emigrated to Liberia in 1830 as a participant in the American Colonization Movement. In 1836 he became a missionary for the Triennial Convention of the American Baptists. When the Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1845, its foreign mission board appointed Day as superintendent of Liberian missions, a post he held until his death in 1859. Day was also a signer of the Declaration of Independence of Liberia in 1847. In addition to his missionary work, he became Liberia's second Supreme Court Justice. His brother Thomas was a well-known cabinet maker in North Carolina.
February 19, 1829 -- The Boston Recorder newspaper reported the death of African-American missionary Lott Carey in Liberia. He was killed in an explosion during an attempt to repel a French ship in quest of slaves. Of Carey, the newspaper said, "Lott Carey was a worthy and useful Baptist preacher, himself a colored man." Born a slave in Virginia, Carey became a Christian while in Richmond. He purchased his freedom, became a lay exhorter and then a licensed Baptist preacher. He went to Liberia in the early 1820s as one of the first American missionaries to the African continent. Also on this day (February 19) in 1902 Levi Coppin from Maryland made his firt trip to South Africa where he been named as the Episcopal bishop.
February 20, 2000 -- A heart attack claims the life of Marilyn Lewis, volunteer at the United States Center for World Mission who helped lay the groundwork for their African American Mobilization Division. A school teacher in Pasadena, CA, Marilyn often spoke of her desire to serve as a missionary in Brazil, reaching the descendants of those who had come from Africa. Just prior to her unexpected death, Marilyn had written a call-to-action article: "Just look at an African-American church today and you can see testimony to our new era: richly decorated, air conditioned sanctuaries with carpeted floors are now quite common. Many drive to church in the latest model cars. Today, instead of working the tables at restaurants, many African Americans own them. God has blessed us. Now it is time for the African American to bless the world in evangelization efforts. In the past many African Americans cried because they could not become involved in missionary work. But now the doors are wide open and we are without excuse." Thank you Marilyn Lewis for serving alongside us here in Pasadena, we hope to continue to tell your story and carry on your legacy!
February 22, 1880 -- Moses Ladejo Stone was ordained into the ministry in the First Baptist Church, Lagos (originally known as American Baptist Church) by William W. Colley. Colley, an African American, is thought to be the person to have served as an appointed missionary of both a white-administered missionary-sending agency and a black-administered missionary-sending agency. Colley began his missionary career in 1875. That year, he was appointed by the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board to serve in West Africa as assistant to W. J. David, a white missionary from Mississippi. In November of 1879, Colley returned to the United States convinced that many more blacks should be involved in international missions, especially in Africa. As Colley traveled back and forth across the country, he urged black Baptists to take an independent course in mission work and form their own sending agency. Colley was the primary force in the founding of the Baptist Foreign Mission Convention (BFMC) in 1880.
February 23, 1814 -- The foundation of the Baptist Mission in Jamaica had been laid by a few black and "coloured" men who had gone to the island from the U.S.A. in 1782. Some of them had been slaves in the United States who had been granted liberty by their owners. Some were Christians when they arrived in Jamaica, while others had been converted after their arrival. The most noted were George Lisle (the first ordained black in America), George Lewis, George Gibb and Moses Baker. It was chiefly through the urging of Moses Baker that the English Baptist Missionary Society began missionary work in Jamaica. The first missionary sent from England in response to Baker's pleas was John Rowe, who landed at Montego Bay, February 23, 1814.
February 24, 1840 -- Evangelist George Brown, who established the Heddington mission station in Liberia, reports organizing a church among the Pessah people as a result of converting two tribal leaders -- Baopgo and Peter -- along with 34 of their people after a "God-palaver."
February 25, 1890 -- By this time William Sheppard, who has been called the "Black Livingstone," was on his way to the Congo on the steamship Adriatic as a Presbyterian missionary. Sheppard was sailing with white missionary Sam Lapsley.
February 29, 1581 -- The birth of Peter Claver in 1581 in Spain. Claver became known as "Slave of the Blacks" and "Slave of the Slaves." A farmer's son from Verdu in Catalonia, Claver studied at the University of Barcelona. At age 20, he became a Jesuit priest. Influenced by Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez, Claver went to South America as a missionary. He ministered to African slaves physically and spiritually when they arrived in Cartegena, Colombia. It is estimated by some that Claver converted 300,000 African slaves to Christianity. For 40 years he worked for humane treatment on the plantations. Claver organized charitable societies among the Spanish in America similar to those organized in Europe by Vincent de Paul. Claver said of the slaves, "We must speak to them with our hands by giving before we try to speak to them with our lips." Peter Claver died on September 8, 1654 at Cartegena, Colombia of natural causes.
Such a rich history is worth pausing to appreciate. It is worth soaking in, celebrating, and giving thanks to God. My prayer is that we would do just that.
Pause.
Soak.
Celebrate.
Thank.
And, let us look forward to the fact that more is ahead.