A small group of evangelical Anglican laypeople began meeting privately in Hanover County, Virginia, in or about 1740, inspired by the news of George Whitefield’s revivals. The group’s leader, the bricklayer Samuel Morris, often simply read Whitefield’s sermons at these meetings, to great emotional effect. The growing religious awakening attracted the attention of Virginia’s Anglican authorities, who wished to know why Morris and his followers had stopped attending regular Anglican services. Despite growing pressure against them, Morris’s group members continued meeting, and began receiving visits from Presbyterian evangelical preachers from New Jersey and Pennsylvania who carried with them the zeal of the revivals in the northern colonies. By 1745, Virginia lieutenant governor Sir William Gooch had begun to call for the suppression of illicit “ministers under the pretended influence of new light, extraordinary impulse, and such like fanatical and enthusiastic knowledge.�
While we all recognize the names of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., from our studies of Black History Month, there are many other African American heroes who were important in the struggle for freedom and equality but whose names aren’t as widely known. These men and women are a vital part of our nation’s religious heritage, as well, and without their contributions, we might not even have had a Martin Luther King, Jr. So, I would like to highlight a few of those here today.
Many black preachers alive today are renowned for their impressive sermon oratory, but this is nothing new in African-American history. One of the earliest American black preachers to be appreciated and respected for his sermon delivery was Rev. Harry Hosier, who was the first to preach to white audiences during the post-Revolutionary War era. He was born a slave in North Carolina and freed in Maryland toward the end of the war, but remained illiterate despite traveling with th
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