Like Henry Highland Garnet, Alexander Crummell embraced the controversial belief that African Americans could, and should, return to Africa to colonize the nation of Liberia. As a religious leader and an intellectual, he advocated for educational opportunities and leadership among young Black Americans. Born March 3rd in New York City in 1819, his father had been an enslaved man from West Africa but had been freed. His mother had been born a free Black woman in the United States. The Crummells were members of the Protestant Episcopal Church. His parents were active abolitionists and their home was used to publish the first African American newspaper, Freedom’s Journal, which promoted the abolition of the slave trade.
Alexander was strongly encouraged by his father to take part in the struggle for African American rights and as a young boy he would work for the American Anti-Slavery Society, an experience that would shape him for the rest of his life. Crummell attended the Quaker-operated New York African School as a young man. Among his classmates were other future Black leaders: Henry Highland Garnett, Ira Aldridge, and Samuel Ringgold Ward. After graduating from the Canal Street High School, Alexander started at Noyes Academy in New Hampshire; however, he wasn’t there for long as the school was soon attacked and destroyed by an angry mob opposed to Black students. Crummell next enrolled in the Oneida Institute in central New York, a hotbed of abolitionism.
During his studies at the Oneida Institute in central New York, Alexander realized his calling was to become an Episcopal (Protestant) priest, while his talent as a preacher ensured him a place as a keynote speaker at an anti-slavery convention in 1840. Crummell applied to the General Theological Seminary in New York City but was rejected. He informally attended lectures at Yale University and studied privately with clergymen in New England. In 1842 he was ordained to the diaconate and two years later to the priesthood by the Bishop of Delaware. He quickly realized that racism within the Episcopal Church hierarchy in America was endemic. While in New England he married Sarah Mabritt Elston of New York, and worked as a correspondent for the Colored American.
Crummell took his first charge as an Episcopalian minister in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1844 he established a small mission in Philadelphia where he became involved in politics including the campaign for equal suffrage and the abolition of slavery. He was refused admission to the Diocese of Pennsylvania, because of his race. He returned to his native New York where he organized a congregation of poor, hardworking Negroes. Six years later, he went to England. While in England he preached, spoke about abolitionism in the United States and raised nearly $2,000. With the sponsorship of the historian Thomas Macaulay, he entered Queens's College, Cambridge University between 1849-1853. Crummell was the first African American to study at Queen’s College, Cambridge. He was joined by his wife and two sons but struggled to complete his studies because of his own poor health and the death of one of his children.
Nevertheless, after failing at his first attempt, he managed to obtain his Bachelor’s degree in theology in 1853. It was while studying at Cambridge that Alexander developed his theory of Pan-Africanism, which became his central belief for the advancement of the African race. He believed that all those of African descent in the Americas, West Indies and Africa should unite as one race; this racial solidarity would therefore—in theory—prevent slavery, discrimination and continued attacks on African people throughout the world. While in Cambridge, Crummell hosted the abolitionist lecturer William Wells Brown, who had escaped slavery in 1834. Crummell continued to travel around Great Britain and became an outspoken advocate for the abolition of slavery and the removal of legal restrictions on Black Americans, as well as the right to vote. Rather than returning home, Crummell applied to go to Liberia as a missionary, fulfilling a long-standing wish.
As an early vocal advocate of the colonization of Liberia, Crummell served at four parishes and on the faculty of Liberia College. He was appointed professor of English and moral philosophy. On his return from the United States in 1865, Crummell was relieved of his professorial duties, and he returned to missionary work. Crummell believed Black Americans needed a moral and spiritual revival and viewed Liberia as the place to accomplish this. Here was an opportunity to create a model Christian republic where Blacks could experience a racial uplift with the Episcopal Church providing a moral and rational discipline. Making frequent visits to the United States, he advocated the emigration of Blacks to Africa and for African self-help. Crummell’s pan-African ideals are expressed in the essay “The Relations and Duty of Free Colored Men in America to Africa” (1860) and in The Future of Africa, published in 1862, a treatise on what would later be called Black nationalism. Crummell began to preach that "enlightened," or ethnic Africans in the U.S and the West Indies had a duty to go to Africa.
There, they would help civilize and Christianize the continent. When enough native Africans had been converted, they would take over converting the rest of the population, while those from the western hemisphere would work to educate the people and run a republican government. Crummell influenced Liberian intellectual and religious life, as preacher, prophet, social analyst, and educationist, proclaiming a special place for Africa in the history of redemption, as it had God-given moral and religious potential. He wanted Liberia to be marked by democratic institutions, flourishing arts and letters, commerce, and law, and to that end Christian teaching was necessary. His travels in the interior of the country are described in letters published in the Episcopal journal Spirit of Missions.
But, Crummell never realized his grand scheme. The majority of Black Americans were more interested in gaining equal rights in the United States than going to colonize or convert Africans. In 1873, fearing his life was in danger from the mulatto ascendancy, Crummell returned to the United States. Crummell continued to be a spokesman for his community and a champion of higher education especially in the face of segregation in the southern states. In 1875 Crummell to began “missionary work at large to the colored people”, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Washington DC., the first independent Black Episcopal church in the city. He focused on founding and strengthening urban Black congregations that would provide worship, education, and social services for their communities. They raised funds to construct a new church in the Columbia Heights area, beginning in 1876, and celebrated Thanksgiving in 1879 in it.
A collection of his sermons, "The Greatness of Christ and Other Sermons", was published in 1882. Crummell favored a program of self-help and separate economic development and recommended the establishment of Black schools. An essay, “The Black Woman of the South: Her Neglects and Her Needs” (1883), outlines an education program for poor Black women suffering the effects of slavery. In 1883 when the Southern Bishops proposed that all Black congregations become separate missionary districts, Crummell organized the Conference of Church Workers Among the Colored People. Their agenda was to lobby and fight for the full inclusion and participation of Blacks in the life of the Church at the congregational level, in seminaries, at diocesan conventions, and General Convention. Under the leadership of Rev. Crummell, separate and unequal was not formally placed in the canons or polity of the church.
A collection of essays and speeches addressing the concerns of Black people in "America, Africa and America: Addresses and Discourses", was published in 1891. Despite his failing health, he continued to travel and lecture widely. His autobiography, "The Shades and the Lights of a Fifty Years’ Ministry", was published in 1894. After his 1894 retirement from the ministry at St. Luke, he taught at Howard University (1895–97). On March 5th, 1897 he founded the American Negro Academy, America’s first major Black scholarly society. Crummell created the Academy to promote literature, science, and art, to defend African Americans against racist scholarship. Crummell believed that Black leadership must be grounded in high intellectual achievement, and the Academy embodied that conviction. Its members produced influential works on sociology, history, theology, and race relations—often countering pseudoscientific racism prevalent in the late 19th century. Its mission aligned closely with the emerging Talented Tenth philosophy, emphasizing rigorous scholarship as a tool of racial uplift. Notable members included W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Mr. Crummell died in Red Bank, New Jersey in 1898 at the age of seventy-nine.
The great contradiction of Alexander Crummell’s life was that he was a passionate abolitionist and advocator for African American rights, but also a supporter of the colonization of Liberia and the—often forced—conversion of African natives by African Americans. Crummell was an important voice within the abolition movement and a leader of the Pan-African ideology. Crummell inspired his peers and exerted his influence on other Black nationalists and Pan-Africanists, such as Marcus Garvey, and W.E.B. Du Bois. He never stopped working for a better world for Black people. Du Bois paid tribute to Crummell with a memorable essay entitled "Of Alexander Crummell", collected in his 1903 book, "The Souls of Black Folk".
"I saw Alexander Crummell first at a Wilberforce commencement season, amid its bustle and crush. Tall, frail, and black he stood, with simple dignity and an unmistakable air of good breeding. I talked with him apart, where the storming of the lusty young orators could not harm us. I spoke to him politely, then curiously, then eagerly, as I began to feel the fineness of his character, his calm courtesy, the sweetness of his strength, and his fair blending of the hope and truth of life. Instinctively I bowed before this man, as one bows before the prophets of the world." —W. E. B. Du Bois.