Levi Jenkins Coppin

BACKGROUND: Levi Jenkins Coppin was born in Frederick Town, Maryland, to free parents, John and Jane (Lilly) Coppin, on December 24, 1848. He had six siblings and learned to read and write from secret classes his mother held on Sundays before church — teaching that was against Maryland law at the time. At the end of the Civil War, a school was created for Black children at the Friendship Church in Frederick Town, with Coppin’s mother, Jane, as its first teacher. In 1866, Levi Coppin attended for two terms before becoming a teacher at the school himself, and became licensed to preach that same year. At the age of 17, Coppin became motivated to seek higher education. He moved to Wilmington, Delaware, where he cast his first vote at age twenty and joined Bethel AME Church, later marrying his first wife, Martha Grinnage, a schoolteacher, in September 1875. They had one son, Octavius Valentine, who died nine months after birth, and his wife only eighteen days later. In December 1881, he married his second wife, Fanny Jackson, who was principal of the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia — making her the first African American woman to head a high school in the United States; Coppin State University in Baltimore is named in her honor. Fannie died in January 1913. After a period of mourning, Coppin married his third wife, M. Evelyn Thompson, a physician, in August 1914; their daughter, Theodosia, was born after. In 1919, Coppin’s autobiography, Unwritten History, was published — one of several books he authored over the course of his ministry. Five years later, Coppin died at his home in Philadelphia, on June 25, 1924.

THEOLOGY: By 1877, Coppin was preaching for the Philadelphia City Mission, a circuit of smaller A.M.E. missions, and by 1879 was placed in charge of it. He became pastor of Mother Bethel that year, serving until 1881, when he was transferred to Baltimore as pastor of Bethel AME Church there. He graduated from the Philadelphia Episcopal Divinity School in 1887. His work led to his election as editor of the AME Church Review in 1888, a post he held until 1896. That year he ran unsuccessfully for the office of bishop; four years later, in 1900, he was elected. In 1902, Coppin was assigned to Cape Town, South Africa, where he and his second wife, Fanny, opened Bethel Institute and worked as missionaries, later extending their work into Ethiopia. He also founded the Masonic Lodge of Cape Town, affiliated with the Philadelphia Jurisdiction of the Prince Hall Masons, and traveled into the African interior to establish smaller mission houses for African communities there.