Crummell, Alexander (1819-1898)

African American Episcopal missionary to Liberia

Crummell was born in New York of free black ancestry. He had a good general education, and though racial prejudice denied him entrance to General Theological Seminary, he was ordained in the Episcopal Church (deacon, 1842; priest, 1844). Fund-raising in England for his new black congregation in New York brought him a place at Queens College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1853. He then went as a Protestant Episcopal missionary to Liberia, taking citizenship and combining pastoral work with the headship of schools in Monrovia and in Maryland county. From 1862 to 1866 he was professor of philosophy and English at Liberia College, a stormy period; and from 1867 to 1873, he lived at the Caldwell settlement, where he built a church and school, established an educational outreach for indigenous people, and served two other mission stations. Crummell influenced Liberian intellectual and religious life as preacher, prophet, social analyst, and educationalist, proclaiming a special place for Africa, with its God-given moral and religious potential, in the history of redemption. He wanted Liberia to be marked by democratic institutions, flourishing arts and letters, commerce, and law, and to that end Christian teaching was necessary. His enthusiasms included agricultural development, opening the interior to evangelization and trade, women’s education, and public libraries. He helped reconstruct the Protestant Episcopal Mission as a Liberian church. In his vision, African Americans had a particular responsibility for Africa, but as a “pure black” (as he frequently asserted), he sought to identify with the interests of the indigenous population, opposing government attempts to concentrate power and resources in the mulatto community. In 1873, fearing his life was in danger from the mulatto ascendancy, he returned to the United States. He was rector of St. Luke’s, Washington, D.C., until 1894 and taught at Howard University from 1895 to 1897. He continued his work for African American Christian scholarship and African redemption and founded the American Negro Academy in 1897.

Andrew F. Walls, “Crummell, Alexander,” in Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, ed. Gerald H. Anderson (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 1998), 161-2.

This article is reprinted from Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, Macmillan Reference USA, copyright © 1998 Gerald H. Anderson, by permission of Macmillan Reference USA, New York, NY. All rights reserved.

Bibliography

Digital Texts

Crummell, Alexander. The Man: The Hero: The Christian! A Eulogy of the Life and Character of Thomas Clarkson: Delivered in the City of New-York, December, 1846. New York: Egbert, Hovey & King, 1847.

_____. The Duty of a Rising Christian State to Contribute to the World’s Well-being and Civilization, and the Means by Which it May Perform the Same: The Annual Oration before the Common Council and the Citizens of Monrovia, Liberia–July 26, 1855; being the Day of National Independence. London: Wertheim & Macintosh, 1856; [Massachusetts]: Massachusetts Colonization Society; 1857 [printing]).

_____. “Address of Rev. Alexander Crummell at the Anniversary Meeting of the Massachusetts Colonization Society, May 29th, 1861.” In Edward Wilmot Blyden and Alexander Crummell, Liberia, The Land of Promise to Free Colored Men, 19-28. Washington, D.C.: American Colonization Society, 1861.

_____. The Relations and Duties of Free Colored Men in America to Africa: A Letter to Charles B. Dunbar, M.D., Esq., of New York City. Hartford: Lockwood and Company, 1861.

_____. The Future of Africa: Being Addresses, Sermons, Etc., Etc., Delivered in the Republic of Liberia. New York: Charles Scribner, 1862.

_____. A Defense 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 the Request of the Colored Clergy of the Prot. Epis. Church. Washington, D.C.: Judd & Dettweiler, 1883.

_____. “The Black Woman of the South.” n.p.: n.p., [1883?]. Published extract from the address, “Needs and Neglects of the Black Woman of the South.” Editors say it includes a plea for “woman’s work for woman.”

_____. Africa and America: Addresses and Discourses. Springfield, MA: Willey & Co., 1891.

Haynes, Elizabeth Ross. Unsung Heroes. New York: Du Bois and Dill Publishers, 1921.

Primary

Crummell’s sermons have been preserved in the collections of the Schomburg Research Center of the New York Public Library and are available on microfilm. His letters to the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society are in the Archives of the Episcopal Church in Austin, TX, and a copy is at Cuttington University College in Liberia. The Library of Congress has microfilmed Crummell’s letters to the American Colonization Society, and a collection of his letters is in the Jay Family Papers at Columbia University.

_____. “The English Language in Liberia” [1861]. In Pamphlets of Protest: An Anthology of Early African-American Protest Literature, 1790-1860. New York: Routledge, 2001.

_____. The Relations and Duties of Free Colored Men in America to Africa: A Letter to Charles B. Dunbar, M.D., Esq., of New York City. Hartford: Lockwood and Company, 1861.

_____. The Future of Africa: Being Addresses, Sermons, Etc., Etc., Delivered in the Republic of Liberia. New York; New York: Charles Scribner; Negro University Press, 1862; 1969.

_____. The Greatness of Christ and Other Sermons. n.p.: n.p., 1882.

_____. Africa and America: Addresses and Discourses. Springfield, MA: Willey & Co., 1891.

__________. Alexander Crummell, 1844-1894: The Shades and Lights of a 50 Years’ Ministry. n.p.: n.p., 1894.

_____. “The Destined Superiority of the Negro, A Thanksgiving Discourse.” In Moral Evil and Redemptive Suffering: A History of Theodicy in African American Religious Thought. Edited by Anthony B. Pinn. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2002.

Secondary

Adeleke, Tende. UnAfrican Americans: Nineteenth-Century Black Nationalists and the Civilizing Mission. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1998.

Akpan, M. B. “Alexander Crummell and His African ‘Race Work’: An Assessment of His Contribution to Liberia to Africa’s Redemption.” In Black Apostles at Home and Abroad: Afro-Americans and the Christian Mission from the Revolution to Reconstruction. Edited by D. W. Wills and R. Newman, 283-310. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982.

Asanti, Molefi Kete. 100 Greatest African Americans: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Amherst, NY. Prometheus Books, 2002.

Ejofodomi, Luckson. “The Missionary Career of Alexander Crummell in Liberia, 1853-1877.” Ph.D. diss. Boston University, 1974.

Haynes, Elizabeth Ross. Unsung Heroes. New York: Du Bois and Dill Publishers, 1921.

Litwack, Leon F. and August Meier. Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 1988.

Moses, Wilson J. Alexander Crummell: A Study of Civilization and Discontent. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

_____. Creative Conflict in African American Thought: Fredrick Douglass, Alexander Crummell, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Marcus Garvey. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Oldfield, John R. Alexander Crummell (1819-1898) and the Creation of an African-American Church in Liberia. 1990.

_____ (ed.). Civilization and Black Progress: Selected Writings of Alexander Crummell on the South. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995.

Rigsby, Gregory U. Alexander Crummell: A Pioneer in Nineteenth-Century Pan-Africa Thought. New York: Greenwood Press, 1987.

Scruggs, O. M. “‘We the Children of Africa in this Land’: Alexander Crummell.” In Africa and the Afro-American Experience. Edited by L. A. Williams. 1977.

Woodson, Carter Godwin. The History of the Negro Church. Washington, D.C.: The Associated Publishers, c1921.

Links

“Alexander Crummell.” A biographical essay with an image of a sketched portrait of a middle-aged Crummell.

“Alexander Crummell: ‘The Attitude of the American Mind Toward the Negro Intellect’ (1898).” A brief biographical essay introduces this extract at BlackPast.org:

Moses, Wilson J. “Alexander Crummell.” American National Biography Online. February, 2000.

Thompson, Stephen. “Alexander Crummell.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta.

Portrait

Public domain: www.blackpast.org