Henry McNeal Turner

Henry McNeal Turner (1834-1915), African American leader and a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, argued for African American emigration to Africa. Henry McNeal Turner’s life was guided by a faith in the capabilities of himself and his people. He grew up in Abbeville, South Carolina. He was born free, and raised by his mother and maternal grandmother. Legend had it that his paternal grandfather was an African prince.

Henry M. Turner was born free near Abbeville, South Carolina, on February 1, 1834. Unable to go to school because of state laws, he was “apprenticed” in local cotton fields but ran away and found a job as sweeper in a law office. The young clerks surreptitiously taught him to read and write.  He preached to white and black audiences throughout the South until 1858. When he learned of the all-black African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), he joined it.

He was licensed to preach in 1853. He was the first black man to hold the position of Chaplain in the U.S. Army. Turner was active in Georgia state politics, and he served briefly in the Georgia State Legislature. He became the twelfth AME. Bishop in 1880. For twelve years he served as chancellor of Morris Brown College (now Morris Brown University) in Atlanta.

As a young boy, he dreamed that millions of people would look to him as a teacher, and he determined to act on that vision. But first, he had to learn to read and write; in South Carolina, teaching blacks to do either was forbidden. He writes that a “dream angel” taught him basic spelling; but his prayers were really answered when he became a janitor for an Abbeville law firm, around 1849. He was converted to Christianity and at age 20 was licensed as a traveling evangelist for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

He married Eliza Ann Preacher of Columbia, South Carolina, in 1856. The couple moved to Baltimore and eventually had 14 children, but only two sons survived.

Turner joined the African Methodist Episcopalian church in 1858, at 24, because he heard that within that church black men could become bishops. He was taken under wing by Bishop Daniel Payne and pastored at two of his churches.

Turner joined the lobbying effort to convince President Lincoln to enlist freedmen in the Union Army. In 1863, Lincoln acceded, and Turner became the first black chaplain.

After the war, Turner walked back to Georgia, and began organizing AME churches there. By some counts, he founded over one hundred churches. At the same time, he helped organize the Georgia Republican Party. In 1868, he was elected state representative, but he and 14 other black representatives were expelled from the Georgia legislature after whites combined in an 82-83 vote.

That rejection made Turner turn his back on the American political process. He turned his attention instead to developing the political potential of the black church.

In 1880, Turner rode a wave of populist popularity to become the first southern bishop elected in the AME Church. He would also prove to be the most controversial. He provoked white racists in print, and advocated a wholesale move of blacks back to Africa “to achieve our dignity and manhood.” He ordained a woman, Sarah Ann Hughes, as a deacon in the church. He built alliances with Baptists. At the first Black Baptist convention, he gave the speech for which he would be forever known: “We have every right to believe that God is a Negro,” he stated, proclaiming that a people needed to see their reflection in their deity.

Turner came close to becoming a national leader in the mold of Frederick Douglass or Booker T. Washington. But in the end, his outspokenness on the Africa issue undermined him.