The Speeches of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner
The Speeches of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner
The Press, the Platform, and the Pulpit
Henry McNeal Turner (1834–1915) was a bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of America’s earliest Black activists and social reformers, and an outspoken proponent of emigration. In The Speeches of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner: The Press, the Platform, and the Pulpit, Andre E. Johnson has compiled selected political speeches, sermons, lectures, and religious addresses delivered by Turner in their original form.
Alongside Turner’s oratory, Johnson places the speeches in their historical context and traces his influence on Black social movements in the twentieth century, from W. E. B. Du Bois’s idea of cultural nationalism to Marcus Garvey’s "Back to Africa" movement, the modern-day civil rights movement, the Black Power movement, James Cone’s Black liberation theology, and more. While Turner was widely known as a great orator and published copious articles, essays, and editorials, no single collection of only Turner’s speeches has yet been published, and scholars have largely ignored his legacy. This volume recovers a lost voice within American and African American rhetorical history, expanding the canon of the African American oratorical tradition.
Johnson has performed a great service with this important collection. The Speeches of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner will introduce students and scholars alike to the depths of Turner’s oratory and perspectives. By the end of this volume, one is left wondering why Turner is not much more well known for his lifetime spent thinking, speaking, and agitating amid the rise and fall of movements for racial justice and civil rights in the United States. It is, perhaps, a sign of how much work we have left in Black intellectual history.
In The Speeches of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner: The Press, the Platform, and the Pulpit, Andre E. Johnson recovers the voice of a politician, citizen, minister, and orator in American history whose contribution as a thought leader in the post–Civil War and Reconstruction period has been overlooked and eclipsed. Turner’s voice is exceptionally relevant to our current racial landscape.
Andre E. Johnson is associate professor of rhetoric and media studies and scholar in residence at the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change at the University of Memphis. He is author of No Future in This Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and editor of The Speeches of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner: The Press, the Platform, and the Pulpit, both published by University Press of Mississippi.
