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John-Chavis: African American Patriot, Preacher, Teacher, and
Mentor (2001) /
John Chavis: To Teach a Generation (1997)
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Rev.
John Chavis (1763 - 1838) Pioneer Educator
The
Presbytery of Lexington (Virginia) Licenses John Chavis as
Preacher, 1800
First Black Ordained
Presbyterian Minister in America
Presbyn. had an
interloquitur to consider the popular discourse of Mr. Chavis
& after some deliberation thereon agreed to sustain it as a
satisfactory part of trial & to licence him to preach the
Gospel. Mr. Chavis was accordingly licensed & record thereof
was ordered to be made in the following words, viz. at Timber
Ridge Meetinghouse, the 19th. day of November, 1800, the Presbyn.
of Lexington having received sufficient testimonials in favor of
Mr. John Chavis, of his being of good moral character, of his
being in full communion with the church & his having made some
progress in literature, proceeded to take him through a course of
trials for licensure & he having given satisfaction as to his
experimental acquaintance with religion & proficiency in
divinity, Presbyn. did & hereby do express their approbation of
these parts of trial & he having adopted the Confession of
Faith of this church & satisfactorily answered the questions
appointed to be put to candidates to be licensed the Presbyn. did
& hereby do license him the said Jno. Chavis to preach the
Gospel of Christ as a probationer for the holy ministry within the
bounds of this Presbyn. or wherever he shall be orderly called,
hoping as he is a man of colour he may be peculiarly useful to
those of his own complexion. Ordered that Mr. Chavis receive an
attested copy of the above minutes.
Minutes, November 19, 1800
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John Chavis, Negro, Is
Engaged as Missionary by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian
Church, 1801
That.. . Mr. John Chavis, a black man
of prudence and piety, who has been educated and licensed to preach
by the Presbytery of Lexington in Virginia, be employed as a
missionary among people of his own colour, until the meeting of the
next General Assembly; and that for his better direction in the
discharge of duties which are attended with many circumstances of
delicacy and difficulty, some prudential instructions be issued to
him by the assembly, governing himself by which, the knowledge of
religion among that people may be made more and more to strengthen
the order of Society: And the Rev. Messrs. Hoge, Alexander, Logan,
and Stephenson, were appointed a committee to draught instructions
to said John Chavis, and prescribe his route.
—Acts
and Proceedings, 1801, p. 7. It has commonly been said that this
remarkable man was a full-blooded, free-born Negro, that he was
educated at Princeton, had an unusual mastery of the classics. was a
very effective teacher and Presbyterian preacher, and that he was
received as an equal socially and was asked to table by the most
respectable white people in the neighborhoods in which he lived in
North Carolina in the early part of the nineteenth century. He had a
school in Raleigh in which he taught white boys and the sons of
prominent families were among his students.
Most of the earlier writers on
Chavis said that he went to Princeton, and a letter from V. Lansing
Collins, Secretary of that institution to Edgar W. Knight,
September 14. 1929, said that although there were no known official
records to verify Chavis's attendance at Princeton, the tradition or
belief that he was a student there was so strong that Chavis was
listed among the non-graduates of the institution. As the court
record below shows, it was believed that Chavis attended Washington
Academy which developed into Washington and Lee University.
For a partial bibliography on this
man, see Edgar W. Knight, "Notes on John Chavis," The
North Carolina Historical Review, VII (July, 1930), pp. 326-45, and
his "A Negro Teacher of Southern Whites," The Baltimore
San, December 8, 1929. Chavis had to discontinue preaching in North
Carolina as result of a statute of 1832 forbidding slaves and free
Negroes to preach or exhort in public. It has been said that Chavis
himself owned slaves. Many Negroes did. See Popular Science
Monthly,
LXXXI (November, 1912). pp.483-94.
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The Court of Quarter Sessions of
Rockbridge County, Virginia, Certifies to the Freedom of John Chavis,
1802—
On the motion of Rev. John Chavis, a
black man, It is ordered that the clerk of this court certify that
the said Chavis has been known to the court for several years last
past and that he has always, since known to the court, been
considered as a freeman and they believe him to be such, and that he
has always while in this county conducted himself in a decent
orderly and respectable manner, and also that he has been a student
at Washington Academy where they believe he went through a regular
course of Academical Studies.
Order Book No. 6, p. 10.
See also J. C. Ballach, A History of Slavery in Virginia,
p.110.
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Joseph Gales, Whig Editor of a
Raleigh Newspaper, Praises Chavis ond His School, 11130
On Friday
last, we attended an examination of the free children of color,
attached to the school conducted by John Chavis, also colored, but a
regularly educated Presbyterian minister, and we have seldom
received more gratification from any exhibition of a similar
character. To witness a well regulated school, composed of this
class of persons-to see them setting an example both in behavior and
scholarship, which their white superiors might take pride in
imitating, was a cheering spectacle to a philanthropist. The
exercises throughout, evinced a degree of attention and assiduous
care on the part of the instructor, highly creditable, and of
attainment on the part of his scholars almost incredible. We were
also much pleased with the sensible address which closed the
examination. The object of the respectable teacher, was to impress
on the scholars, the fact, that they occupied an inferior and
subordinate station in society, and were possessed but of limited
privileges; but that even they might become useful in their
particular sphere by making a proper improvement of the advantages
afforded them.
The Raleigh Register, April 22, 1830
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Sources:
Chapter VI. "The Instruction of Negroes." In Edgar W.
Knight..
A Documentary History of Education in the South before 1860. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina, 1953
Chapter 10 "Up From Slavery: Educational and
other Rights of Negroes." In Edgar W. Knight and Clifton L. Hall. Readings
in American Educational History. New York Appleton-Century-Crofts,
Inc., 1951. Many states had laws prohibiting
the education of blacks; here black youngsters are turned away at the
school door |
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.— WashingtonPost
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Hopes and Prospects
By Noam Chomsky
In this urgent new book, Noam Chomsky
surveys the dangers and prospects of our
early twenty-first century. Exploring
challenges such as the growing gap
between North and South, American
exceptionalism (including under
President Barack Obama), the fiascos of
Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S.-Israeli
assault on Gaza, and the recent
financial bailouts, he also sees hope
for the future and a way to move
forward—in the democratic wave in Latin
America and in the global solidarity
movements that suggest "real progress
toward freedom and justice." Hopes and
Prospects is essential reading for
anyone who is concerned about the
primary challenges still facing the
human race. "This is a classic Chomsky
work: a bonfire of myths and lies,
sophistries and delusions. Noam Chomsky
is an enduring inspiration all over the
world—to millions, I suspect—for the
simple reason that he is a truth-teller
on an epic scale. I salute him." —John
Pilger
In dissecting the rhetoric and logic of
American empire and class domination, at
home and abroad, Chomsky continues a
longstanding and crucial work of
elucidation and activism . . .the
writing remains unswervingly rational
and principled throughout, and lends
bracing impetus to the real alternatives
before us.—Publisher's
Weekly
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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