Alexander Crummell

Alexander Crummell (March 3, 1819, New York City, September 10, 1898, Red Bank, New Jersey) was a pioneering African pastor, professor and African nationalist.

Crummell was born to a former slave, Boston Crummell, and freeborn Charity Hicks. According to Crummell's own account, his paternal grandfather was an ethnic Temne born in Sierra Leone, and was captured into slavery when he was around 13 years old. Both parents were active abolitionists, and the first African American newspaper, Freedom's Journal, was published within their home. Boston Crummell also instilled in his son a sense of unity with those blacks still living in Africa. His parents' influence and these early experiences within the abolitionist movement shaped Crummell’s values, beliefs, and actions throughout the rest of his life. For example, even as a boy in New York, Crummell worked for the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Crummell began his formal education in the African Free School No. 2 and at home with private tutors. He then attended the Canal Street High School. After graduating, Crummell, along with his friend Henry Highland Garnet, attended the Noyes Academy in New Hampshire. When the school was destroyed by a lynch mob, Crummell enrolled in the Oneida Institute. While studying there, Crummell decided to become an Episcopal priest, but was denied admission to the General Theological Seminary because of his race. In spite of such discrimination, Crummell went on to receive holy orders and was ordained in 1842. As he struggled against ambivalence and low church attendance, Crummell took a trip to Philadelphia to petition the bishop for a larger congregation. Bishop Onderdonk replied, "I will receive you into this diocese on one condition: No negro priest can sit in my church convention and no negro church must ask for representation there." Crummell is said to have paused for a moment, and then said, "I will never enter your diocese on such terms."

Career

In 1847, Crummell traveled to England to raise money for his congregation at the Church of the Messiah. While there, Crummell preached, spoke about abolitionism in the United States, and raised almost $2,000. From 1849 to 1853, Crummell studied at Queens' College, Cambridge, sponsored by Benjamin Brodie, William Wilberforce, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, James Anthony Froude, and Thomas Babington Macaulay. He had to take his finals twice to receive his degree.

During his time at Cambridge, Crummell continued to travel around Britain and speak out about slavery and the plight of black people. Crummell formulated his most central belief for the advancement of the African race, Pan-Africanism, during this epoch. Crummell believed that in order to achieve their potential, the African race as a whole, including those in the Americas, the West Indies, and Africa, needed to unify under the banner of race. Racial solidarity, to him, was the solution to slavery, discrimination, and continued attacks on the African race. To that end, Crummell decided to move to Africa to spread his message.

He arrived in Liberia in 1853, at the point in that country's history when Americo-Liberians had begun to govern. Crummell came as a missionary of the American Episcopal Church, with the stated aim of converting the native people. Though previously he had been against colonization, experiences in Liberia changed his mind (see Civilizing mission). Crummell wove colonization into his Pan-African ideology, preaching that "enlightened," or Christianized, Africans in the United States and the West Indies had a duty to come back 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 America and the West Indies would continue to educate the people and run a republican government. Crummell’s grand scheme never came to fruition, with interest in colonization waning and the failure of "enlightened" blacks to perform the duty he had laid out for them. While he did successfully serve as both a pastor and professor in Liberia, Crummell was never able to set up the government and society he dreamed of. In 1873, he returned to the United States.

Once back on American soil, Crummell took on the task of running St. Mary’s Episcopal Mission. He was rector of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Washington, D. C. from 1875 to 1894. Despite prior frustrations, he never stopped working for the racial solidarity he had advocated for so long. Throughout his life, Crummell continued to work for black nationalism, self-help, and separate economic development. He spent the last years of his life setting up the American Negro Academy, which opened in 1897. Alexander Crummell died in Red Bank, New Jersey in 1898.

Influence

Though most of his work never produced the intended results, Crummell was an important voice within the abolition movement and a vocal leader of the Pan-African ideology. Crummell's legacy can be seen not in his personal achievements, but in the influence he exerted on other black nationalists and Pan-Africanists, such as Marcus Garvey, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Du Bois paid tribute to Crummell with a memorable essay entitled "Of Alexander Crummell," collected in his 1903 book, The Souls of Black Folk.

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Alexander Crummell on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

Veneration

Crummell is honored with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on September 10.

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

References

• Wilson Jeremiah Moses‎: "Alexander Crummell." American National Biography Online. 2000. Oxford University Press. 5 Feb 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.
• Wahle, Kathleen O'Mara. "Alexander Crummell: Black Evangelist and Pan-Negro Nationalist." Phylon 29(1968): 388-395.