Radical Minister

I have been on vacation so I have republished old posts for the Short Stories and Historical Ruminations. But the Cranky Man Philosophizes is new and awaits your reading.

Bishop Henry McNeal Turner. Turner was born a free-man in Newberry Courthouse, South Carolina on February 1, 1834 and died on May 5, 1915. The eighty-one years of his life were one of America’s remarkable stories He received his preacher's license in 1853. He became pastor of Israel AME church in Washington D.C. During His ministry in Washington DC Abraham Lincoln commissioned Turner to the office of Chaplain in the Union Army,  This made him the first Black chaplain in the United States Army in 1863. He primarily served the First Regiment of United States Colored Troops, a regiment he helped create and for which he recruited soldiers he traveled throughout the South as an itinerant evangelist, going as far as New Orleans, Louisiana. His religious career was significant because of the many A.M.E. churches he started after the Civil War.   
Turner may be considered as a precursor of the Black Liberation Theology Movement of the sixties and seventies. In his sermons, he often stated that God is a Negro, a phrase meant to show God’s unique concern for Blacks, a concept shocking some even today. In 1885, showing his well-known radicalness, he became the first A.M.E. bishop to ordain a woman, Sarah Ann Hughes, to the office of deacon[1]
          He was equally groundbreaking in his political career. Reverend Turner helped organize Georgia's Republican Party and served in the State's new Constitutional Convention. He was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives to represent Macon, becoming one of the first Black legislators in America. His term was cut short and the revocation of many of the reforms of Reconstruction. In 1868, the vast majority of white legislators decided to expel their African American peers on the grounds that holding public office was a privilege denied Blacks. When the Georgia legislature was voting on whether to seat the newly elected Black legislators, Reverend Turner delivered a speech, “Am I Not a Man,” that is still recognized as one of America’s greatest speeches.  A quote from the speech reads:
 
Mr. Speaker: Before proceeding to argue this question upon its intrinsic merits, I wish the members of this House to understand the position that I take. I hold that I am a member of this body. Therefore, sir, I shall neither fawn nor cringe before any party, nor stoop to beg them for my rights. Some of my colored fellow members, in the course of their remarks, took occasion to appeal to the sympathies of members on the opposite side, and to eulogize their character for magnanimity. It reminds me very much, sir, of slaves begging under the lash. I am here to demand my rights and to hurl thunderbolts at the men who would dare to cross the threshold of my manhood. There is an old aphorism which says, “Fight the devil with fire,” and if I should observe the rule in this instance, I wish gentlemen to understand that it is but fighting them with their own weapon.[2]
 
 
Though his eloquence was unmatched, the Black legislators would eventually be unseated.

         Turner’s significance for Savannah was his appointment to work at the Custom House and served as a pastor of the prestigious St. Philip's AME Church here in Savannah. In 1876 while serving at St. Philip’s he was elected manager of the publishing house of the church. Four years later, in a hard-fought and controversial contest, he won election as the twelfth bishop of the AME Church. Much of his time was spent in Georgia, where he preached at revivals in Macon, Athens and other places helping phenomenal growth in Georgia AME churches. While Bishop He wrote The Genius and Theory of Methodist Polity (1885), a popular guide to Methodist policies and practices.
.          Turner supported Black Nationalism and emigration of Blacks to Africa, a concept that would plant ideas for Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X in the twentieth century. He owned two newspapers: The Voice of Missions (he served as editor from 1893 to 1900) and later The Voice of the People (editor from 1901 to 1904). These newspapers helped him found the International Migration Society, an effort to move Blacks from the United States back to Africa where they could find equality in economics, political, and social spheres. He organized two ships that left the Savannah harbor with a total of 500 or more emigrants, who traveled to Liberia in 1895 and 1896. Turner also served as chair of the board of Morris Brown College from 1896-1908 a historically black university.
           Turner was ahead of his time and his term as pastor of St. Phillip’s Church (see picture below) here and later becoming bishop do the Georgia AME allowed him a platform to challenge the lynchings and the establishing of Jim Crow laws. He was a proud voice crying in the wilderness of Georgia and Reconstruction America in Savannah many years before Black mayors, Black uncontested state representatives, and Black council members could be found. Savannah has a monument in his honor at the former site of St. Phillip’s Church across from the Savannah College of Art and Design’s Art Museum (see below). There is also a portrait of him hanging in the State Capitol.