Saint Of The Day

Alexander Crummell, Priest, Missionary, and Educator, 1819-1898.

Alexander Crummell was born in New York City, March 3, 1819. He attended Noyse Academy in Canaan, New Hampshire, which was founded by a group of abolitionists from Dartmouth. After the school was dragged off its foundation by ninety oxen and torched, Crummell returned to New York then on to Boston to further his education. At the age of twenty-five, he was ordained a minister.

Crummell quickly discovered that he was not accepted by the white Episcopal clergy, so he moved to England and completed an A.B. degree in theology at Queen's College of Cambridge University in 1853. He spent twenty years performing missionary work and teaching in Liberia. In 1879 he founded St. Luke's Episcopal Church, where he served as its pastor until his retirement in 1894. During that time he led the movement to separate from the white Protestant Episcopal church. He also established the American Negro Academy in Washington D.C.

Crummell devoted his life to writing and instruction. He believed Africa's situation could be improved by the people receiving a classic Western education. He is quoted as saying, "If Africa is ever regenerated the influences and agencies to this end must come from external sources. Civilization....never springs up, spontaneously, in any new land. It must be transplanted."