THE BLACK ATLANTIC MISSIONARY MOVEMENT AND AFRICA, 1780s-1920s

Abstract

AbstractOver a period of 150 years African American missionaries sought to spread the Christian Gospel in the 'Black Atlantic' region formed by the Americas, Africa and Britain. Relatively few in number, they have been largely ignored by most historians of mission. As blacks in a world dominated by persistent slavery, ideas of scientific racism and also by colonialism, their lot was rarely a comfortable one. Often called, by a belief in 'divine providence', to the Caribbean and Africa, when employed by white mission agencies they were invariably treated as second-class colleagues. From the late 1870s new African American mission bodies sent men and women to the mission field. However, by the 1920s, black American missionaries were viewed with alarm by the colonial authorities as challenging prevailing racial ideas and they were effectively excluded from most of Africa.