Alexander Crummell

• Born: March 3, 1819
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: September 1, 1898
• Place of death: Point Pleasant, New Jersey

Scholar, educator, and religious leader

The foremost African American intellectual of the nineteenth century, Crummell was a pioneer of pan-Africanism who influenced later generations of black nationalists. Crummell wrote and lectured widely, and his published works are important examples of African American literature of the period.

Areas of achievement: Abolitionism; Education; Religion and theology; Social issues

Early Life

Alexander Crummell was born in New York to Charity Hicks, a freeborn woman, and Boston Crummell. Boston was an African who had been enslaved and then emancipated himself and started a business. Crummell was proud of his pure black ancestry, and his later career was influenced by his father’s reminiscences of Africa. The eldest of five children, Crummell was educated at the Canal Street High School, one of whose founders was his father. In 1835, he moved to a school in New Hampshire that was destroyed by antiabolitionists who objected to its integration policy. Crummell then enrolled in the Oneida Institute in upstate New York.

After graduating, Crummell applied to the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church but was refused entry because of his race. He continued his studies privately with clergymen in Providence and Boston and also attended lectures at Yale Theological Seminary. In 1841, he was offered the ministry of a black congregation in Providence. It was during this time that he married Sarah Mabitt Elston, a New Yorker. In 1844, Crummell was ordained; the next year, he took charge of the Church of the Messiah in New York City. The congregation was extremely short of funds, and the couple’s first child died of malnutrition. After the church was destroyed by a fire in 1847, Crummell sailed to England to raise funds for its rebuilding. He traveled around giving lectures to abolitionist groups and was offered financial support to complete his education. Crummell was the first African American to study at Queen’s College, Cambridge. He was joined by his wife and two sons but struggled to complete his studies because of his own poor health and the death of one of his children. Nevertheless, he managed to obtain his degree in theology in 1853.

Life’s Work

Rather than returning home, Crummell applied to go to Liberia as a missionary, fulfilling a long-standing wish to visit Africa, his father’s homeland. Liberia, founded in 1847 by emancipated slaves, appeared to offer Crummell an opportunity to become involved in establishing a new African nation. He arrived full of hopes with his wife and four children in the capital, Monrovia.

Crummell’s expectations were soon dashed. His health was never good, and his uncompromising nature led him to clash with colleagues and superiors. His support of the campaign for a Liberian Episcopal church placed him at odds with his employers, the U.S. Board of Missions. He quarreled with his bishop and resigned from his position in 1857. Crummell then took charge of a school in Cape Palmas. He ran it successfully for several years but was dismissed when the school later went bankrupt. In 1861, he returned to the United States on a lecture tour for the American Colonization Society to promote black emigration to Liberia.

Crummell’s pan-African ideals are expressed in the essay “The Relations and Duty of Free Colored Men in America to Africa” (1860) and in The Future of Africa, published in 1862, a treatise on what would later be called black nationalism. He favored the benevolent colonization of Africa by black people from America and the Caribbean and viewed Christianity and English as vehicles for progress. He disagreed with those American immigrants in Liberia who wished to keep indigenous Liberians uneducated and away from power.

When Crummell returned to Liberia in early 1863, he was appointed professor of English and moral philosophy at the newly founded Liberia College. He soon fell out with the trustees and college president, Liberians of American origin who felt themselves superior to the indigenous population. On his return from a short visit to the United States in 1865, Crummell was relieved of his professorial duties, and he returned to missionary work. His travels in the interior of the country are described in letters published in the Episcopal journal Spirit of Missions. After his application for the bishopric in 1871 was rejected in favor of a white missionary, Crummell became more closely involved in politics. He backed the Negro Party presidential candidate, E. J. Roye, but after Liberia’s first coup, he fled the country in 1873.

Back in the United States, Crummell was offered the rectorship of St. Mary’s Church in Washington, D.C., which he developed into a larger church called St. Luke’s. Crummell’s marriage was not a happy one. His wife bore six children but suffered from poor health, and they frequently lived apart. Sarah died in 1878, and Crummell was remarried in 1880 to Jennie Simpson. The United States was recovering from the Civil War, and emancipation had not greatly improved life for most African Americans. Crummell wrote and lectured extensively and campaigned for voting rights for African Americans. A collection of his sermons, The Greatness of Christ and Other Sermons, was published in 1882. Crummell favored a program of self-help and separate economic development and recommended the establishment of black schools. An essay, “The Black Woman of the South: Her Neglects and Her Needs” (1883), outlines an education program for poor black women suffering the effects of slavery. In 1883, he founded the Conference of Church Workers Among Colored People to challenge segregation within the Episcopalian Church.

A collection of essays and speeches addressing the concerns of black people in America, Africa and America: Addresses and Discourses, was published in 1891. Following his retirement from the ministry in 1894, Crummell taught at Howard University. Despite his failing health, he continued to travel and lecture widely. His autobiography, The Shades and the Lights of a Fifty Years’ Ministry, was published in 1894. The most notable achievement of his later life was founding the American Negro Academy at the age of seventy-eight. Shortly thereafter, Crummell died in Point Pleasant, New Jersey.

Significance

A fervent supporter of antislavery struggles who devoted his life to challenging racism, Crummell saw self-help and racial solidarity as the ways for African Americans to secure equality. He believed that the destiny of black Americans was linked to Africa, and this led him to promote emigration to what he viewed as the homeland. His pan-Africanism greatly influenced later black leaders, including W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey. He produced a large body of writing including letters, sermons, and public addresses.

Bibliography

Moses, Wilson J. Alexander Crummell: A Study of Civilization and Discontent. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. The definitive biography by the foremost scholar on Crummell, this work examines his life and significance.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Alexander Crummell and the Destined Superiority of African People.” In The African Diaspora and the Study of Religion, edited by Theodore Trost. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Discusses Crummell’s life and intellectual contributions.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Creative Conflict in African American Thought: Frederick Douglass, Alexander Crummell, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Marcus Garvey. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. An essay on Crummell examines the contradictions between his Afrocentric ideology and his admiration of Western civilization.

Oldfield, J. R. Civilization and Black Progress: Selected Writings of Alexander Crummell on the South. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995. Examines Crummell’s thought and influence through selected texts on religion, race, gender, politics, and education.