Critical Theory infects much of the study of American history today. Horkheimer said that a theory is critical if it seeks "to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them." Although the context of that is Marxist, as a Christian we also desire for humans to be liberated but recognize that it is God and His means of grace that alone brings real freedom to individuals and to systems of society, from the internal to the external. So especially in the study of Black history we need to use what I call “Providential Theory.”
In America’s Providential History co-authored by myself and Stephen McDowell, we do not ignore the impact that sin has on history but try to put more emphasis on the influence of God and righteous people in the founding and development of the United States. (You can order a copy with updated material here)
During Black History Month or any other courses with that focus, we have to discern principles and fruit of events using a Biblical worldview. It is important for the Christian to know the difference and not just blindly praise or follow anyone primarily for their race or gender or culture. It is not necessarily a good thing just because a person is first to do something, whether black or white. But in rest of this article we will make a sweeping view of the highlights of black history in America and make some observations.
We will look at it in roughly 80 or 90 year periods.
Black History 1776-1853
Prior to American independence Blacks made minor contributions in pre-USA territory under the control of other nations – British, Spanish, French, etc. The 1619 Project puts too much blame on Americans for things they could not appreciably change. By 1776 as Americans declared independence people began to try changing things immediately but most would still take time. Our focus in this article is not much on what whites did, but rather on what Blacks themselves did to contribute to the culture and policies of the American nation.
While states and territories slowly eliminated slavery and the slave trade, some blacks made steps that were remarkable for the time. Phyllis Wheatley’s poems in the 1770s were recognized for their objective quality. Immediately during the War for Independence about 7% of soldiers were black and mostly served in integrated units and made a good testimony for their race. Richard Allen in 1794 started the first African Methodist Episcopal Church called Bethel in Philadelphia. In 1804 a slave of William Clark named York was part of the Lewis and Clark Expedition to the west. Daniel Coker led the first emigration of blacks to Liberia in Africa in 1820. Thomas Jennings invented dry cleaning in 1821. The first black periodical began in 1827 called Freedom’s Journal in NY (its Editor in 1829 was Rev. Samuel Cornish). In 1829 David Walker’s Appeal was written. Daniel Payne opened a school in S.C. in 1830.
But in 1831 when Rev. Nat Turner led a slave rebellion in Virginia that led to the deaths of 50 whites, the legislative over-reaction led to extreme limits on activities of blacks and stopped the gradual abolition trend. In fact the first defense of slavery and expression of opposition to its abolition began in the 1830s. Virtually none can be found before then. Church denominations began to split over slavery in America.
Clearly the most significant black leader to emerge in this first period was Frederick Douglass who had escaped from slavery and was licensed as a preacher by the AME Zion Church in 1839 in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He began his anti-slavery work. Unfortunately, at that time the anti-slavery movement was split due to the non-Christian, anti-southern and anti-Constitutional stance of William L. Garrison. At first Douglass echoed Garrison, having become disillusioned with church leaders, and began blaming the Constitution and America’s form of government as pro-slavery & evil.
In contrast was Rev. Henry H. Garnet, a Presbyterian pastor in Troy, N.Y., who led the Christian movement and rivaled Douglass as the foremost black leader before the Civil War. Similarly, Rev. Sojourner Truth (Isabella Wagener), a former slave, began traveling to preach and speak against slavery (AME Zion church).
By 1851 Douglass changed his view (as expressed in his earlier 1845 Narrative) and began supporting the Constitution as an anti-slavery document and became far more effective a leader. His faith became more central to his public life, writing later that there is “…one great political idea…The best expression of it I found in the Bible: …righteousness exalts a nation, and sin is a reproach to any people—Proverbs 14:34. Now this constitutes my politics—the negative and positive of my politics and the whole of my politics.”
Others fought slavery in different ways. The parents of Charlotte Forten, a free black girl, home-schooled her in protest of segregation in public schools. Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in 1849 and began to lead others to freedom (underground railroad). In 1852 Rev. Daniel Payne (AME) urged the importance of education of blacks.
Black History 1854-1931
In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska bill allowed for states to decide slavery. That same year the Republican Party was founded with an anti-slavery platform. Frances Harper was a leading black activist and lecturer for anti-slavery societies at that time. Ann Wood, a fugitive slave, led a wagon-load of armed boys & girls in a shoot-out & escape.
A case regarding a slave named Dred Scott was decided in 1857 by the Supreme Court that denied blacks as persons. This began to be debated in 1858 between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in Illinois and Lincoln was elected to the presidency in 1860. Southern states seceded and joined together in a confederacy, so Lincoln employed the military against them.
Over the course of the Civil War between the states 186,000 blacks joined the Union Army (an all black regiment, the 54th Massachusetts, was memorialized in the movie “Glory”), and some joined the Confederate Army. Both whites and blacks made decisions on politics not necessarily skin color. At the same time there were Indian wars in the west where black soldiers there became known as “Buffalo soldiers.”
In 1863 Lincoln made slavery the moral focus of the Civil War. That year Harriet Tubman became the first woman to lead troops and her raid freed 750 slaves. After the war ended but the 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the country by the end of 1865. The Freedman’s Bureau began to serve the newly freed communities.
For the first time blacks had opportunity to not only vote but to hold elected office. Mary Pleasant was a black civil rights leader in California. In 1867 Rev. Hiram Revels of Mississippi was the first black elected to the U.S. Senate as a member of the Republican Party. Frederick Douglass became a public official in Washington, D.C. that same year, also as a Republican. In all, there were two black senators and 14 black congressmen elected in those years. In 1872 Pinckney Pinchback, a Republican, was the first black elected as Governor of a state in Louisiana. Lucy Parsons was a black activist who joined the Labor party in 1877.
In 1868 the 14th Amendment (although passed illegally) guaranteed civil rights and due process for blacks but gave Congress power to usurp state law for the first time. In 1876, as martial law ended, Democrats returned to power in the southern states and seven years later their segregation system and Black Codes were upheld by the Supreme Court. Terrorism was used by radical Democrats through the KKK against blacks and white Republicans.
Despite these difficulties, some notable Black leaders found ways to make a difference within their limited opportunities. In 1881, Booker T. Washington, a former slave, started the Tuskegee Institute to educate blacks. In 1896, George W. Carver began teaching there. In 1891 Washington published his story called Up From Slavery, and became an advisor to Republican President Theodore Roosevelt. Booker was truly the most prominent black American in the 19th century. His faith held the supreme allegiance, saying later: “If no other consideration had convinced me of the value of the Christian life, the Christlike work which the Church of all denominations in America has done during the last thirty-five years for the elevation of the black man would have made me a Christian.”
Black women emerged also. Rev. Amanda Smith was a popular black evangelist and missionary at that time. Fannie Williams formed the National League of Colored Women (1st pres. is Mary Terrell) in 1893. In 1895, Margaret Washington was first president of the National Federation of Afro-American Women. Two other African-American women made strides: Maggie Walker in 1903 was the first woman bank president in Baltimore, and Mary Bethune in 1904 founded a school for black girls in Florida (eventually a college). In 1906, Rev. William Seymour was a black preacher who led an interracial revival in California at the Azuza Street Mission that launched Pentecostalism – a religious movement that over the next century became the largest Christian movement in the world with the most racially diverse churches in history.
In 1896 the Supreme Court upheld segregation in its Plessy v. Ferguson. Some leaders began to organize in new ways. Ida B. Wells was a journalist, advocate for civil rights and an anti-lynching crusader who helped to found the National Association of Colored Women in 1896 and the Negro Fellowship League. Mary Terrell was president of the National Association of Colored Women and was active in the National American Suffrage Organization.
A shift away from Christian motivation and Republican party leadership began in the 1900s. In 1905 W. E. B. DuBois in New York issued a declaration calling for an end of voting restrictions and segregation. Wells, DuBois and several others helped start the National Association for the Advancement for Colored People (NAACP) on February 12, 1909. The National Urban League began a year later. These had good goals but some bad influences began to emerge. Unfortunately, DuBois rejected Christianity and was also a member of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society and wrote in support of socialism and Marxism. Although an effective voice against racism he marked the beginning of a non-Christian philosophy of government.
James Baldwin and Marcus Garvey were other non-Christian voices. Garvey began the black nationalism movement in 1916 (which even DuBois condemned). Racism infused other organizations such as Planned Parenthood which its founder Margaret Sanger believed would use birth control and abortion to reduce inferior races, mainly blacks.
The black cultural movement known as the Harlem Renaissance led by Langston Hughes had a mixture of both biblical and unbiblical philosophies being expressed. The first black movie star Paul Robeson was a Communist. In 1925, A. Philip Randolph, a secular Humanist, organized and served as the first President of the Black International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and became one of America’s foremost labor leader and civil rights pioneers. Carter Woodson was the father of the black history movement which was good at the time but which has now been captured by non-Christian ideologies.
Black History 1932-today
All of the blacks famous in the 19th century were identified with the Republican Party and virtually all blacks voted for that party for about 80 years. DuBois did an almost unthinkable thing in the minds of most blacks by endorsing the Democratic Party’s racist southern presidential candidate Woodrow Wilson in 1912. Unquestionably, the systemic racism of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, the KKK, and were owned by the Democratic Party, but the Republican Party leaders were ignoring their black voters, assuming they would always be loyal. A political shift was coming.
Seeking greater leverage the NAACP gave their endorsements in the 1920s between both Republican and Democratic Parties. After the stock market crash in 1928 and Great Depression began, some blacks became advisors to the new Democratic president Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1933 Mary M. Bethune was one who did so even though she identified as a Republican. Her faith in God was central to her work. She said: “Faith is the first factor in a life devoted to service. Without it, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible. Faith in God is the greatest power, but great, too, is faith in oneself….Our greatest Negro figures have been imbued with faith.”
FDR was reelected in 1936 with a significant shift of the black vote toward the Democratic Party for the first time due to the promise of economic aid. In 1935 John Lewis started a new integrated union called the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) after withdrawing from the all-white American Federation of Labor (AFL). Randolph organized a march on Washington in 1941. In 1942 James Farmer formed the nonviolent Congress of Racial Equality. Again, both Randolph and Farmer were secular Humanists.
FDR’s successor Harry Truman ordered the integration of the military after World War II and by 1948 a significant majority of blacks for the first time started identifying more with the Democratic Party (even though they had been voting that way for a decade or so).
Finally in 1954 the Supreme Court struck down segregation of schools and public institutions in its Brown v. Board of Education saying that separate is inherently unequal. This started the trend for integration of other public services with social pressure by people such as Rosa Parks, a Christian who refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955. In her church she said “I learned people should stand up for their rights, just as the Children of Israel stood up to the Pharaoh.” When she decided not to move from her seat she said: “I instantly felt God give me the strength to endure whatever would happen next….God’s peace flooded my soul, and my fear melted away. All people were equal in the eyes of God, and I was going to live like a free person.” It started a bus boycott organized by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. He and others organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference a year later.
A Philip Randolph, still a Republican, was the first African American to serve as an International Vice-President of the AFL-CIO in 1957, and he organized another major march on Washington, D.C. in 1963 that became famous for its speech by Rev. M. L. King. Although King and most of these were still identified with the Republican Party and most politicians in the South were of the Democratic Party, most national Democratic leaders began to embrace King’s “Dream” based on the Declaration of Independence ideals and on content of character rather than race. It was the connection of the Christian community to the ideals of the founders that made the civil rights movement successful where it was unable to be so when lacking that emphasis.
King’s faith, as a Baptist minister of the Gospel was central to his politics. Here are a few quotes: “We need to recapture the gospel glow of the early Christians who were nonconformists in the truest sense of the word . . . Their powerful gospel put an end to such barbaric evils as infanticide and bloody gladiatorial contests. Finally, they captured the Roman Empire for Jesus Christ.” He then challenged his hearers: “If any earthly institution or custom conflicts with God’s will, it is your Christian duty to oppose it. You must never allow the transitory, evanescent demands of man-made institutions to take precedence over the eternal demands of the Almighty God.” But Rev. King was clear where it starts: “By opening our lives to God in Christ, we become new creatures. This experience, which Jesus spoke of as the new birth, is essential if we are to be transformed nonconformists . . . Only through an inner spiritual transformation do we gain the strength to fight vigorously the evils of the world in a humble and loving spirit.” His Letter from a Birmingham Jail is one of the most important pieces of American literature that should be read as much as Washington’s Farewell Address. (For paid subscribers we have included King’s Letter. see below)
The year after the 1963 March on Washington Congress passed the Civil Rights Act banning discrimination in public Facilities, and then in 1965 the Civil Rights Act. Although more Republicans supported it than Democrats, the high-profile signing of it by President Lyndon Johnson of the Democratic Party made the overwhelming majority of blacks to begin supporting that party. A march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama continued to expose racism in the south still in the control of the Democrats. There were also riots by blacks in Los Angeles. But in 1966 the first black in a century was elected to the U.S. Senate, Edward Brooke, Republican of Massachusetts. And that same year the first black justice was appointed to the Supreme Court – Thurgood Marshall.
Although breakthrough was happening, riots still took place nationwide and in 1968 Dr. King was assassinated. But it did not succeed to stop the gradual acceptance of integration and respect of the rights of blacks in America. Rev. Andrew Young was U.N. ambassador in 1977. Dr. King was honored in 1983 when President Ronald Reagan made a national holiday in his honor. Other black leaders with Christian roots such as Rev. Jesse Jackson attempted to lead blacks but could not do so as effectively as King and the SCLC due to the liberalism and socialism that he articulated.
Clarence Thomas, a conservative Republican, joined the Supreme Court in 1989. In 1993 and again 2005 and 2009 Illinois sent a Democratic African-American to the Senate. In 2011 South Carolina did the same, but as a Republican. New Jersey sent a Democratic black man to the Senate in 2013.
In 1989 Colin Powell, also a member of the Republican Party, became the first Secretary of State in 2001. In 1990 the first black in over a century was elected as a Governor – Douglas Wilder a Democrat in Virginia. Barack Obama, a Democratic candidate, was elected the first African-American President in 2008 and appointed the first black to be Attorney General.
By the beginning of the 21st century the most popular religious leaders in America had become African Americans. Also the most popular television and movie stars, and singers. Likewise the most money-making in sports, top corporations, universities, hospitals, etc. Finally Barack Obama, a Democrat senator, was elected as President in 2008. The Democratic Party had become the dominant party for African-Americans over the last 80 years or so, but yet with an increasingly secular and non-Christian philosophy of public policy.
Summary of Providential Theory of Black History
Looking at the providential history of African Americans, it is clear that God raised up Christians to lead and bring Biblical progress. Using providential theory we have highlighted people who held to Biblical principles that brought healthy and true liberation. Ultimately what matters is not party or color, but transcendent truth.
But today godly leadership seems to be waning as secular and pagan philosophies take the lead. The natural family and biblical ideas of sexuality and gender, along with the transcendent principles of liberty articulated by the Founders and reaffirmed by Black leaders such as Douglass and King are under serious attack. Without those principles, real liberation is turned into licentiousness and will lead to decline and division of the nation. The wheat and the tares are growing together and a harvest is coming.
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Letter from Birmingham Jail is for paid subscribers below.
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