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BISHOP HENRY MCNEAL TURNER

© Maisah B. Robinson, Ph.D.

Henry McNeal Turner was born free on February 1, 1834, in Newberry Courthouse, South Carolina. He was raised by his teenage mother, Sarah Turner and his Grandmother, Hannah Greer. It was his Grandmother who instilled in him a sense of pride in his African heritage. Henry M. Turner spent his early childhood in the cotton fields of South Carolina. He left the cotton fields and moved to the city and worked as a janitor in a law office. On this job he was exposed to books on philosophy, religion and the law; as a result, he was able to learn to read and write.

In 1853, at the age of nineteen, and after a powerful religious experience, he decided to enter the ministry. He was ordained as a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church of the South. In 1858 Turner moved to the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church because he was swayed by their espousal of black pride and the need to worship in a way that was Afro-centric, as opposed to Euro-centric. As a theologian Turner spent much of his time explaining the relationship between God, African and world history, and the struggle for equality of Black people in America.

When the Civil War broke out, Turner encouraged African American men to enlist. He was so successful that he was commissioned as Chaplain of the African American troops. After the war, he was named to a prestigious post with the Freedmen’s Bureau.

During Reconstruction, Turner focused on politics and the plight of the African American populace. In 1867 he was a primary organizer for the Republican Party in Georgia. He was elected as a delegate to the Georgia State Constitutional Convention. In 1868 he was elected to a seat in the Georgia State Legislature. Although 32 African Americans were elected to the Georgia legislature in 1868, by 1869, Bishop Henry M. Turner and other blacks elected to the state legislature were disqualified to be seated in the State House by a coalition of white Republicans and Democrats. Georgia refused to ratify the Fifteenth Amendment, which stated that the right to vote would not “be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

Turner subsequently held the post of Postmaster of Macon, Georgia and Customs Agent of Savannah, Georgia. The University of Pennsylvania awarded him the title of Doctor of Literature in 1872 and Wilberforce University awarded him the title of Doctor of Divinity in 1873. In 1880 Henry M. Turner became a Bishop in the AME Church, after receiving private instruction at Trinity College. He was also the publisher of the AME church’s weekly newspaper “Christian Recorder.” He used this newspaper to espouse his Black Nationalist views. Bishop Turner spoke out against illegal acts perpetrated against blacks and against American involvement in the Spanish American War. He was also the leading proponent of a “Back To Africa” movement during the 1880s and 1890s.

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