TheAmerican Missionary Association (AMA) was aProtestant-basedabolitionist group founded on September 3, 1846 (179 years ago) (1846-09-03) inAlbany, New York. The main purpose of the organization wasabolition of slavery, education ofAfrican Americans, promotion of racial equality, and spreadingChristian values. Its members and leaders were of both races; the Association was chiefly sponsored by theCongregationalist churches in New England. The AMA played a significant role in several key historical events and movements, including the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights Movement.
In the 1850s it assisted the operation of theUnderground Railroad for men and women fleeing enslavement in the South. Starting in 1861, it opened camps in the South for former slaves. It played a major role during and after theReconstruction Era in promoting education for blacks in the South by establishing numerous schools and colleges, as well as paying for teachers. It helped establish Black churches and civic organizations. Its teachers and workers were targets ofwhite supremacy groups such as theKu Klux Klan. Outside the South it also promoted schools for Native Americans and immigrants. The AMA continued to play a role in the Civil Rights Movement in the 20th century, supporting the work of activists such asMartin Luther King Jr. and supporting legal efforts to desegregate public schools.
The American Missionary Association was started by members of theAmerican Home Missionary Society (AHMS) and theAmerican Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), who were disappointed that their first organizations refused to take stands against slavery and accepted contributions from slaveholders. From the beginning the leadership was integrated: the first board was made up of 12 men, four of them black.[1] One of its primary objectives was to abolish slavery. The AMA (American Missionary Association) was one of the organizations responsible for pushing slavery onto the national political agenda.[citation needed]
The organization started theAmerican Missionary magazine, published from 1846 through 1934.[2]
Among the AMA's achievements was the founding of anti-slavery churches. For instance, the abolitionistOwen Lovejoy was among the Congregational ministers of the AMA who helped start 115 anti-slavery churches in Illinois before theAmerican Civil War, building on the strong westward migration of population to that area.[3][4] Another member, Rev.Mansfield French, anEpiscopalian who became a Methodist, helped foundWilberforce University in Ohio.[5]
Members of the AMA began their support of education for blacks before the Civil War. Once war had begun, they recruited teachers for the numerouscontraband camps that developed in Union-occupied territory in the South. In slaveholding Union states, such as Kentucky, the AMA staffed schools for both the newly emancipatedUnited States Colored Troops and their families, such as at Camp Nelson, now known asCamp Nelson Heritage National Monument. Leading this effort wasRev. John Gregg Fee.[6]
Rev. French was assigned toPort Royal, South Carolina, and went on a speaking tour withRobert Smalls, who famously escaped enslavement, as well as met with PresidentAbraham Lincoln, Secretary of WarEdwin M. Stanton and Treasury SecretarySalmon P. Chase, jointly convincing them to allow blacks to serve in the Union military.[7] By war's end, Union forces had organized 100 contraband camps, and many had AMA teachers.
The AMA also served theRoanoke Island Freedmen's Colony (1863–1867). Located on an island occupied by Union troops, the colony was intended to be self-sustaining. It was supervised byHorace James, a Congregational chaplain appointed by the Army as "Superintendent for Negro Affairs in the North Carolina District". The first of 27 teachers who volunteered through the AMA was his cousin, Elizabeth James.[8] By 1864 the colony had more than 2200 residents, and both children and adults filled the classrooms in the several one-room schools, as they were eager for learning. The missionary teachers also evangelized and helped provide the limited medical care of the time.[8]
The AMA's pace of founding schools and colleges increased during and after the war.[9] Freedmen, historically free blacks (many of whom were "mulattoes" of mixed race), and white sympathizers alike believed that education was a priority for the newly freed people.
It created and supported Atlanta University, Hampton Institute, Fisk University; Talladega College; Tougaloo College; Straight College (now Dillard University); Tillotson College (now Huston-Tillotson); and LeMoyne College (now LeMoyne Owen). Altogether, "the AMA founded eleven colleges and more than five hundred schools for the freedmen of the South during and after the Civil War. It spent more money for that purpose than did theFreedmen's Bureau of the federal government."[1]
In addition, the AMA organized theFreedmen's Aid Society, which recruited northern teachers for the schools and arranged to find housing for them in the South.
In the mid-1870s, white Democrats began to regain control of state legislatures through violence and intimidation at the polls that suppressed Republican voting. The Association expressed disappointment at the failures of the Reconstruction Era but never wavered in opposing disenfranchisement and continued the struggle over the following decades.[10][11] By the 1870s, the AMA national office had relocated toNew York City.
While the AMA became widely known in the United States for its work in opposition to slavery and in support of education for freedmen, it also sponsored and maintained missions in numerous nations overseas. The 19th-century missionary effort was strong in India, China and east Asia. It was strongly supported by Congregational and Christian churches. Over time, the association became most closely aligned with theCongregational Christian Churches, established in 1931 as a union between those two groups of churches.
Most of those congregations became members of theUnited Church of Christ (UCC) in the late 20th century. The AMA maintained a distinct and independent identity until 1999, when a restructuring of the UCC merged it into theJustice and Witness Ministries division.
Its magazine,American Missionary, was published 1846–1934, and had a circulation of 20,000 in the 19th century, ten times that of the abolitionistWilliam Garrison's magazine.[1] TheCornell University Library has editions from 1878–1901 accessible online in itsMaking of America digital library.[2]
^Clifton H. Johnson, "The Amistad Incident and the Formation of the American Missionary Association",New Conversations, Vol. XI (Winter/Spring 1989), pp. 3-6
^Drago, Edmund L.(2006).Charleston's Avery Center: From Education and Civil Rights to Preserving the African American Experience, The History Press.ISBN978-1-59629-068-6
Anderson, Eric, and Alfred A. Moss, Jr.Dangerous Donations: Northern Philanthropy and Southern Black Education, 1902–1930 (University of Missouri Press, 1999)online book review
Beard, Augustus Field.A Crusade of Brotherhood: A History of the American Missionary Association (1907); the old official history that sings its praises with no analysis.online
Blanchard, F. Q. "A Quarter Century in the American Missionary Association."Journal of Negro Education (1937): 152-156.online
Brady, Patricia. "Trials and Tribulations: American Missionary Association Teachers and Black Education in Occupied New Orleans, 1863-1864."Louisiana History 31.1 (1990): 5-20.online
Click, Patricia C.Time Full of Trial: The Roanoke Island Freedmen's Colony, 1862-1867 (Univ of North Carolina Press, 2003).online
DeBoer, Clara Merritt.His truth is marching on: African Americans who taught the freedmen for the American Missionary Association, 1861-1877 (Routledge, 2016).
De Boer, Clara Merritt. "The Role of Afro-Americans in the Origin and Work of the American Missionary Association: 1839-1877" (PhD dissertation, Rutgers The State University of New Jersey; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1973. 7327914.
DRAKE, RICHARD BRYANT. "THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION AND THE SOUTHERN NEGRO, 1861-1888" (PhD dissertation, Emory University; ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1957. 5805136).
Fuke, Richard Paul. "Land, Lumber, and Learning: The Freedmen's Bureau, Education, and the Black Community in Post-Emancipation Maryland" inThe Freedmen's Bureau and Reconstruction: Reconsiderations, Edited by Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller (Fordham UP, 1999) pp: 288-314..
Goldhaber, Michael. "A mission unfulfilled: Freedmen's education in North Carolina, 1865-1870."Journal of Negro History 77#4 (1992): 199-210.in JSTOR
Harrold, Stanley.The abolitionists and the South, 1831-1861 (University Press of Kentucky, 1995).
Johnson, Charles S. "The American Missionary Association Institute of Race Relations."Journal of Negro Education (1944): 568-574.online
Jones, Jacqueline. "Women who were more than men: Sex and status in freedmen's teaching."History of Education Quarterly 19#1 (1979): 47-59.in JSTOR
McPherson, James M.The struggle for equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction (Princeton University Press, 1964)online
McPherson, James M.The abolitionist legacy: From reconstruction to the NAACP (Princeton University Press, 1995).online
Pearce, Larry Wesley. "The American Missionary Association and the Freedmen in Arkansas, 1863-1878." Arkansas Historical Quarterly 30.2 (1971): 123-144.online
Richardson, E. Allen. "Architects of a Benevolent Empire: The Relationship Between the American Missionary Association and the Freedmen's Bureau in Virginia, 1865-1872" inThe Freedmen's Bureau and Reconstruction: Reconsiderations, Edited by Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller (Fordham UP, 1999) pp: 119-139.
Richardson, Joe M.Christian Reconstruction: The American Missionary Association and Southern Blacks, 1861-1890 (University of Alabama Press, 2009).excerpt; The standard history.
Richardson, Joe M., and Maxine D. Jones.Education for Liberation: The American Missionary Association and African Americans, 1890 to the Civil Rights Movement (University Alabama Press, 2015); for secondary schools.
Richardson, Joe M. "Christian abolitionism: The American missionary association and the Florida Negro."Journal of Negro Education 40.1 (1971): 35-44.online
Richardson, Joe M. " 'We Are Truly Doing Missionary Work': Letters from American Missionary Association Teachers in Florida, 1864-1874."Florida Historical Quarterly 54.2 (1975): 178-195.online
Richardson, Joe M. "The Negro in post Civil-War Tennessee: A report by a northern missionary."Journal of Negro Education 34.4 (1965): 419-424.online
Richardson, Joe M. "Fisk University: The First Critical Years."Tennessee Historical Quarterly 29.1 (1970): 24-41.online
Vaughn, William Preston.Schools for All: The Blacks and Public Education in the South, 1865–1877 (1974).online
Weisenfeld, Judith. "'Who is Sufficient For These Things?'Sara G. Stanley and the American Missionary Association, 1864–1868."Church History 60#4 (1991): 493-507.in JSTOR
Zipf, Karin L. "" Among These American Heathens": Congregationalist Missionaries and African American Evangelicals during Reconstruction, 1865-1878."North Carolina Historical Review 74.2 (1997): 111-134.online
