| Kwaku Walker Lewis | |
|---|---|
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1798-08-03)August 3, 1798 Barre, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | October 26, 1856(1856-10-26) (aged 58) Lowell, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Resting place | Lowell Cemetery |
| Spouse(s) | Elizabeth Lovejoy |
| Children | Enoch Lovejoy Lewis Lydia Elizabeth Walker Lucy Minor Lewis Walker Lovejoy Lewis |
| Parents | Peter P. Lewis Minor Walker |
Kwaku Walker Lewis[1] (August 3, 1798 – October 26, 1856), was an early African-Americanabolitionist,Freemason, andMormon elder fromMassachusetts. He was an active member of theUnderground Railroad and theanti-slavery movement.
Lewis was born on August 3, 1798, inBarre, Massachusetts, to Peter P. Lewis and Minor Walker Lewis. His full name was Kwaku Walker Lewis, named after his maternal uncle,Quock Walker also known as Kwaku Walker.[2] (Kwaku means "boy born on Wednesday" among theAkan people ofGhana.[3])
Lewis was one of nine children. He was raised in a prominent middle-class black family that valued education, activism and political involvement. As a young boy, Peter and Minor Lewis moved their family toCambridge. Walker Lewis was a successful barber who owned residential and commercial building inBoston.
In March 1826, Lewis married Elizabeth Lovejoy (themixed-race daughter of Peter Lovejoy, who was black, and Lydia Greenleaf Bradford, who waswhite). Their first child, Enoch Lovejoy Lewis, was born on May 20, 1826. Their second, Lydia Elizabeth, would be born the following year in November.
The Lewis family moved toLowell, where theIndustrial Revolution oftextile mills brought economic prosperity to the area. In Lowell, together with his brother-in-law John Levy, Lewis opened a barbershop on Merrimack Street. Lewis purchased a two-family home in the Centralville section of Lowell.
Lewis and many of his siblings and their families were actively involved in the abolition and equal rights movement throughout Massachusetts and theNortheast.
While in Boston, Lewis was initiated into African Freemasonry about 1823, participating in Boston's African Lodge #459 (Prince Hall Freemasonry). In 1825, he became the sixth Master and a year later was its Senior Warden. After the African Lodge declared its independence from the Grand Lodge of London and became its own African Grand Lodge, Walker Lewis was the Grand Master of African Grand Lodge #1 for 1829 and 1830.[4]
Around the time of his marriage to Elizabeth Lovejoy in 1826, Lewis andThomas Dalton helped organize theMassachusetts General Colored Association (MGCA), the first such all-black organization in the United States.
In 1829, the MGCA helpedDavid Walker (no relation) to publish the radical, 76-pageAppeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, which demanded unconditional and immediate emancipation of all slaves in the USA. Lewis arranged for the Boston printer who published the Articles for the African Grand Lodge, to print the controversialAppeal.[5]
In 1831, Lewis served as President of the African Humane Society in Boston, which provided funeral expenses for the poor, assisted widows, built the African School in Boston. The African Humane Society also sponsored a "settlement project" for African Americans who wanted to emigrate to settle inLiberia. When the ship sailed in 1813 its manifest contained most of the members of Hiram Lodge No. 3 ofProvidence, Rhode Island (chartered by Grand MasterPrince Hall of African Grand Lodge in 1797).[6]
In Lowell during the 1840s and 1850s, Lewis's home was a stop on the Underground Railroad. For some time, he shelteredfugitive Nathaniel Booth from Virginia, who settled in Lowell in 1844. Until 1850 Booth had a barber shop, but went to Canada after passage of theFugitive Slave Law of 1850. Later he returned to Lowell.[7]
Walker's son, Enoch ran a used clothing store, mainly to assist escaping slaves to change their appearances with new and better clothing. Walker wouldcut and style their hair to assist in their disguise.
| Black people and the Latter Day Saint movement |
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About 1842, Lewis, who had worshipped with theEpiscopal Church, converted to theChurch of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He is believed to have beenbaptized byParley P. Pratt.[8] One year later, in the summer of 1843, Lewis was ordained anelder byWilliam Smith, brother of founderJoseph Smith. Lewis became the third black man known to hold theMormon priesthood. (The first two wereElijah Abel andPeter Kerr.)[9]
Walker's first-born son, Enoch Lovejoy Lewis, also joined the church. On September 18, 1846, Enoch married a white Mormon woman, Mary Matilda Webster, in Cambridge.[8]
After settling in the Salt Lake Valley in 1848,Brigham Young announced a ban that prohibited all men of black African descent from holding thepriesthood.[10] In addition, he prohibited Mormons of African descent from participating in Mormontemple rites, such as theendowment orsealing. These racial restrictions remained in place until 1978, when the policy was rescinded bychurch presidentSpencer W. Kimball.[11]
Walker Lewis migrated to Utah to be with the main body of members ofthe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He left Massachusetts at the end of March 1851 and arrived inSalt Lake City about October 1. There he received hispatriarchal blessing fromPresiding PatriarchJohn Smith, an uncle of Joseph Smith.[12] He askedJane Elizabeth Manning James, a black Mormon fromConnecticut, to marry him as hispolygamous wife, but she declined.
Two months after Walker's arrival, Brigham Young lobbied for, and theUtah Territorial Legislature (composed only of high-ranking Mormon leaders) passed, theAct in Relation to Service. This new territorial law madeslavery legal in the territory of Utah, and Section Four of the statute provided punishment for "any white person... guilty ofsexual intercourse with any of the African race," regardless of their being married, consenting adults. Theanti-miscegenation law was not repealed in Utah until the 1960s.
Walker Lewis left Utah after six months the following spring, returning to Lowell. Hisdaughter-in-law Mary Matilda Webster Lewis subsequently died from "exhaustion" just after Christmas 1852 in the State Hospital atWorcester. His son, the widower Enoch Lewis, married the African-American Elisa Richardson Shorter in 1853.[13]
Lewis died on October 26, 1856, in Lowell oftuberculosis.
...a revelation had been received by President Spencer W. Kimball extending priesthood and temple blessings to all worthy male members of the Church.See also:Official Declaration—2.
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