NEWS: African Union and CARICOM Members Seek Reparations

Recent reporting has highlighted a joint effort by member nations of the African Union and member nations of the Caribbean organization CARICOM to hold European nations accountable for "historical mass crimes" related to slavery. A recent summit meeting in Accra, Ghana resulted in statements calling for formal apologies from European nations that were involved with enslavement and financial reparations to address the ongoing negative effects of the Atlantic slave trade. The delegates of the seventy-five nations representing the African Union and CARICOM were reportedly buoyed by recent announcements from the Church of England designating £100 million in reparations funding for its involvement in enslavement. The full Church of England report is available here. Some estimates suggest that the total owed by Britain alone to Caribbean nations for the effects of its involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade could amount to over £18 trillion.

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

The Rt. Rev. Samuel Seabury (1729-1796) - First American Bishop, New Jersey Enslaver

Samuel Seabury (Ralph Earl artist QS:P170,Q1350959, 
Ralph Earl - Samuel Seabury - NPG.84.171 - National Portrait Gallery,
marked as public domain, more details on Wikimedia Commons)

Today is the feast day for the Right Rev. Samuel Seabury, best known as the first consecrated bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States. He was elected bishop of Connecticut by ten clergy in 1783 and consecrated in Scotland in 1784. He was then formally elected by the Connecticut convocation in 1785. What is somewhat less well known is that he was an enslaver, and he became an enslaver during his time as a priest in New Jersey before the Revolutionary War. 
        The first parish Seabury served following his ordination was Christ Church, New Brunswick where he was rector from 1754 to 1757. After serving in New Jersey he held various appointments in New York State, and after the Revolutionary War, moved to Connecticut, where he had grown up and where his father had been a priest.
        His father had been an enslaver[1] when Seabury was growing up, so Seabury was likely already comfortable with the institution by the time he was an adult. But Seabury himself did not come to own any slaves until his marriage to Mary Hicks in his late-twenties, in 1756 while he was the rector of Christ Church, New Brunswick, New Jersey.[2] Many different priests and wealthy parishioners at Christ Church had owned slaves during the colonial era.[3] Hicks' family (also an enslaving family of origin like Seabury's) gave a dowry of one slave and a promise of more upon the marriage, than a number of additional enslaved persons subsequently. Throughout the rest of his career Seabury would remain an enslaver, still keeping enslaved persons until his death.[4]

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

[1] Seabury's father's will lists ownership of an enslaved "mulatto" man named Newport. See New York Historical Society, Abstract of Wills on File in the Surrogate's Office, City of New York, Vol. VI, 1760-1766 (New York: 1898), 347-348.
[2] See, for instance, Bruce Steiner, Samuel Seabury, 1729-1796: A Study in the High Church Tradition (Oberlin: Ohio University Press, 1971), 65ff.

[3] See Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, ed. "The History of Slavery at Christ Church, New Brunswick," Diocese of New Jersey Racial Justice Review (March 27, 2023).

[4] Seabury's will lists two enslaved persons: Nell and Rose (see the scanned manuscript made available by the Connecticut State Library). The 1790 census data for New London County, Connecticut lists three enslaved persons in the household (Department of Commerce and Labor, Bureau of the Census, The First Census of the United States, 1790: Connecticut [Washington: Government Printing Office, 1908], 129). For additional information see also "Samuel Seabury (1729-1796)" which is part of the "Trinity and Slavery" collection of the Primus Project hosted by Trinity College.

NEWS: Update on Diocese of NJ Racial Justice Review in Good News in the Garden State

Many thanks to Canon Steve Welch, the editor of Good News in the Garden State for publishing an update on the ongoing work of the Diocese of New Jersey Racial Justice Review! The article, entitled "Reparations Commission Researching History of Slavery and Racism in the Diocese" summarizes the findings and work to this point, explains how this is actually good news, and provides some possibilities for how congregations can engage in research and support of the initiative. Onward!

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

VIDEO: NJISJ History of Slavery in New Jersey Committee, Public Session #1 Recording

The New Jersey Institute for Social Justice (NJISJ) has posted video from the first public session of the History of Slavery in New Jersey Committee of the New Jersey Reparations Council which was held on September 26, 2023. The session was the first of nine planned public sessions. There were a number of activists and scholars among the panelists including Elaine Buck, Taja-Nia Henderson, Marisa Fuentes, Beverly Mills, and Leslie Alexander. Viewing is worth your time.

NEWS: Afterlives of Slavery Conference at Howard University

The recently completed Afterlives of Slavery Conference at Howard University in Washington, D.C. was a great success. It included three days of excellent papers on the theme “The Troubles I’ve Seen: Religious Dimensions of Slavery and Its Afterlives.” The conference was sponsored by Howard University, Princeton Theological Seminary, the National Museum and African American History and Culture, and the University of Liberia, Monrovia. A book is planned to publish the papers from the conference (more details to come) so be on the lookout for the contributions from members of the Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey! See below for more information on papers and presenters.

 

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.

Reparations Commission Research Historian

Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

 

 

Afterlives of Slavery Conference Presenters and Speakers (October 19-21, 2023)

 

Day 1: Thursday, October 19, 2023

 

Welcome and Greetings: Afe Adogame

 

Keynote Address #1: Daina Ramey Berry, University of California, Santa Barbara, “‘A Spirit too Bold and Daring for a Slave’: Lineage, Legacy, and Legitimizing History.” 

 

Panel #1: Institutional Presidents (Gordon Mikoski presiding).

Jonathan Walton, President, Princeton Theological Seminary, USA 

Julius Nelson, President, University of Liberia, Liberia 

Erika Gault, Director of the Center for the Study of African American Religious Life, Smithsonian Museum for African American History and Culture, USA 

Romelle Horton, President, Cuttington University, Liberia 

Ben Vinson III, President, Howard University, USA 

 

Paper Session #1A: Regions: Africa I

Okelloh Ogera (Kenya): “The Continuing Legacy of ‘Enslavement’: An Appraisal of the Experiences of the Frere Town Freed Slaves Community.” 

Clement Donard Fumbo (Tanzania): “Consequences of enslavements for contemporary life in Tanzania and transnationally.” 

Telesia Musili (Kenya): “Sex for Work: Unearthing Colonial Legacies of Slavery in Kericho Tea Farms in Kenya.” 

Olufemi Akanji Olaleye (Nigeria): “Sounding Politics, Religions, and Enslavement of Cultural Oath-Taking Systems in Southwest Nigeria: 2015-2022.” 

 

Paper Session #1B: Theological Issues

Matthew Elia (Venezuela/USA): “The Origins of the Christian Master: Augustine in the Afterlife of Slavery.” 

Lawrence A. Whitney (USA): “Ain’t I Elect? – Protestant Logic from Slavery through Intersectionality.” 

David Latimore (USA): “The Troubles I’ve Seen: Religious and Economic Dimensions of Slavery & Its Afterlives.” 

Jolyon G. Pruszinski (USA): “Lex Orandi, Lex Servitutis: Slavery as Valorized in the Language of the Book of Common Prayer.” 

 

Paper Session #1C: The Arts I (Narrative)

Jordan Burton (USA): “Non-Agency in the Anti-Black State: A Comparative Study of Method.” 

David Childs (USA): “All God's Chillun Got Wings: The Theological and Sociological Meaning and Origin of the Myth of the Flying African.” 

Aaron C. Waldon (Cuba): “A Strange Fruit: A Theopoetics of Colonization & Chattel Slavery in Amerika.” 

Andre LePelle Keitt (USA): “Bringing the Freedom Trail to Life, For Real!” 

 

 

Day 2: Friday, October 20, 2023

 

Keynote Address #2: Yolanda Pierce, Vanderbilt Divinity School “Laying on of Hands: Slavery’s Sins & Divine Healing. 

 

Panel #2: “Christian Nationalism and Self-Determination in African Americans’ Participation in the African Missions Movement (1820-1925)” (William Allen presiding).

Kimberly Hill (USA), University of Texas at Dallas 

Jenny McGill (USA), Indiana Wesleyan University 

Andrew N. Wegmann (USA), Delta State University 

Ben Wright (USA), University of Texas at Dallas 

Nemata Blyden (USA), George Washington University 

 

Paper Session #2D: Regions: Africa II

William E. Allen (Liberia): “The future is not known: The Rise of Liberia's Congoes from Enslaved and Wardship to Power.” 

Ignatius Afe Oshiomogwe (Nigeria/USA): “The Afterlives of Slavery and the Religious Ethics of the Metal Peace Tree on Providence Island, Monrovia, Liberia.” 

Francis Ethelbert Kwabena (Ghana/Finland): “Afterlives of Slavery and the Re-Emergence of Memory, Culture and Religion in Ghana and Beyond.” 

Grace Umezurike (Nigeria): “Ohu and Osu Slavery System: It’s Nature, Dynamics, and Impact on the Contemporary Igbo Society.” 

Samaila Wada Ayuba (Nigeria/USA): “The Nexus Between Formerly Enslaved Persons, Identity Negotiation and the Making of Hausa Christianity in Northern Nigeria.” 

 

Paper Session #2E: Education Issues

Monique Jones (USA): “Sin, Shame, and the Anti-DEI Movement in Parochial Schools.” 

Jairus Hallums (USA): “On the Come Up in Massa’s House: Twenty-First Century Black Educational Leader Sensemaking Under the White Gaze.” 

Taulby H. Edmondson (USA): “Knights of the Lost Cause: Neo- Confederate Fraternities and the Christian Myths of the Lost Cause on Campus.” 

Anthony Harris (USA): “The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave?” 

 

Paper Session #2F: Historical Perspectives

David Childs (USA): “Jordan River I’m Bound to Cross: Researching Slavery and Religion in Northern Kentucky and Ohio.” 

Ken Miyagi (Japan/USA): “Religious Discursive Resistance: Theodore Sedgwick Wright’s Anti-Colonization Thought.” 

Kimberly Akano (Nigeria/USA): “Learning Africa: African Americans, Religious Education, and the Pursuit of Freedom.” 

David Daniels III (USA): “Before Slave Religion: The Theological Contours of Kongolese-American Christianity, 1619-1750.” 

 

Panel Discussion #3: Pastors Roundtable (David Latimore presiding).

Rev. Kenneth Rioland, Paramount Baptist Church, Washington D.C. 

Rev. William Lamar, Metropolitan AME Church, Washington D.C. 

Rev. John H. Molina-Moore, National Capitol Presbytery, Rockville, MD. 

 

Day 3: Saturday, October 21, 2023

 

Keynote Address #3: Jacob Olupona, Harvard University “The Afterlife of Slavery in Africa: Unforeseen Religious and Sociocultural Consequences.” 

 

Paper Session #3G: Regions: Caribbean, the Americas, and Europe

Jorge William Falcão Junior (Brazil): “What to do after abolition? A Presbyterian Missionary's Perspectives on Brazil and the United States of America.” 

Eloy Alfaro (Ecuador): “Reasons to prefer Semi slavery. Afro- descendants who stayed on the San José - Ecuador country state, after the manumission 1850–1970.” 

Selina Stone(Jamaican/Britain): “From Mis-Education to Re-Formation: Colonialism, Slavery and The Task of Decolonising Theological Education in Britain.” 

Binu Varghese (India/USA): “Roots and Routes of discontent: Indian Ocean Slave trade and Indian Americans.” 

 

Paper Session #3H: Theological Issues II

Isaac Sekyi Nana Mensah (Ghana/USA): “‘Slave Cost not a little’: Racial Baptism on Jesuit Slave Plantations in Maryland.” 

Yanan Rahim Navarez Melo (Philippines/USA): “Black Body and Blood: The Eucharistic Imagination of Racial Capitalism.” 

Donna J. Sloan (USA): “The Religious/Spiritual Journey of Africans in America.” 

Itohan M. Idumwonyi (Nigeria/USA): “Sexploitation of Women in Slavery and Women in African Pentecostal Church in the United States.” 

 

Paper Session #3I: The Arts II

Olukayode Odujobi (Nigeria): “From Oral Tradition to Historical National Treasure: Preservation and Documentation of Negro Spirituals from 1867 to 2007.” 

Emily Pruszinski (USA): “Ethical Challenges for the Black Christ in White Church Iconography: Problematizing Jeannine Baker-Fletcher's ‘Ghostly Grace.’” 

Janice A. McLean-Farrell (Jamaica/USA): “Singing Songs of Freedom to exorcise the demons: Interrogating the relationship between Caribbean Christianity, U.S. Hegemony and the Status Quo.” 

Anna Stamborski (USA): “Who Defines? Who Decides?: How Black Congregants Define ‘Antiracism’ and Role of the Black Church in Antiracist Efforts” 

 

Paper Session #3J: Contemporary Issues

Richard X, III (USA): “‘It look like a Slave Ship in There’: Rikers Island as the Afterlife of Slavery.” 

Evan Dietrich Gosen (USA): “Punishment Obsession: The American Criminal Legal System as a Vestige of Enslavement Ideology.” 

Nosizwe Breaux-Abdur-Rahman: “Race, Culture and Islam: Indigenous African American Muslim and Non-Indigenous Muslim Relationships.” 

Michael Brandon McCormack (USA): “Original Sin or Exotic Notions? Mitch McConnell, 1619, and the Afterlives of Slavery.” 

 

Panel Discussion #4: “Whitewashing Ancient Slavery and its Modern Legacies” (Frederick Ware presiding).

Chance Bonar, Tufts University 

Mónica Rey, Boston University 

Ella Karev, Mónica Rey 

Ericka Dunbar, Baylor University 

Kevin Burell, Wilfrid Laurier University 

 

End of Program

Support for the American Colonization Society (ACS) in the Diocese of New Jersey

Figure 1: American Colonization Society member certificate (color, Rev. S. R. Ely),
marked as public domain, more details on Wikimedia Commons

Founded in 1816 at the impetus of New Jersey native Rev. Robert Finley and friends, the American Colonization Society (ACS) had the stated goal of ridding the United States of free Black people. At times over the history of the organization their rhetoric appeared benevolent, and they worked very hard to present themselves as a charitable organization. But this charitable rhetoric cloaked a conviction that free American Blacks could not and should not live alongside Whites. In some members of the Society this conviction resulted from a belief in the inherent inferiority of Black people. For others the conviction resulted from a fear of violence or economic competition from free Black people. And for still others, the conviction that free Blacks should not live alongside Whites derived from a strong desire to maintain a smoothly functioning slave society, which the advocacy of free Blacks hampered.[1] Suffice to say, the organization was based entirely on racist principles, even though at times (usually in the north) it presented itself as supportive of abolition.

            That the organization was racist, in spite of its protestations that it only had the best interests of African-Americans at heart, can be seen from the near universal rejection of its mission and aims by African-Americans at the time, chronicled in Ousmane K. Power-Greene’s book Against Wind and Tide: The African American Struggle against the Colonization Movement. Various well-known African Americans resisted the efforts of the ACS, publishing constantly in abolitionist and African American newspapers and journals. Frederick Douglass pushed back against the ACS not only to assert the right of African-Americans to live in the U.S., but because the ACS had advocated for forced deportation of free Blacks.[2] The Rev. Absalom Jones, the first Black priest ordained in the Episcopal Church, opposed the ACS early on.[3] Alexander Crummell, a nationally known Black Episcopal priest and intellectual,[4] also rejected the organization for decades, travelling extensively to combat ACS fundraising efforts.[5]

 

Figure 2: Alexander Crummell (cropped), Internet Archive Book Images, 
marked as public domain, more details on Wikimedia Commons

            In spite of these African American efforts, including those by Black Episcopalians, White New Jersey Episcopalians heavily supported the ACS. New Jersey was important to the founding and support of the organization, and New Jersey Episcopalians particularly. Christian leaders generally were the founders and leaders of the organization. Robert Finley, the first president, was a Presbyterian minister in New Jersey, but from the outset the ACS involved ecumenical collaboration. Key early members from New Jersey included Commodore (and later Senator) Robert F. Stockton and John Potter. Stockton was instrumental in forcibly obtaining the land that would become Liberia for the ACS.[6] Stockton was also the first President of the New Jersey Chapter (1824), while Potter was one of the founding Vice Presidents.[7] They would jointly go on to found Trinity Church (Episcopal), Princeton in 1833,[8] to continue to own hundreds of slaves each,[9] and to remain life-long boosters of the ACS.

            Diocesan records of church giving in New Jersey show consistent congregation and institutional support for the ACS starting in 1834. This interest coincides with the launch of “African Missions” to Liberia[10] supported by the national Episcopal Church in cooperation with the ACS.[11] Both Episcopal mission literature[12] and ACS documentation,[13] along with subsequent scholarship on the Episcopal African mission[14] acknowledge the high degree of cooperation between the institutions. The local manifestation of this cooperation in New Jersey came particularly in the form of fundraising and prayer in the Diocese and in local churches.

            In his convention address of 1834, Bishop Doane, in mentioning services held across the Diocese on July 4, acknowledged the fundraising for the ACS in his congregations, noted Episcopal collaboration with the ACS, and encouraged giving in support of the collaborative Episcopal mission to Liberia writing:

 

One improvement [to the Independence Day worship service] has suggested itself to me as worthy of being incorporated with the plan. The day on which we acknowledge the goodness of God in establishing our own freedom, is a day on which we should do what we can towards letting ‘the oppressed go free.’ As a nation, we are held by peculiar obligations to promote the civil and religious liberation of Africa. The duty has been very generally recognized among American Christian, by the practice of making collections, after the religious services of the day, for the benefit of the American Colonization Society. Of that institution, I design to express no opinion—none certainly of an unfavourable character. But the fact, that the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of our Church, has been… desirous of establishing a Mission there, with the recent resolution of the Board of Directors, instructing the Executive Committee to send two Missionaries to Africa with all convenient speed, has seemed to me, to call especially for our approbation and patronage. I propose, therefore, that the services of the day be partly of a Missionary character; and that a collection be recommended in all the Churches of the Diocese,—the proceeds of which, shall be transmitted to the Treasurer of the Society above named, in aid of Missions to Africa.[15]

Church giving to the ACS that year from St. Peter’s Church, Perth Amboy surpassed its giving to the Episcopal Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, and the ACS was the only non-Episcopal organization designated in its giving.[16] Giving to the ACS that year from Trinity Church, Newark was similarly significant, outpacing other categories of giving, and singling out the ACS as the only non-Episcopal organization receiving funds.[17]

            Doane’s address had a significant effect. Giving to both the ACS and the Episcopal African Mission increased dramatically during his tenure, with churches often designating gifts to both initiatives. Reports of congregational giving between 1834 and 1856[18] reveal donations to the ACS from Trinity Church (Newark), St. Peter’s Church (Perth Amboy), Christ Church (New Brunswick), and St. John’s Church (Somerville). However, congregational giving to the Episcopal “African Mission” to Liberia, which cooperated with the ACS, exploded following Doane’s exhortation, with regular donations appearing during this same period from the following congregations:

 

            St. Peter’s Church, Perth Amboy

            St. Andrew’s Church, Mt. Holly

            St. Mark’s Church, Orange

            St. James Church, Piscataway

            Trinity Church, Woodbridge

            St. James Church, Knowlton

            St. Luke’s Church, Hope

            Christ Church, Shrewsbury

            St. John’s Church, Elizabethtown

            St. Paul’s Church, Hoboken

            St. Peter’s Church, Berkeley at Clarksboro

            Christ Church, Middletown

            Trinity Chapel, Red Bank

            St. Stephen’s, Mullica Hill

            St. Peter’s Church, Morristown

            Church of the Redeemer, Morristown

 

Beyond the aforementioned Episcopal strategic cooperation with the ACS in Liberia, at the national level in the U.S., and even at the state Diocesan level, there was significant Episcopal collaboration with the ACS at the local level in New Jersey as well, even beyond the founding of the state auxiliary. For instance, when the Newark, New Jersey auxiliary of the ACS was formed in 1838, the Rev. Matthew H. Henderson (rector) and Joel W. Condit, Jabez Hays, David Clarkson, and Silas Merchant (lay leaders) of Trinity Church (Episcopal), Newark were elected managers of the Society, while Hanford Smith, another lay leader at Trinity was elected Vice President.[19] J. C. Garthwaite, a lay leader of Grace Church (Episcopal), Newark was also elected a manager, as was the Rev. Dr. George T. Chapman, then rector of Grace Church. Clearly, Episcopalians were disproportionately represented among the leadership of the local auxiliary compared to their overall presence in the city, indicating a very strong interest in and support for the initiative.[20]

In the immediate aftermath of the passage of the federal Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, general interest in the ACS in the United States grew to at an all-time high.[21] Alexander Crummell actually gave up on changing the United States for the better and emigrated to Liberia, so dismayed was he at the apparently deteriorating state of Black freedoms in America. However, the final mention of the ACS in the New Jersey Diocesan convention proceedings journals occurs not long after this in 1856 (mention of a donation from St. John’s, Somerville to the ACS).[22] Why the loss of interest, or at least, direct financial support at this time when the ACS was at its zenith? By this time much of the direct giving in the Diocese related to Africa had shifted to Episcopal-specific “African Mission.” The Episcopal initiative in Liberia was still cooperative with the ACS and still shared much with it in the way of racist ideology and rhetoric,[23] but it was also big enough by this time that it was a viable and more pertinent charitable target for Episcopal giving, at least at the congregational and diocesan level, than the ACS. An example of the dynamics underlying this shift is in the particular connection felt in the Diocese of New Jersey at the time for the new (non-Liberian) African mission of the Rev. Hamble J. Leacock, a missionary who had formerly served as the rector at St. Peter’s Church, Perth Amboy, and who remained on the New Jersey diocesan rolls while he sought to found a mission station at Rio Pongas (now in Gambia). Some congregational giving within the diocese went specifically to Leacock’s work,[24] and some to the general “Africa Mission” fund which apportioned donations across various initiatives, but after this point, none to the ACS.

 

Figure 3: Hamble James Leacock, cropped, by Henry Caswall, (1810-1870), CC0 1.0

After the end of the Civil War, the goal of removing African Americans from the United States became even more obviously absurd.[25] And while the ACS met with even less African American interest in emigration, efforts to revive it nevertheless continued to arise. T. Thomas Fortune, a well-known African-American publisher and important figure in the racial uplift movement,[26] and later a parishioner at St. Thomas’ (Episcopal) Church, Red Bank (New Jersey), continued to reject the ACS project and its rhetoric when attempts were made in the 1880s to revive the organization. He took up the arguments of earlier Black intellectuals who had insisted that at root the “colonization movement [was] an anti-Black program.”[27]

 

Figure 4: Timothy Thomas Fortune, by Booker T. Washington, et al., 
marked as public domain, more details on Wikimedia Commons

            Neither the ACS nor its White New Jersey Episcopalian supporters had managed to rid the U.S. of free Blacks by the time of the Civil War, but they had both managed to produce long-standing suspicion among African-Americans. They had also jointly managed to produce an American colony in Africa (Liberia) that in spite of its increasingly Black colonial political leadership, replicated many of their own prejudices toward Black Africans.[28] Ultimately the Episcopal Diocese of Liberia would come to be administered by a Black Bishop and led by a predominantly Black clergy, but by that time much damage had already been done, including a longstanding normalization of western (and White) cultural chauvinism[29] in the teachings and organization of the Liberian Episcopal Church.[30]

 

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.

Reparations Commission Research Historian

Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

---

[1] These various motives have been documented by a number of scholars including James T. Yarsiah, The Episcopal Church – Early Missionaries in Liberia 1821-1871: Positive and Negative Impact of Missionary Activities (Saarbrucken: LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing, 2014), 33-34. Rev. Dr. Yarsiah is currently a priest in the Diocese of New Jersey.

[2] Ousmane K. Power-Greene, Against Wind and Tide: The African American Struggle against the Colonization Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 115.

[3] D. Elwood Dunn, A History of the Episcopal Church in Liberia 1821-1980 (London: Scarecrow Press, 1992), 15.

[4] Bishop Doane of New Jersey had supported his admission to General Seminary in spite of racist opposition (Craig Steven Wilder, “‘Driven… from the School of the Prophets’: The Colonizationist Ascendance at General Theological Seminary,” New York History 93.4 [2012]: 157-85).

[5] After decades of fighting the ACS, Crummell only moved to Liberia after the plight of African Americans in the United States had become so dire (after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850) that he had given up hope for any successful advocacy in the States.

[6] Colonization Society of the City of Newark, A Sketch of the Colonization Enterprise, and of the Soil, Climate and Production of Liberia, in Africa(Newark: 1838), 2-3.

[7] Society of the American Colonization Society in New Jersey, Proceedings of a Meeting Held at Princeton, New Jersey, July 14, 1824 to Form a Society in the State of New Jersey to Cooperate with the American Colonization Society (Princeton: D. A. Borrenstein, 1824), 39.

[8] Robert Field Stockton and John R. Thomson, “Subscription Book of 1827 to Build a Protestant Episcopal Church in the Borough of Princeton,” August 16, 1827. See also, The Rector, Wardens and Vestrymen of Trinity Church in the Borough of Princeton, “Certificate of Incorporation,” May 17, 1833. MSS held at Trinity Church, Princeton archives.

[9] See Kyra N. Pruszinski and Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski (ed.), “Trinity Church, Princeton and Slavery: A Brief Introduction” Diocese of New Jersey Racial Justice Review (April 10, 2023), https://dionj-racialjusticereview.blogspot.com/2023/04/trinity-church-princeton-and-slavery.html last accessed October 1, 2023.

[10] That is, the region that soon became Liberia.

[11] The Episcopal periodical “Spirit of Missions” was begun in 1836 to support the new interest and initiatives in missions.

[12] E.g. The Protestant Episcopal Church, An Historical Sketch of the African Mission of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A. (New York: Foreign Committee, 1884), 6-7. This promotional document even goes so far as to claim that “the colonization scheme originated with us,” which is to say, Episcopalians (here 59).

[13] E.g. American Society for the Colonizing the Free People of Color of the United State, The Twenty-First Annual Report of the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color of the United States, with the Proceedings of the Annual Meeting, December 12, 1837 (Washington: James C. Dunn, 1838), 14.

[14] E.g. Dunn, A History of the Episcopal Church in Liberia 1821-1980, 31, 35, 83-84.

[15] George W. Doane, Episcopal Address Delivered at the Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the State of New-Jersey; May 28, 1834(Camden: Josiah Harrison, 1834), 33. Italics original.

[16] Journal of the Proceedings of the Fifty First Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the State of New-Jersey; Held in Trinity Church, Newark, Wednesday the 28^th, and Thursday the 29^th Days of May, 1834 (Camden, Josiah Harrison, 1834), 17.

[17] Journal of the Proceedings of the Fifty First Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the State of New-Jersey, 10.

[18] As documented in the State Convention Proceedings Journals of the time.

[19] All these men appear as frequent delegates representing their parishes to the Diocesan Conventions at the time. 

[20] For the roster of elected leaders see Colonization Society of the City of Newark, A Sketch of the Colonization Enterprise, 13-14.

[21] Power-Greene, Against Wind and Tide, 118-120.

[22] See Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Seventy Third Annual Convention; Held, in Grace Church, and in Trinity Church, Newark, on Wednesday, 28 May, 1856 (Burlington: Samuel C. Atkinson, 1856), 41.

[23] As can be seen by the fact that White clergy dominated the mission throughout this period, and that the White American Bishop of Liberia (Bishop Payne) who for decades (1850-1874) insisted on tight control of the diocese, did not trust African or African-American church leadership, worked to prevent power-sharing, and regularly acted paternalistically. See Dunn (A History of the Episcopal Church in Liberia 1821-1980, 93) for a discussion of accusations of racism brought against Payne during his tenure.

[24] Donations from St. Peter’s Church, Morristown noted in the 1856 Convention Proceedings Journal are specifically designated to the “Leacock Fund, Africa.” Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Seventy Third Annual Convention, 34.

[25] It had been rather prohibitively expensive before the war, but afterward it was largely mooted by the significant, if qualified, advance of African-American rights and freedoms within the U.S.

[26] He is actually responsible for popularizing the term “Afro-American.”

[27] Power-Greene, Against Wind and Tide, 197.

[28] Rev. (and later Bishop) John Payne wrote in 1848 that “the time has not come yet, nor will it, for a long time when socially, natives can rank with colonists. The latter are destined by providence to be the teachers and governors of the former in this region.” Payne to Latrobe, Nov. 22, 1848 (as quoted in Dunn, A History of the Episcopal Church in Liberia 1821-1980, 80). Early Black Episcopal missionary James Thomson also perpetuated this attitude insisted not simply on teaching Christianity, but promoting western culture and removing natives from their “unwholesome social environment” (Dunn, A History of the Episcopal Church in Liberia 1821-1980, 47). Yarsiah (The Episcopal Church – Early Missionaries in Liberia 1821-1871, 40) notes that this attitude produced particularly problematic approaches toward nation-building: “the settlers’ government focused on increasing the national population through new immigrants rather than from the local ethnic groups whose potential for nation building was great but needed to be developed.”

[29] As noted by Yarsiah, The Episcopal Church – Early Missionaries in Liberia 1821-1871, 39.

[30] Which could be seen in the segregation that was established then in Liberian Episcopal Churches between native Africans and African-American colonists. See Dunn, A History of the Episcopal Church in Liberia 1821-1980, 81. See also Yarsiah, The Episcopal Church – Early Missionaries in Liberia 1821-1871, 40-41: “Many features of the negative effects of the policies and practices of the Christian churches are evident in contemporary Liberia. Two examples were the black/mulatto social cleavage in Liberian society and the absence of indigenous involvement in the affairs of the Church and state.”

Rev. James C. Ward (1777-1834), the first African American clergyman in the Diocese of New Jersey

In his invaluable book History of the African-American Group of the Episcopal Church, George F. Bragg lists James C. Ward as the fourth ordained African American clergyperson in the Episcopal Church, one of only seventeen ordained before the end of the Civil War.[1] Bragg’s brief biographical precis states: “James C. Ward, deacon in 1824. By Bishop White. Mr. Ward was a school teacher, and it does not appear that he was ever in pastoral work. He only lived a few years.”[2] Ward had formerly been ordained as a Presbyterian. He left the Presbyterian Church for the Episcopal Church and was ordained a deacon by the Bishop of Pennsylvania in 1824.[3]

List of the Diocese of New Jersey clergy, including Rev. James C. Ward,
from the Convention Proceedings Journal of 1830.

            The Rev. Ward was a schoolteacher in Philadelphia while canonically resident in Pennsylvania. His ordination was not an entirely traditional ordination though. He was ordained to the diaconate on the condition that he would not have voting rights in convention proceedings.[4] and even when in attendance he was not considered among the clergy composing the convention.[5] During his time in Pennsylvania he was under consideration for an appointment with the Church Missionary Society (CMS) as a teacher in Sierra Leone, but the appointment was never finalized.[6]

            However, in his state convention address of 1830, the Bishop of the Diocese of New Jersey, the Rt. Rev. John Croes, notes among the clergy changes that year the following: “The Rev, James C. Ward, a coloured man, lately a Deacon of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, has, by a letter dismissory from the Right Rev. Dr. White, Bishop of that Diocese, been admitted into this.”[7] In the state convention journal of that year the Rev. Ward is included in the list of clergy, but is listed last, after the priests, and after the other deacon ministering in the Diocese.[8]
            It is unclear where Ward taught when in New Jersey, or if he taught at all. In the 1830 convention journal nearly all other clergy have their church assignment listed,[9] but Rev. Ward does not. Marion M. Thompson Wright, in her magisterial treatment of Black education in New Jersey, does not mention him though she reviewed the diocesan records that refer to him.[10] It appears that she concluded that he did not end up teaching in New Jersey, or at least, not very much. Due to the ambiguity of the records, it is difficult to determine where Rev. Ward may have taught in the Diocese during his tenure.
            In 1830 nine churches in the Diocese mention formalized regular Sunday Schools in their convention reports[11] including Christ Church, New Brunswick, St. Mark’s Church, Orange, St. Peter’s Church, Morristown, St. John’s Church, Elizabethtown, Christ Church, Newton, St. James Church, Piscataway, St. Mary’s Church, Burlington, St. Peter’s Church, Berkeley, and St. John’s Church, Salem. By 1831 the Sunday School Society had reorganized its constitution and worked to formalize instruction and membership. According to their reports there were five churches running Sunday Schools that met the Society guidelines including 483 students, though most still-unaffiliated churches had some kind of Sunday School program.[12] There is no list of diocesan clergy in the 1831 convention journal, and no mention of Rev. James C. Ward.
            By 1832 there were seven churches in the Diocese that had affiliated Sunday Schools and among all of those schools and hundreds of students there were a total of only 23 “coloured” children listed as students.[13] At this time the education of African-Americans in Episcopal Churches was, almost without exception, segregated. As such, it is possible that the Rev. Ward did not have adequate pupils among the Sunday Schools, and by extension, did not have adequate teaching opportunities (or pay) in the Diocese at that time to warrant continued residence. There is no record of a diocese-associated school for those of African descent at this time, either on Sunday or otherwise, unlike those in Pennsylvania and New York. New Jersey was one of the few colonies where such a school had never been founded by the S.P.G.[14] during the colonial era,[15] and by the time of Rev. Ward’s residency no such school appears to have been yet founded.[16]
            According to the state convention journal of 1834, Trinity Church, Newark had just then started a segregated school for Black children.[17] It is possible that Rev. Ward taught there briefly, but it is unlikely and no evidence of this has been discovered. It is possible, though also unlikely, that Rev. Ward continued to work as a schoolteacher in Philadelphia while living in New Jersey during this period. However, it seems most likely that Rev. Ward had been invited, perhaps aspirationally, to the Diocese of New Jersey to teach African-American students at one or more of the churches with a significant segregated Sunday School, or to found an “African school” affiliated with one of the churches, but that the arrangement did not work out.
            Bishop Croes’ letter to the convention of 1832 provides another terse update: the Rev. Ward had left the Diocese. “The Rev. James C. Ward (a coloured man) a Deacon in the Diocese, having made application to me for a letter dismissory to the Rt. Rev. Dr. Stone, Bishop of the Diocese of Maryland, it was granted to him and of course he no longer belongs to this Diocese.”[18]
It appears that this move was already in the works as early as the previous summer. Bishop Croes had written a favorable letter of reference for Rev. Ward on July 16, 1831 which he sent to Ward in Annapolis, Maryland.[19] Apparently Ward had either already moved, or was in the process of setting up what would be his next teaching job in Maryland. This would mean that Ward was resident in New Jersey for as little as under one year. Unfortunately Ward did not teach long in Maryland, passing away soon after his move in 1834.
            Whatever the circumstances that led to Rev. Ward’s extremely brief tenure in the Diocese of New Jersey, we can at least conclude a few things. Firstly, Rev. Ward’s experience shows that Bishop Croes, who was an enslaver for much of his life, was willing to work with Black clergy, at least to some degree. He affirmed Ward’s ordination and welcomed him to the diocese. Secondly, however much support Rev. Ward received from the bishop, it did not translate into a stable teaching position in the diocese. There was likely not yet widespread support for Black clergy in any particular White churches in the diocese. Further, Ward would likely have needed a church affiliation to start a school of his own creation, and churches in the diocese, in addition to having limited established programs for Black pupils at the time, showed in the subsequent period a significant interest in hiring only White instructors for segregated parish schools.[20] All this is to say, Ward did not find the Diocese of New Jersey to be as hospitable a location for his teaching as Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) had been, or Maryland would be, and as a result, his tenure in New Jersey was fleeting. He remains, however, the first Black man to be counted among the clergy of the Diocese of New Jersey.

Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.

Reparations Commission Research Historian

Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey

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[1] George F. Bragg, History of the African-American Group of the Episcopal Church (Baltimore: Church Advocate Press, 1922), 15.

[2] Bragg, History, 185. Italics original. Bishop White was the bishop of Pennsylvania.

[3] Bragg, History, 185; See also General convention record for 1826. For record of some kind of proceedings against him in the Presbyterian Church see “Records of the Presbytery of New Castle, 1814-1834,” Journal of the Department of History (The Presbyterian Historical Society) of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. 19.2 (1940): 93-97, here page 95. David L. Holmes (“The Making of the Bishop of Pennsylvania, 1826-1827: Part I: The Nestor’s Finest Hour” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 41.3 [1972]: 225-262, here page 260) reports his ordination as having occurred in 1825. This date accords with most Episcopal Church records.

[4] George Burgess, List of Person Admitted to the Order of Deacons in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, from A.D. 1785 to A.D. 1857 (Boston: A. Williams, 1874), 13.

[5] Holmes, “The Making of the Bishop of Pennsylvania,” 260.

[6] D. Elwood Dunn, A History of the Episcopal Church in Liberia 1821-1980 (London: Scarecrow Press, 1992), 37.

[7] John Croes, “Address,” in Journal of the Proceedings of the Forty-Seventh Annual Convention, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the State of New Jersey (New Brunswick: Terhune & Letson, 1830), 12.

[8] Croes, “Address,” in Journal of the Proceedings of the Forty-Seventh Annual Convention, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the State of New Jersey (New Brunswick: Terhune & Letson, 1830), 29.

[9] All save Ward and one other.

[10] M. M. Thompson Wright, The Education of Negroes in New Jersey (New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1941).

[11] And they would have every incentive to do so.

[12] The Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Forty-Eighth Annual Convention, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the State of New Jersey (New Brunswick: Terhune & Letson, 1831), 34. Churches affiliated with the Society included Christ-Church, New Brunswick, St. John’s Church, Salem, St. Peter’s Church, Spotswood, Christ Church, Newton, and St. Mark’s Church, Orange.

[13] The Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Forty-Ninth Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the State of New Jersey (New Brunswick: Terhune & Letson, 1832), 33. Most of the churches had Sunday Schools of some kind, but not all had yet affiliated with the Sunday School Society. Churches with some kind of Sunday School included Christ Church, New Brunswick, St. Paul’s Church at Paterson, Trinity Church, Newark, St. John’s Church, Elizabethtown, St. James Church, Knowlton, St. Peter’s Church, Perth Amboy, St. Peter’s Church, Spotswood, St. Mary’s Church, Burlington, St. Andrew’s Church, Mount Holly, St. Peter’s Church, Berkeley, St. John’s Church, Salem, St. George’s Church, Penns Neck, St. Mark’s Church, Orange, Christ Church, Newton, and St. Luke’s Church, Hope.

[14] Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.

[15] New Jersey is conspicuously missing from the accounts in Edgar Legare Pennington, “Thomas Bray’s Associates and Their Work Among the Negroes,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 48 (1938): 311-403. In his correspondence with the S.P.G. Rowland Ellis expressed an intention to teach a night school for those of African descent in Burlington in the winter of 1715-16 but it is unclear if he ever actually followed through, and certainly the intended “school” was never formalized. See Rowland Ellis to S.P.G., October 8, 1715, British Online Archives, Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (S.P.G.) Correspondence Collection: “American in Records from Colonial Missionaries, 1635-1928,” A Series Letter Book Vol. 11, page 118.

[16] M. M. Thompson Wright mentions no school of this kind in The Education of Negroes in New Jersey.

[17] The Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Fifty First Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the State of New Jersey (Camden: Josiah Harrison, 1834), 10.

[18] The Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Fifty First Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the State of New Jersey (Camden: Josiah Harrison, 1834), 8.

[19] John Croes to Revd. James C. Ward, July 16, 1831; Record ID 108178, Accession number MA 365.121, The Morgan Library & Museum.

[20] See, for example, the example of Trinity Church, Princeton described in Kyra N. Pruszinski and Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, ed., “Trinity Church, Princeton and Slavery: A Brief Introduction,” Diocese of New Jersey Racial Justice Review (10 April 2023), https://dionj-racialjusticereview.blogspot.com/2023/04/trinity-church-princeton-and-slavery.html, last accessed October 1, 2023.