African American Religious History: A Documentary Witness

Front Cover
Milton C. Sernett
Duke University Press, 1999 - History - 595 pages
This widely-heralded collection of remarkable documents offers a view of African American religious history from Africa and early America through Reconstruction to the rise of black nationalism, civil rights, and black theology of today. The documents--many of them rare, out-of-print, or difficult to find--include personal narratives, sermons, letters, protest pamphlets, early denominational histories, journalistic accounts, and theological statements. In this volume Olaudah Equiano describes Ibo religion. Lemuel Haynes gives a black Puritan's farewell. Nat Turner confesses. Jarena Lee becomes a female preacher among the African Methodists. Frederick Douglass discusses Christianity and slavery. Isaac Lane preaches among the freedmen. Nannie Helen Burroughs reports on the work of Baptist women. African Methodist bishops deliberate on the Great Migration. Bishop C. H. Mason tells of the Pentecostal experience. Mahalia Jackson recalls the glory of singing at the 1963 March on Washington. Martin Luther King, Jr. writes from the Birmingham jail.
Originally published in 1985, this expanded second edition includes new sources on women, African missions, and the Great Migration. Milton C. Sernett provides a general introduction as well as historical context and comment for each document.
 

Contents

Introduction
1
FROM AFRICA THROUGH EARLY AMERICA
11
OLAUDAH EQUIANO Traditional Ibo Religion and Culture
13
BRYAN EDWARDS African Religions in Colonial Jamaica
20
francis Le Jau Slave Conversion on the Carolina Frontier
25
JUPITER HAMMON Address to the Negroes in the State of New York
34
GEORGE LIELE and Andrew BRYAN Letters from Pioneer Black Baptists
44
LEMUEL HAYNES A Black Puritans Farewell
52
DANIEL ALEXANDER PAYNE Education in the A M E Church
261
AMANDA SMITH The Travail of a Female Colored Evangelist
270
ALEXANDER CRUMMELL The Regeneration of Africa
282
HENRY MCNEAL TURNER Emigration to Africa
289
AFRICAN AMERICAN CATHOLICS The First African American Catholic Congress 1889
296
ELIAS C MORRIS 1899 Presidential Address to the National Baptist Convention
301
Elsie w Mason Bishop C H Mason Church of God in Christ
314
W E B DUBOIS Of the Faith of the Fathers
325

SLAVE RELIGION IN THE ANTEBELLUM SOUTH
61
Visible and Invisible
63
SISTER KELLY Proud of that Ole Time Religion
69
HENRY BIBB Conjuration and Witchcraft
76
JAMES W C PENNINGTON Great Moral Dilemma
81
NAT TURNER Religion and Slave Insurrection
89
FREDERICK DOUGLASS Slaveholding Religion and the Christianity of Christ
102
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON Slave Songs and Spirituals
112
BLACK CHURCHES NORTH OF SLAVERY AND THE FREEDOM STRUGGLE
137
RICHARD ALLEN Life Experience and Gospel Labors
139
CHRISTOPHER RUSH Rise of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church
155
JARENA LEE A Female Preacher among the African Methodists
164
NATHANIEL PAUL African Baptists Celebrate Emancipation in New York State
185
DAVID WALKER Our Wretchedness in Consequence of the Preachers of Religion
193
MARIA STEWART Mrs Stewarts Farewell Address to Her Friends in the City of Boston
202
PETER WILLIAMS To the Citizens of New York
211
CHARLES B RAY Black Churches in New York City 1840
218
JEREMIAH ASHER Protesting the Negro Pew
224
JERMAIN W LOGUEN I Will Not Live a Slave
228
DANIEL ALEXANDER PAYNE Welcome to the Ransomed
232
1865WORLD WAR I
243
ISAAC LANE From Slave to Preacher among the Freedmen
245
LUCIUS H HOLSEY The Colored Methodist Episcopal Church
251
WILLIAM WELLS BROWN Black Religion in the PostReconstruction South
256
REVERDY C RANSOM The Race Problem in a Christian State 1906
337
ROSA YOUNG What Induced Me to Build a School in the Rural District
347
FROM THE GREAT MIGRATION TO WORLD WAR II
357
AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL COUNCIL OF BISHOPS Address on the Great Migration
359
Dear Mary and My dear Sister
364
S MATTIE FISHER AND MRS JESSIE MAPP Social Work at Olivet Baptist Church
368
LACY KIRK WILLIAMS Effects of Urbanization on Religious Life
372
JASPER C CASTON Address to the Suehn Industrial Mission
403
Negro Church
423
ST CLAIR DRAKE AND HORACE R CAYTON The Churches
435
47
453
MILES MARK FISCHER Organized Religion and the Cults
464
RABBI MATTHEW Black Judaism in Harlem
473
WALLACE D MUHAMMAD SelfGovernment in the New World
499
JOSEPH H JACKSON National Baptist Philosophy of Civil Rights
511
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR Letter from Birmingham JailApril
519
5555
536
Hope
548
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF BLACK CHURCHMEN Black Power
555
Where Do
567
A New Agenda
580
Index
589
Copyright

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About the author (1999)

Milton C. Sernett is Professor of African-American studies at Syracuse University. He is the author of several books, including Bound for the Promised Land, also published by Duke University Press.