ALEXANDER CRUMMELL
In the class with Ray should be mentioned Henry Highland Garnett, another minister of the Presbyterian Church, devoting most of his time to the many movements which attracted the attention of his colaborers. Having escaped from Maryland to the North in 1822, Garnett experienced sufficient mental development to ask for admission to the Canaan Academy, where he, along with Alexander Crummell and others, caused the school to be broken up by a mob arraying itself against the idea of permitting persons of color to enjoy such privileges in that community. Proceeding, however, to the Oneida Institute in New York, he succeeded in laying a foundation for his work under the noble-hearted friend of man, Beriah Green. Here Garnett attained the reputation of an accomplished man, an able and eloquent debater and a good writer. He soon developed into a preacher of power of the evangelical type, whose discourses showed much thought and careful study. He had complete command of his voice and used it with skill, never failing to fill the largest hall. Soon there was a demand for him as a preacher. He was sent as a missionary to the Island of Jamaica. He later spent some time in Washington as the pastor of the Presbyterian Church and served at another time at the Shiloh Church in New York City.
Garnett, however, was soon more than a preacher. From the time he made his first public appearance in New York City in 1837 he secured for himself a standing among first-class orators. In 1843 he delivered before the National Convention of Colored Americans at Buffalo, New York, one of the most remarkable addresses ever uttered by man. His contemporary says: "None but those who heard that speech have the slightest idea of the tremendous influence which he exercised over the assembly." For forty years thereafter he was an advocate of the rights of his race, a forcible and daring speaker wherever he had an opportunity to present his cause. Visiting England in 1850, he was well received as an orator. Garnett, moreover, served much of his time as an educator, having been President of Avery College, where he passed as a man of learning.
In this group of enterprising clergymen of this period should be mentioned Alexander Crummell, although his more important service to the race belongs to the two generations following the Civil War. Crummell was a native of New York, but a descendant of a Timanee chief in West Africa. Early in his career he attended a Quaker school with Thomas S. Sidney and Henry Highland Garnett in New York, and later experienced with the latter, as mentioned above, the humiliation of seeing the Academy of Canaan, New Hampshire, broken up because of the admission of Negroes. Crummell then studied three years under Beriah Green at the Oneida Institute. Having then the aspiration to enter the ministry of the Episcopal Church, he applied for admission to the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church of New York, which, in keeping with its hostile attitude toward the Negro, refused to accept him.
Thus barred from entering upon his life's work, Crummell could not then influence the public to the same extent as Negro leaders laboring in the more inviting fields. Presenting his case to the clergy in Boston in 1842, he was ordained deacon by Bishop Griswold. After studying two years under Dr. A. H. Vinton of Providence, Rhode Island, Crummell was ordained priest by Bishop Lee of Delaware at St. Paul's Church in Philadelphia, and engaged to work in a barren field. Here poverty and ill health overtook him and rendered his circumstances all but intolerable. To earn a livelihood he conducted for four men a private school, which, after having a promising beginning, proved inadequate to his support.
He then went to England, where he was well received as a preacher and given the opportunity to prosecute further his studies at Queen's College, Cambridge University, from which he obtained the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1853. Crummell then began his career as a missionary and educator, working in Liberia and Sierra Leone for about twenty years. He returned to the United States in 1873 and entered upon his work as an Episcopal priest in Washington, where, as the rector of St. Mary's, and as the founder of the American Negro Academy, he experienced the culmination of his usefulness as a scholar, a clergyman, and a champion of the rights of his people.
J. W. C. PENNINGTON