Minister, politician, and the 12th elected and consecrated bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), Henry McNeal Turner, was born a “free Black” in New Berry Courthouse, South Carolina on February 1, 1834. His paternal grandparents were a White woman planter and an African man, who was rumored to be an African prince. According to slave law in the colony, the White woman’s mixed-race children were born free because she was White and free. His mother Sarah, and maternal grandmother raised him, and even though he was born a free person, he nonetheless experienced the harsh realities of prejudice and racism. He worked alongside enslaved Africans from sun-up to sundown for meager earnings in South Carolina cotton fields.
In winter months, he labored in a blacksmith shop, watched over by harsh, White overseers. When Turner was “eight or nine years old,” he had a dream that was both prophetic and propelling. He interpreted the dream as God “marking him” for great things. This became a “guiding star” in Turner’s life—a point that he would always reflect on when times got tough. It also gave him a passion for education. This was no easy task, however, as state laws forbade Blacks to attend school or learn to read and write. After managing to obtain a spelling book, Turner attempted to learn how to read and write with the help of people in his community. However, each time he would begin to study, others would find out and have the teaching stopped. Turner, therefore, decided to teach himself.
By the age of 14, he worked as a janitor at a law firm in Abbeville, South Carolina. The firm’s lawyers noted his “astonishing memory, honed by memorizing passages of scripture abilities and helped with his education". They took notice of his “quick mind” and his “eagerness to learn,” and furthered Turner’s education by teaching him “arithmetic, astronomy, geography, history, law and even theology,” which he greatly appreciated. During this time, Turner was inspired by a Methodist revival and swore to become a pastor. Turner not only taught himself how to read and write, but by the time he was fifteen he had read the entire Bible five times and memorized lengthy passages of scripture, which helped him develop a very strong memory. He received his preacher's license at the age of 19 from the Southern Methodist Church in 1853. Turner traveled through the South for a few years as an evangelist and exhorter.
In 1856, at the age of 22, he married Eliza Peacher, the daughter of a wealthy Black contractor from Columbia, South Carolina. One of the first places he preached was Macon, Georgia, where he received a warm welcome from both African American and White audiences. It was here that his education from the lawyers in Abbeville served him well. Turner surprised many in the audience with the amount of knowledge he displayed. Benjamin Tanner, who later became an opponent to Turner’s emigration plans wrote, “that when they heard him quote history, ecclesiastical and profane, some of the White people declared him to be a White man galvanized.” Turner was also instrumental at conducting a series of revivals in Athens, Georgia during the spring of 1858.
In 1858, he moved his family to St. Louis, Missouri, to escape the possible kidnapping of his family by ruthless slave catchers who received bounties for catching escaped slaves. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 had increased incentives for the capture of refugee slaves. Slave catchers often rounded up free Black men, women, and children because it required little to no documentation to prove that someone was enslaved. While in St. Louis, Turner was ordained as a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, the first Black Christian denomination in the United States. He had become disillusioned with the Southern Methodist Church because they did not allow African Americans to become ordained or to become bishops. He had learned about the AME Church during a visit to New Orleans for a preaching assignment where he also met Willis H. Revels, pastor of the St. James AME Church.
Turner was thoroughly impressed, as he had not heard of this denomination before and the fact that this was a Black Methodist denomination, complete with Black bishops and pastors, only intrigued Turner more. However, while documents show that Turner later wrote that he joined the church immediately after Revels invitation, he kept his standing as a licensed minister for the Southern Methodist Church for almost a year after meeting with Revels. While Turner had enjoyed some success as a Southern Methodist preacher, it was after he joined the AME Church that his preaching career really took off. Turner moved his family to the Washington, DC area to serve area AME churches at the outbreak of the Civil War. It was near the heart of government and the war in Virginia. It is here where he developed ties with different politicians who would often hear him preach at the area churches.
Turner befriended “powerful Republican politicians” such as Thaddeus Stevens, Salmon Chase, Benjamin Wade, and Charles Sumner. Since Turner’s church was within walking distance from the Capitol, Turner invited his newfound friends to speak to the Black citizens of the city, and he spent hours in the Capitol listening to debates and arguments on the floor of the House of Representatives and the Senate Chamber. Turner quickly learned about the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, about politics, and the art of deliberative oratory. During this time, Turner also started a lyceum at Israel Church, in which he served as president and participated in debates about these and many other issues of the day. Turner also became a regular correspondent for the Christian Recorder, the AME’s weekly newspaper. Later he wrote about the condition of his parishioners in postwar Georgia.
Turner had already become a national figure when in 1863, during the Civil War, at the age of 29 he was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln to the position of Chaplain in the Union Army. Turner was attached to 1st Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops, making him the first African American chaplain in the history of the United States Army. In this capacity, he also became a war correspondent and published many articles in the Christian Recorder about the trials and tribulations of the First Regiment of U.S. Colored Troops. During this time period, his reputation as spokesman and leader spread throughout the USCT and eventually throughout the country. Turner regularly preached to the men while they trained and reminded them that the "destiny of their race depended on their loyalty and courage". When the Civil War ended, The Freedmen’s Bureau assigned him to Georgia as Army Chaplain as part of the church's missionary effort in the South.
Turner became politically active with the Republican Party, during the Reconstruction era, whose officials had led the war effort and, under Abraham Lincoln, emancipated the slaves throughout the Confederacy. In 1867 he organized for the Republican Party in Georgia. The following year was elected a delegate to the Georgia State Constitutional Convention. In the same year, Turner ran for political office from Macon and was elected to the Georgia Legislature in 1868. At the time, the Democratic Party still controlled the legislature and declared the African American members disqualified and refused to seat them, all of them Republicans. The U.S. Congress intervened and allowed Turner to reclaim his legislative seat in 1870 but he was not reelected in an election marred by fraud.
After his ouster from the Georgia state legislature, President Ulysses S. Grant appointed Turner postmaster of Macon, Georgia. He was forced to resign in a few weeks under pressure from local Democrats. Turner abandoned politics and moved to Savannah, Georgia where he took a position as a customs inspector. After resigning from his position as customs inspector, Turner focused his efforts on building the AME Church in the South. His primary goal was to increase membership and build churches. While serving as pastor of St. Phillips AME Church, Turner became the first AME Bishop to ordain a woman, Sarah Ann Hughes, to the office of deacon. He also wrote "The Genius and Theory of Methodist Polity" in 1885 as a guide to the policies and practices of the AME Church.
While serving in the army, Turner had refined his thinking about the African race and its future in America. By the late 1870s Turner became increasingly disillusioned with the inability of African Americans to achieve social justice in the United States. He thought it was the only way they could make free and independent lives for themselves. He proposed emigration back to Africa, an idea much discussed in the antebellum period but which all but disappeared during the Civil War and Reconstruction. By 1880 Turner had become one of the leading advocates of emigration, particularly to Liberia. In 1883, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which forbid racial discrimination in public places, such as hotels and trains, was ruled unconstitutional.
Turner founded the International Migration Society, supported by his own newspapers: The Voice of Missions and later The Voice of the People. He organized two ships with a total of 500 or more emigrants, who traveled to Liberia in 1895 and 1896. This was established as an American colony by the American Colonization Society before the Civil War. During the 1890s, Turner sailed four times to Liberia and Sierra Leone. The former, at one time an American colony, had gained independence. The latter was still a British colony. As bishop, Turner organized four annual AME conferences in Africa to introduce more American Blacks to the continent and organize missions in these two English-speaking jurisdictions. Disliking the lack of economic opportunity, cultural shock, and widespread tropical diseases, some of the migrants returned to the United States. After that, Turner did not organize another expedition.
Turner also worked to establish the AME Church in South Africa, where he negotiated a merger with the Ethiopian Church. Due to his efforts, Black African students from South Africa began coming to the United States to attend Wilberforce University in Ohio. With the rise of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois as leaders in the Black community, Turner’s influence began to wane. Although he never completely relinquished his emigration ideas and remained in touch with numerous African leaders, Turner increasingly devoted the remainder of his life to church work. He served as chair of the board of Morris Brown College from 1896-1908, and kept a busy schedule up to the end of his life. He died in Ontario, Canada on May 8th , 1915, while traveling on AME Church business.