*Note:
Before my works on Turner, “The Literary Archive of Henry McNeal Turner, Vols.1 and 2 and “The Forgotten Prophet: Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and the AfricanAmerican Prophetic Tradition,” this is the scholarship on Bishop Henry McNeal
Turner taken from my dissertation, “The Prophetic Oratory of Henry McNealTurner.”
Scholarship on Turner is meager. Outside of brief
articles or sketches printed in journals or edited volumes,[1]
the first published work on Turner came two years after his death titled, “The Life and Times of Henry McNeal Turner” and written by friend and fellow AME
minister Mungo Ponton. This glowing and uncritical “biography” purported to
share the life story of Turner “upon the times in which he lived” (23).
However, the “biography” was more apologetic in nature as Ponton not only
defended the actions of Turner, but also had, as a goal, to protect and promote
the AME Church
Despite the uncritical nature of the work and its
apparent shortcomings, something that Ponton apologizes for early in the text
(24), I believe that dismissing his work is a mistake. It is through Ponton’s
work that we learn of Turner’s childhood experiences and get some glimpse of
his family life—his call into ministry and some of his early travels. More
important for the purposes of this dissertation, Ponton offers testimony from
others to the oratorical prowess of Turner. He quotes many of Turner’s
contemporaries who give us some impression of what Turner was like as a
speaker.
After Ponton’s book, the next treatment of Turner
came in 1938 with J. Minton Batten’s “Henry McNeal Turner, Negro BishopExtraordinary.” Drawing from
Ponton, Batten offers a biographical sketch of Turner’s career as a pastor,
politician, and bishop. However, unlike Ponton, Batten offers historical
documentation in the way of speeches, and other writings that support his
arguments.
It was not
until 1964 that another published article on Turner appeared. “Henry M. Turner: Georgia Negro Preacher-PoliticianDuring the Reconstruction Era” by E. Merton Coulter, was an account of
Turner’s activities during the early part of Reconstruction. Drawn primarily
from sources unfriendly and hostile to African Americans and their concerns,
Coulter’s aim was to paint an unflattering picture of Turner’s political
activities. As if to sum up his argument for this unflattering view, Coulter
writes in the closing of his essay, “if he was the greatest man the Negro race
ever produced, then that race had not reached the stage in civilization which
has generally been accorded it” (406).[2]
In 1967,
Edwin Redkey published “BishopTurner’s African Dream” that
focused on Turner’s push for emigration to Africa . In his essay, Redkey, while highlighting
Turner’s successes, also puts forth arguments that demonstrate why Turner’s
emigration campaign ultimately failed. In addition, Redkey posits a reason for
the dearth in Turner scholarship. Redkey argues that because of Turner’s
“scathing attacks on American society and upon Negroes who disagreed with his
solution to the race problem; few mourned the end of his uncomfortable prodding
toward Negro achievement and his perpetual scheming to move Negroes to Africa ” (272).
In 1969,
Jane Herndon published “Henry
McNeal Turner’s African Dream: A Re-Evaluation”. As the title
would indicate, this was not a refutation or critique of Redkey’s earlier work.
Herndon’s aim is to place Turner within the African American nationalist
tradition and refute the charge that the “Negro has docilely accepted his
position and that his sole ambition has been to amalgamate into white society”
(327). By highlighting Turner’s emigration position and placing Turner within
the nationalist tradition, Herndon offers a “re-evaluation” of Turner’s work
and represents Turner as a forerunner to Garvey and Dubois and “more recent
leaders of the contemporary Negro revolution” in the United States (336).
The next
publication, published in 1971, was “Respect Black: The Speeches and Writingsof Henry McNeal Turner” by Edwin Redkey. Offering a brief biographical sketch at
the beginning, this book is the only volume of writings and speeches by
Turner and is a valuable source for anyone interested in Turner’s rhetoric.[3]
In 1973,
Josephus R. Coan published “Henry McNeal Turner: A Fearless Prophet of Black Liberation”. Coan’s aim is clear from the outset: he
attempts to place Turner within the Black Awareness movement current at the
time of publication. Black Awareness Coan writes, “Is a determination to
achieve complete liberation of Black Americans from all the forces and
movements aimed at degrading and dehumanizing the race” (9). Coan divides his
essay in two parts; first, he offers a chronological sketch of Turner’s life
and second, he offers an overview of his theology and social ideas.
In 1980,
Edwin Redkey published Turner’s Civil War recount of the assault on Fort Fisher
After the
1980’s, there was some renewal of interest in the life and works of Turner.
Three edited volumes contain essays about Turner. The first one, published in
1991, entitled “Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century,” contains an article
by John Dittmer entitled “The
Education of Henry McNeal Turner.” The essay offers a biographical sketch of Turner’s life and offers no new
information. The second volume, published in 1999, titled “Black Conservatism: Essay in Intellectual and Political History,” contains an article
by Stephen Angell, “Henry McNeal
Turner—Conservative? Radical? Or Independent.” In this essay, Angell argues
that Turner does not fit “any single party label or any ideological label.”
Therefore what Angell attempts to do is to offer an “accurate…portrayal of
[Turner’s] political and ideological commitments throughout his career” (26).
Finally,
the third book published in 2004 “Black Soldiers in Blue: African American Troops in the Civil War,” contains an essay by Edwin Redkey “Henry McNeal Turner: Black Chaplain in the
Union Army.” As the title indicates, Redkey focuses on
Turner’s career as a chaplain in the Union Army which, Redkey argues, helped
Turner “develop some of the ideas, attitudes, and skills that became manifest
in his later career” (336).
In 1992,
there was a publication of a full-length biography of Turner by Stephen Ward
Angell titled “Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and African American Religion in theSouth.” Angell’s work focused primarily on Turner’s extensive church work
during antebellum and Post-Bellum periods of American history.
Also published are books that devote chapters to
Turner,[4]
articles and essays that feature Turner,[5]
as well as master theses’ and dissertations that focus on Turner’s life and
work.[6]
However, outside of Coan and Pinn who are theologians, the works published on
Turner have come primarily from historians or students of history. While these
historians have done a wonderful job at unearthing primary sources of Turner’s
publications, writings, and speeches, what is utterly surprising is that only two published articles focus on Turner’s
rhetoric.
The first one published in 1982, was Melbourne
Cummings’ “The Rhetoric of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner.” Cummings offers a rhetorical biography of
Turner that covers the major events in his life that gave rise to his fiery
rhetoric. Cummings traced the life of Turner from his childhood “working in the
cotton fields alongside slaves” to his failed emigration movement. While she
notes Turner’s use of religious rhetoric and makes a connection to contemporary
Black Nationalist rhetoric, her primary focus is on Turner’s call for
emigration to Africa .
Cummings’ essay differs from her earlier treatment
of Turner’s rhetoric in her dissertation entitled “The Rhetoric of Bishop HenryMcNeal Turner, Leading Advocate in the African Emigration Movement,1866-1907.” Focused on Turner’s calls for emigration, Cummings grounds her
analysis in Leland Griffin’s social movement model. In addition to Griffin ’s
model, she also uses Arthur Smith’s (Molefi Asante) agitational strategies of
vilification, objectification, mythication, and legitimation to examine Turner’s
style.
The other treatment of Turner’s rhetoric comes from
an essay by Richard Leeman, “Speaking as Jeremiah: Henry McNeal Turner’s “IClaim the Rights of a Man” in 2006.
It has the distinction of being the only scholarly treatment of a speech
delivered by Turner. In the essay, Leeman offers a rhetorical analysis of
Turner’s “On the Eligibility of Colored Members to Seats in the Georgia Legislature” (also known as “I Claim the Rights of a Man”) speech,
calling it an example of the jeremiad.
Andre E. Johnson is the Dr. James L. Netters Professor of Rhetoric and Religion and African American Studies at Memphis Theological Seminary
Andre E. Johnson is the Dr. James L. Netters Professor of Rhetoric and Religion and African American Studies at Memphis Theological Seminary
[1] See “Bishop
H. M. Turner’s Twenty-Fifth Anniversary”. A.M.E. Church Cleveland AME Church A.M.E. Church
[2]
Coulter was a member of the Dunning School Columbia
University
[3] Until my
collection of Turner texts, The Literary Archive of Henry McNeal Turner: An
African American pastor before and During the American Civil war, Vol.1 (2010) and
the Chaplain Letters, Vol. 2 (2012). Mellen Press
[4]
See Black Exodus: Black Nationalist and Back-to-Africa Movements, 1890-1910
especially chapters 2 and 8 by Edwin Redkey; Unafrican Americans:
Nineteenth-Century Black Nationalists and the Civilizing Mission especially
chapter 5 by Tunde Adeleke.
[5] See “Double
Consciousness” in Nineteenth-Century Black Nationalism: Reflections on the
Teachings of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner” by Anthony Pinn; Ain’t Gonna
Lay My ‘Ligion Down: African American Religion in the South edited by
Alonzo Johnson and Paul T. Jersild for Stephen Angell’s “Black Methodist
Preachers in the South Carolina Upcountry, 1840-1866”; Returning Home: A
Century of African-American Repatriation by Robert Johnson, Jr. especially
chapter 12; “Henry McNeal Turner Verses the Tuskegee Machine: Black
Leadership in the. Nineteenth Century” by Gregory Mixon; “A Black
Minister Befriends the “Unquestioned Father of Civil Rights”: Henry McNeal
Turner, Charles Sumner, and the African American Quest for Freedom” by Stephen
Ward Angell
[6] See Henry
McNeal Turner, Exponent of American “Negritude” by Jane Walker Herndon; The
Life of Henry McNeal Turner, 1834 to 1870 by Elbert Martin; Black
Nationalism and Theodicy: A Comparison of the Thought of Henry
Highland
