Black history’s heroes: The Rev. Henry McNeal Turner, pastor and founder of Georgia Republican Party
Christopher Tremoglie
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As many in our country repeatedly lament about a “separation between church and state,” mixing those two “worked out well for Henry McNeal Turner.” Turner, a legend, was a pastor, politician, and one of the founders of Georgia’s Republican Party. He accomplished a lot during his life and was a prominent and influential figure, but most people aren’t aware of his valuable contributions to our country’s history.
Turner was of humble origin and was born a free man in South Carolina in 1834. His mother and grandmother raised him. Due to laws in the state at the time that prevented black people from being taught how to read and write, Turner was autodidactic. Later, he obtained a job as a janitor at a white law firm. His talents were recognized, and the firm’s lawyers refined his skills and helped Turner further his education.
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By the age of 19, Turner felt the church was calling him, and he became a licensed minister at the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He traveled all over the country as a pastor, preaching the word of God. In 1858, he enrolled at Trinity College in Baltimore and studied theology and the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew languages. By 1860, he was ordained a deacon and, by 1862, a church elder.
During the Civil War, Turner helped organize one of the first black troop units in Company B of the First United States Colored Troops. He aided with soldier recruitment, and President Abraham Lincoln commissioned him as chaplain of the Union Army, the first black chaplain in any military branch in the nation’s history.
After the Civil War, Turner’s rise to prominence continued. He moved to Georgia and helped with the state’s Reconstruction efforts. He served in the 1867 Georgia Constitutional Convention and was appointed Macon’s postmaster by President Ulysses S. Grant. In addition to his political accomplishments, Turner continued his work in the church and became pastor of the St. Philip AME Church in Savannah.
He also helped organize and establish the Georgia Republican Party and later helped establish the first Republican State Convention. He diligently recruited black people to the Republican Party and mobilized voters throughout the state. He was elected as a Georgia state representative. However, he was later removed from office after white Democrats disqualified him “from holding office” because of his skin color.
By the 1870s, Turner’s political career faced significant resistance from the white Democrats in the state who did not want black people serving in office. He witnessed the numerous atrocities committed by these people that suppressed and disenfranchised black voters. He saw the country pass the Civil Rights Act of 1875 and the Supreme Court ruling that this legislation was unconstitutional in 1883.
“The world has never witnessed such barbarous laws entailed upon a free people as have grown out of the decision of the United States Supreme Court, issued October 15, 1883. For that decision alone authorized and now sustains all the unjust discriminations, proscriptions and robberies perpetrated by public carriers upon millions of the nation’s most loyal defenders,” Turner wrote about the court’s decision.
“It fathers all the ‘Jim Crow cars’ into which colored people are huddled and compelled to pay as much as the whites, who are given the finest accommodations. It has made the ballot of the black man a parody, his citizenship a nullity and his freedom a burlesque. It has engendered the bitterest feeling between the whites and blacks, and resulted in the deaths of thousands, who would have been living and enjoying life today.”
The racial discrimination against black people led by the country’s Democrats led Turner to favor policies of black nationalism and emigration to Africa. He combined politics and religion again as he traveled there four times during the 1890s but also promoted Christianity abroad in the western and southern parts of the continent.
Throughout his life, Turner accomplished much. He changed the course of history in the state of Georgia. He was a pastor, a politician, a pioneer, a renegade, a political organizer, an innovator, and a scholar. He helped black people vote and run for office. Turner devoted the remainder of his life to civil rights problems and church work. He later moved to Canada, where he died in 1915.
Henry McNeal Turner is a black history hero. And most importantly, he is one of America’s heroes too.
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