Abraham Lincoln DeMond
Abraham Lincoln DeMond (June 6, 1867 – January 19, 1936) was an American minister and advocate for
He was the first black graduate of the State
Early life
Born in 1867 in Covert, Seneca County, New York, DeMond was the son of Quam and Phebe (Cuffe Darrow) DeMond. After graduating from Howard University Seminary, he was called to pastorates in New Orleans, Charleston, South Carolina, Montgomery, Alabama and Memphis, Tennessee. He married Lula Watkins Patterson, a Selma University graduate and music teacher. They had five children, all born between 1902 and 1908: teacher Ruth DeMond Brooks, Albert Laurence DeMond, William Arthur DeMond, Charles Gordon DeMond, and Marguerite Lula DeMond (wife of journalist John P. Davis).
Pastoral life
The Negro Element in American Life was A. L. DeMond's most important contribution to history. He delivered his oration to members of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, on January 1, 1900.
The Dexter Avenue Baptist Church later in the early 1960s became known as the church from which Dr.
In his speech, DeMond reviews African-American history as a map for the American nation's future. He identifies the
The first of January was a day of celebration for African Americans who commemorated the day that President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. The Emancipation Proclamation Association sponsored publishing DeMond's speech as a pamphlet. DeMond emphasizes that African Americans are fully American, not African, and therefore fully deserving of all the rights of citizens. DeMond describes the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation as:
"two great patriotic, wise and humane state papers…Both were born in days of doubt and darkness. Both were the outcome of injustice overleaping the bounds of right and reason. The one was essential to the fulfilling of the other. Without the Declaration of Independence the nation could not have been born; without the Emancipation Proclamation it could not have lived."
Buxton, Iowa
DeMond was a minister in
At a time when both southern and northern blacks were disadvantaged in different ways, blacks in Buxton enjoyed steady employment, above-average wages, decent housing, and minimal discrimination. For such reasons, Buxton was commonly known as "the black man's utopia in Iowa."[2]
References
- ^ Buxton, Iowa (1895-1927). BlackPast.org.
- ^ a b Dorothy Schweider, Joseph Hraba, Elmer Schwieder, Buxton: A Black Utopia in the Heartland, University Of Iowa Press, 2003.
External links
- "The Negro Element in American Life," an oration delivered by Rev. A. L. DeMond in the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, January 1, 1900. African American Perspectives, 1818–1907, Library of Congress -American Memory.
- The Antislavery Literature Project
- Library of Congress Rare Books and Special Collections. African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A.P.Murray Collection, 1818–1907.
- The Negro Element in American life: an oration: delivered by Rev. A. L. DeMond, in the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, Jan. 1, 1900, Project Gutenberg