This month in Virginia the American Baptist Home Mission society establishes the Richmond Institute, a school devoted to the training of African American preachers and teachers. Twenty-four initially enroll, and the classes are held at night. The following year the name of the school is changed to the National Theological Institute of Richmond, and in…
Northern Baptist minister Charles Henry Corey, a representative of the American Baptist Home Mission Society and active in preaching to Union troops and working among freedmen during the war, has in recent months assisted freedmen in establishing churches and schools. This month the Canadian native Corey returns to Charleston, where he had previously been stationed…
Born a slave on June 29, 1849 in Charleston, South Carolina, as a child William J. Simmons was given freedom when one of “conflicting parties over a will” sent him, two siblings and his mother to the North. In Bordertown, New Jersey, young Simmons apprenticed as a dentist. Then came the war. When blacks were…