American Missionary Association

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The American Missionary Association (AMA) was a Protestant organization that set itself the goal of slave liberation ( abolitionism ) and was founded on September 3, 1846 in Albany, New York . To this end, the group was committed to the education of African Americans , to the implementation of racial equality and Christian values. The members and leaders were of both races; the association was mainly supported by the National Council of the Congregational Churches of the United States in New England . From 1861 the organization also had camps in the south for freed slaves. During the Reconstruction era it played a major role in the education of "blacks" in the south.

history

The American Missionary Association was founded by members of the American Home Missionary Society (AHMS) and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) because they were disappointed that their parent organizations refused to speak out against slavery and accepted donations from slave owners. From the beginning, the management was made up of equal numbers: the first committee consisted of 12 men, four of whom were black. One of the main goals was the abolition of slavery and indeed the AMA managed to put the abolition of slavery on the political agenda.

The organization published the American Missionary magazine (1846-1934). One result of the work was the establishment of Anti-Slavery Churches . The abolitionist Owen Lovejoy was also a pastor of the AMA and founded 115 anti-slavery churches in Illinois before the Civil War .

AMA support for black education began before the Civil War when the Association recruited teachers for the numerous Contraband camps that developed in the south during the war. At the end of the war there were around 100 Contraband camps and AMA teachers were stationed in many of them. The AMA also oversaw the Roanoke Island Freedmen's Colony (1863-1867). The colony, located on an island and secured by Union troops, should function in a self-organized manner. She was cared for by Horace James , a Congregationalist and chaplain who was appointed by the Army as Superintendent for Negro Affairs in the North Carolina District. The first of 27 teachers who taught there through the AMA was his cousin Elizabeth James . In 1864 the colony had more than 2,200 residents and both children and adults filled the rooms of several one-room schools, eager to learn. The mission teachers also evangelized and helped distribute the then limited medical supplies.

Reconstruction

During and after the war, the AMA accelerated the creation of schools and colleges. Freedmen, that is, free African-Americans, and white sympathizers considered education to be a priority for newly liberated slaves. In total, the Association established more than 500 schools and colleges for the freedmen from the south. She spent more money on it than the federal government 's Freedmen's Bureau .

Colleges the Association established included Berea College , Atlanta University , (1865); Fisk University , (1866); Hampton Institute (1868), Tougaloo College , (1869); Dillard University , Talladega College , LeMoyne-Owen College , Huston-Tillotson University , and Avery Normal Institute (1867) (now part of the College of Charleston ). Together with the Freedmen's Bureau , the AMA founded Howard University in Washington, DC in 1867. In addition, the AMA organized the Freedmen's Aid Society , which recruited teachers from the north and provided them with apartments in the south.

In the 1870s, however, the Association proclaimed "Black liberation was a failure and the freedmen were ungrateful for the organization's many efforts to get them."

During this time the headquarters of the AMA had been relocated to New York City . The magazine, American Missionary , had a circulation of 20,000 in the 19th century. That was ten times the abolitionist magazine from William Lloyd Garrison .

In addition to working in the United States to support the freedmen and the abolition of slavery, the AMA has also sent missionaries to numerous overseas countries. The main fields of work were India , China and East Asia .

Over time, the AMA became more closely linked to the Congregational Christian Churches , which later became part of the United Church of Christ (UCC). The AMA retained its identity until 1999, when a reorganization of the UCC merged the AMA with the Justice and Witness Ministries Division .

The American Missionary Association's files are housed at the Amistad Research Center , Tulane University, New Orleans.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Clara Merritt DeBoer: Blacks and the American Missionary Association , United Church of Christ, 1973, accessed January 12, 2009.
  2. ↑ Some of the copies are available in the Cornell University Library in the Making of America Digital Library . "The Missionary Magazine" (1878-1901) , Making of America , Cornell University Library, March 3, 2009.
  3. ^ Clifton H. Johnson: The Amistad Incident and the Formation of the American Missionary Association. In: New Conversations, Vol. XI, Winter / Spring 1989: 3-6.
  4. ^ Paul Simon: "Preface", Owen Lovejoy, His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838-1864 , edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Anne Moore, University of Illinois Press, 2004, accessed January 27, 2011
  5. ↑ a b "The Roanoke Island Freedmen's Colony" ( Memento of the original from September 29, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , provided by National Park Service, at North Carolina Digital History: LEARN NC, accessed November 11, 2010. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.learnnc.org
  6. ^ "The AMA founded more than five hundred schools and colleges for the freedmen of the South during and after the Civil War, spending more money for that purpose than the Freedmen's Bureau of the federal government." Clara Merritt DeBoer: Blacks and the American Missionary Association , United Church of Christ, 1973, accessed January 12, 2009.
  7. ^ "Pronounced black suffrage a failure and the freedmen ungrateful for the organization's many efforts on their behalf." Eric Foner: Reconstruction. New York: Harper & Row, 1988: 527.

literature

  • Augustus Field Beard: A Crusade of Brotherhood: A History of the American Missionary Association (1907); the old official history. on-line
  • Patricia C. Click: Time Full of Trial: The Roanoke Island Freedmen's Colony, 1862-1867 (Univ. Of North Carolina Press, 2003). on-line
  • Michael Goldhaber: A mission unfulfilled: Freedmen's education in North Carolina, 1865-1870. In: Journal of Negro History 77 # 4, 1992: 199-210. in JSTOR
  • Stanley Harrold: The abolitionists and the South, 1831-1861 University Press of Kentucky, 1995.
  • Jacqueline Jones: Women who were more than men: Sex and status in freedmen's teaching. In: History of Education Quarterly 19 # 1, 1979: 47-59. in JSTOR
  • Robert C. Morris: Reading, Writing, and Reconstruction: The Education of Freedmen in the South, 1861-1870. University of Chicago Press 1981.
  • Joe M. Richardson: Christian Reconstruction: The American Missionary Association and Southern Blacks, 1861-1890 University of Alabama Press 2009. excerpt ; The standard history.
  • Judith Weisenfeld: Who is Sufficient For These Things? Sara G. Stanley and the American Missionary Association, 1864-1868. In: Church History 60 # 4, 1991: 493-507. in JSTOR

Web links