From Mississippi and Memphis to Mozambique: American emancipation and the evangelical struggles of Benjamin and Henrietta Ousley and Nancy Jones, “ex-slave” missionaries in “Zulu East Africa,” 1850s–1900

Abstract

ABSTRACT Soon after Emancipation a trio of formerly enslaved preachers relocated to the Portuguese colony of Mozambique. Supported by an American mission organization, their outpost named Kambini became a site of conversion and literacy. A nearby white colleague, Rev. William Wilcox, had another plan. He linked proselytization to the operation of a cashew plantation that used local labor. Having enduring plantation bondage in Mississippi, two of the three Black evangelists wanted to make Kambini a beacon of Christianity that removed the sins of slavery in “Africa … [and the] Southern States.” This article analyzes the resulting conflict between the white and Black missionaries’ aims.