Bishop Henry McNeal Turner
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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 1956. 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.
Turner organized AME Churches all over
the state of Georgia and a number of members joined under his influence. He was
elected a member of the Constitutional convention in Georgia in 1868 and 1870.
He was later sent to the Georgia Legislature as a State Senator.
Bishop Turner served as a Presiding Elder in Georgia. He was elected the
Business Manager of the Publication Department. He founded the Southern
Christian Recorder, the Voice of Missions and the Women's Christian Recorder.
Turner was elected a Bishop at the General Conference in St. Louis, Missouri in
1880. During his tenure, he presided over the 8th, 5th, 1st, 12th, 6th and 7th
Districts. He also established a AME church in West and South Africa.
As for his personal life, Turner married four times, Turner survived three wives
and all but two of his children. His final marriage at 73 to his secretary
evoked a storm of criticism and attempts were made to remove him from office.
He died, isolated and bitter, in 1915.
Key Moments of Faith
FIRST, HE HAD TO LEARN TO READ
Turner was raised in the heart of the
Confederacy, where it was illegal for blacks to learn to read and write. His
mother arranged for lessons, but each time she was found out, and the lessons
ended. Finally, an elderly slave taught him to sound out words, and Turner wrote
that an angel would come to him in his dreams and teach him the connection
between sounds and the alphabet. His education progressed when the lawyers at a
firm where he worked as janitor tested his memory by teaching him science.
Within four years, he had learned enough to become a licensed preacher.
A BLACK CHAPLAIN IN THE CIVIL WAR
Turner was the first of fourteen black
chaplains who served in the Union Army during the Civil War. Historians consider
him an important primary source for researching the experience of black Union
soldiers because of his prolific dispatches to the Christian Recorder, the
weekly newspaper of the AME church. Chaplains organized prayer meetings, tended
to and prayed for the wounded, ensured that the soldiers' pay was sent to their
families, wrote letters for the illiterate, and acted as intermediaries between
the black troops and white commanding officers. Most importantly, they taught
the men in their unit how to read. Many black troops learned to read during the
war. Their textbook was the Bible. Turner's unit, the 1st Regiment, U.S. Colored
Troops, served in Virgina and North Carolina.
A MISSIONARY AND A POLITICIAN
After the war, Turner became one of the
AME church's hardest working missionaries. He sought to save the souls of the
freedmen and to expand their minds. Missionaries from various denominations
competed with one another for church membership, and joining a church became one
of the ways in which a freedman claimed an identity. Turner loosened the strict
rules requiring educated ministers, allowed congregants to sing their slave
spirituals during worship, and dared the Klu Klux Klan to try and stop him. At
the same time, he worked with white Republicans, trying to develop a multiracial
coalition which would govern the South.
FROM A STATE REPRESENTATIVE TO AN EXPELLED LEGISLATOR
In 1868, Turner was elected a state
representative; but his white colleagues couldn't countenance those they once
considered chattel. After Turner had joined them in a vote grandfathering the
right to vote to those who owned property, they used the clause to prohibit
black officeholders because, under that same clause, blacks could not have held
property. Turner filibustered for three days, but, finally, the black
legislators were expelled.
POLITICALLY CHARGED SCANDALS
Georgian Democrats went to great lengths
to discredit Turner's leadership and character. He was charged with carrying
counterfeit money - the charges were thrown out in federal court - but, more
damaging were accusations of extramarital affairs. The scandal destroyed his
friendship with Bishop Daniel Payne and damaged his reputation, particularly
among women in the AME Church, who formed the bedrock of the organization.
BISHOP TURNER BUILDS A DENOMINATION
As Bishop, Turner dedicated himself to
building a denomination. The AME Church had begun to lose ground to the
fast-growing Baptist denomination, which allowed greater freedom of expression
during service. Turner wrote a hymnal which included adaptations of many "slave
ditties," as Bishop Payne called them. He worked to give southern congregations
a greater voice among the AME hierarchy, which, dominated as it was by
Northerners, tended to look down on their southern brethren. And he gave women a
greater role in the denomination. He even ordained a woman as deacon, but that
move was condemned so loudly that he rescinded it and never spoke about it again
- the one subject on which he was silenced.
BACK TO AFRICA: EMIGRATION TO THE HOME LAND
Turner believed that Emancipation was the
first Exodus for African-Americans and leaving the South would be the second.
While many in the black community shared Turner's views on the limits of freedom
in the South, most chose to remain
in the United States instead of migrating to Africa.
Turner's insistence on linking missionary work in Africa with mass emigration to
the continent made him a divisive figure in the AME Church. At the same time,
his four trips to Africa showed him the dignity of a people uncowed by slavery.
In 1895, speaking before the first meeting of the National Baptist Convention,
Turner declared that African-Americans should see God as a Negro.
* The previous information was taken from the following web
pages
Henry McNeal Turner Biography - Profile of Henry McNeal
Turner Biographies:
http://www.bookrags.com/biography/henry-mcneal-turner/
Henry McNeal Turner, 1834-1915:
http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/turneral/bio.html
This Far by Faith . Henry McNeal Turner PBS:
http://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/people/henry_mcneal_turner.html
Henry M. Turner:
http://www.amecnet.org/turner.htm
Henry McNeal Turner Biography:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAturnerHM.htm
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