Alexander Crummell, priest, missionary, and educator was born on March 3, 1819 in New York City wished to study for the priesthood, but received many rebuffs because he was black and struggled against racism all his life. As a young man he was driven out of an academy in New Hampshire, dismissed as a candidate for Holy Orders in New York and rejected for admittance to General Seminary.
He was ordained in the Diocese of Massachusetts in 1844, when he was 25 years old, but was excluded from a meeting of priests of the diocese (diocesan convention), and decided to go to England. After graduating from Cambridge, he went to Liberia, an African country founded under American auspices for the repatriation of freed slaves as a missionary.
Crummell hoped to see established in Liberia a black Christian republic combining the best of European and African culture, and led by a Western-educated black bishop. He visited the United States and urged blacks to join him in Liberia and swell the ranks of the church there. On returning to Liberia he worked to establish a national Episcopal Church. His work in Liberia ran into political opposition and indifference, along with a lack of funding which forced him to return to the United States.
Rev. Crummell concentrated his efforts on establishing a strong presence to strengthen the urban black congregations that would provide worship, education, and social services for their communities. When some southern bishops proposed a separate missionary district for black parishes, he organized a national group called the Conference of Church Workers Among the Colored People to fight the proposal. and now known as the Union of Black Episcopalians, to fight the proposal.
The Rev. Crummell passed away on September 10, 1898. His faith in God, his perseverance in spite of repeated discouragement, his perception that the Church transcended the racism and limited vision of its rulers, and his unfailing belief in the goodness and greatness of black people are the legacy of the Afro-American pioneer.
Source: Portions from James Kiefer. Union of Black Episcopalians