Alexander Crummell
Alexander Crummell | |
---|---|
Born | New York City, New York, U.S. | March 3, 1819
Died | September 10, 1898 Red Bank, New Jersey, U.S. | (aged 79)
Education | Noyes Academy Oneida Institute Queens' College, Cambridge |
Occupation(s) | Minister, Professor |
Personal | |
Religion | Episcopal |
Alexander Crummell (March 3, 1819 – September 10, 1898) was an American minister and academic. Ordained as an
In 1853, Crummell moved to Liberia, where he worked to convert Africans to Christianity and educate them, as well as to persuade African-American colonists of his ideas. He wanted to attract American Blacks to Africa on a civilizing mission. Crummell lived and worked for 20 years in Liberia and appealed to American Blacks to join him, but did not gather wide support for his ideas.
After returning to the United States in 1872, Crummell was called to St. Mary's Episcopal Mission in Washington, DC. In 1875, he and his congregation founded St. Luke's Episcopal Church, the first independent Black Episcopal church in the city. Crummell served as rector there until his retirement in 1894.
Early life and education
Crummell was born in 1819 in
Crummell began his formal education in the African Free School No. 2 and at home with private tutors. Other African-American men who became active in the abolitionist movement, such as James McCune Smith (a pioneering doctor) and Henry Highland Garnet, also graduated from this school. Crummell attended the Canal Street High School. After graduating, Crummell and his friend Garnet attended the new Noyes Academy in New Hampshire. However, a mob opposed to Blacks attacked and destroyed the school. Crummell next enrolled in the Oneida Institute in central New York, a hotbed of abolitionism. While there, Crummell decided to become an Episcopal priest. His prominence as a young intellectual earned him a spot as keynote speaker at the anti-slavery New York State Convention of Negroes when it met in Albany in 1840.[2]
Denied admission to the
Career
Studies and lectures in England
In 1847, Crummell traveled to
At his graduation Crummell endured a moment of racist heckling until another student,
A pale slim undergraduate [...] shouted in a voice which re-echoed through the building, "Shame, shame! Three groans for you, Sir!" and immediately afterwards, "Three cheers for Crummell!" This was taken up in all directions [...] and the original offender had to stoop down to hide himself from the storm of groans and hisses that broke out all around him.[11]
While in Cambridge, Crummell hosted the abolitionist lecturer
In Liberia
Crummell arrived in
His name appears on an 1859 document signed by citizens of the
Crummell began to preach that "enlightened," or Christianized, ethnic Africans in the United States and the West Indies had a duty to go to Africa. There, they would help civilize and Christianize the continent. When enough native Africans had been converted, they would take over converting the rest of the population, while those from the western hemisphere would work to educate the people and run a republican government. Crummell influenced Liberian intellectual and religious life, as preacher, prophet, social analyst, and educationist, proclaiming a special place for Africa in the history of redemption, as it had God-given moral and religious potential.[13] But Crummell never realized his grand scheme. Most American Blacks were more interested in gaining equal rights in the United States than going to colonize or convert Africans. While Crummell successfully served as both a pastor and professor in Liberia, he could not create the society he envisioned. In 1873, fearing his life was in danger from the Americo-Liberian ascendancy, Crummell returned to the United States.[13]
Return to the United States
He was called as pastor for St. Mary's Episcopal Mission in Washington, DC, in the Foggy Bottom area. It was then a predominately African-American, working-class neighborhood. In 1875, he and his congregation founded St. Luke's Episcopal Church, the first independent Black Episcopal church in the city. They raised funds to construct a new church on upper 15th Street, N.W., in the Columbia Heights area, beginning in 1876, and celebrated Thanksgiving in 1879 in it. Crummell served as rector at St. Luke's until his retirement in 1894. The church was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976.[14] Crummell taught at Howard University from 1895 to 1897.[13]
Despite frustrations, Crummell never stopped working for the racial solidarity he had advocated for so long. Throughout his life, Crummell worked for Black nationalism, self-help, and separate economic development. He spent the last years of his life founding the American Negro Academy, the first organization to support African-American scholars, which opened in 1897 in Washington, DC.[15] Alexander Crummell died in Red Bank, New Jersey, in 1898.
Influence
Crummell was an important voice within the abolition movement and a leader of the Pan-African ideology. Crummell's legacy can be seen not only in his personal achievements, but also in the influence he exerted on other Black nationalists and
In 2002, the scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Alexander Crummell on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.[16]
Legacy and honors
Crummell's private papers are held by the
In 2021,
On April 24, 2023, Yale University awarded M.A Privatim degrees to Crummell along with the first known Black student at Yale, Rev. James W.C. Pennington, acknowledging the discrimination they faced while students at the university.[19]
Veneration
Crummell is honored with a
Writings
- Africa and America: addresses and discourses at the Internet Archive
- Civilization the Primal Need of the Race The American Negro Academy. Occasional Paper No. 3 at the Internet Archive
- A defence of the negro race in America from the assaults and charges of Rev. J. L. Tucker, D. D., of Jackson, Miss., in his paper before the "Church Congress" of 1882, on "The relations of the church to the colored race." Prepared and published at request of the colored clergy of the Prot. Epis. Church at the Internet Archive
- The Black woman of the South at the Internet Archive
- Charitable institutions in colored churches at the Internet Archive
- The future of Africa: being addresses, sermons, etc., etc., delivered in the Republic of Liberia
- The greatness of Christ : and other sermons at the Internet Archive
- Liberia, the land of promise to free colored men at the Internet Archive
- Look within at the Internet Archive
- The man: the hero: the Christian! : A eulogy on the life and character of Thomas Clarkson: delivered in the city of New-York; Dec. 1846 at the Internet Archive
- The race-problem in America at the Internet Archive
- The relations and duties of free colored men in America to Africa. A letter to Charles B. Dunbar .. at the Internet Archive
- The shades and the lights of a fifty years' ministry: jubilate : a sermon by Alex. Crummell, rector, and a presentation address by Mrs. A.J. Cooper at the Internet Archive
See also
- National Afro-American League, set up in 1890 and based on racial solidarity and self-help
- Black separatism, as distinguished from Black nationalism
Notes
- ^ Moses (1988), p. 11.
- ^ Thompson, Stephen, "Alexander Crummell", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).
- ISBN 978-1484007945.
- ^ "Honoring the Rev. James W. C. Pennington and the Rev. Alexander Crummell". Office of the President. 2023-04-22. Retrieved 2023-05-17.
- – via Taylor & Francis.
- ^ Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk, Modern Library Edition: New York/Toronto p. 226.
- ^ "Crummell, Alexander (CRML849A)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ^ Twigg, John, A History of Queens' College, Cambridge, 1448-1986 (1987), pp. 268-71.
- ^ Bates, Stephen (October 19, 2011). "Alexander Crummell, Cambridge's first Black graduate". The Guardian. Retrieved December 20, 2012.
- ^ "Cambridge University's 'first' Black student pioneer". BBC News. 20 October 2011. Retrieved 24 September 2022.
- ^ a b John Twigg, "Alexander Crummell", The Record, 1986, pp.9–10.
- OCLC 746972358.
- ^ a b c Anderson, Gerald H. (1998). Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions. Grand Rapids, Michigan: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. Archived from the original on 2012-10-10. Retrieved 2012-12-20.
- ^ "St. Luke's Episcopal Church". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. Archived from the original on October 11, 2012. Retrieved September 4, 2009.
- ^ a b "The Reverend Alexander Crummell: 1819-1898". The Church Awakens: African-Americans and the Struggle for Justice. Archives of the Episcopal Church. Retrieved December 20, 2012.
- ISBN 1-57392-963-8.
- ^ Alexander Crummell School Archived September 29, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, NRHP.
- ^ "The Alexander Crummell Scholarships". Queens' College, Cambridge. Retrieved 24 September 2022.
- ^ Mongkol, Chatwan (2023-04-28). "First known Black student at Yale gets his degree, nearly 200 years later". New Haven Register. Retrieved 2023-05-17.
- ^ "Lessons Appointed for use on the Feast of Alexander Crummell".
References
- Wilson Jeremiah Moses: "Alexander Crummell". American National Biography Online. 2000. Oxford University Press. 5 February 2008.
- Wilson Jeremiah Moses: Alexander Crummell: A Study of Civilization and Discontent. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
- Rigsby, Gregory, U.. Alexander Crummell: Pioneer in the Nineteenth-Century Pan-African Thought. New York: Greenwood Press, 1987.
- Moss, Alfred A. The American Negro Academy: Voice of the Talented Tenth. Louisiana State University Press, 1981.
- Wahle, Kathleen O'Mara. "Alexander Crummell: Black Evangelist and Pan-Negro Nationalist." Phylon 29(1968): 388–395.
External links
- Media related to Alexander Crummell at Wikimedia Commons
- Works by or about Alexander Crummell at Wikisource
- Works by Alexander Crummell at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Alexander Crummell at Internet Archive
- Works by Alexander Crummell at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Works by Alexander Crummell at Open Library