James Melvin Washington (April 24, 1948 – May 3, 1997) was an African-American
historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...
,
educator
A teacher, also called a schoolteacher or formally an educator, is a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence, or virtue, via the practice of teaching.
''Informally'' the role of teacher may be taken on by anyone (e.g. whe ...
, and
minister.
Life and career
Originally from
Knoxville, Tennessee
Knoxville is a city in and the county seat of Knox County, Tennessee, Knox County in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 United States census, Knoxville's population was 190,740, making it the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Di ...
, with two sisters and three brothers, he was the child of a laborer and a housekeeper.
A 1972 graduate of the
University of Tennessee
The University of Tennessee (officially The University of Tennessee, Knoxville; or UT Knoxville; UTK; or UT) is a public land-grant research university in Knoxville, Tennessee. Founded in 1794, two years before Tennessee became the 16th state, ...
, he received a Master's degree at the
Harvard Divinity School
Harvard Divinity School (HDS) is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school's mission is to educate its students either in the academic study of religion or for leadership roles in religion, gov ...
. His doctorate was from
Yale Divinity School
Yale Divinity School (YDS) is one of the twelve graduate and professional schools of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Congregationalist theological education was the motivation at the founding of Yale, and the professional school has ...
in 1979. The title of his dissertation: "The Origins and Emergence of Black Baptist Separatism, 1863-1897."
Further development of its themes resulted in his 1991 book ''Frustrated Fellowship''. It starts in the 1780s. The divide in status between slave and free was a stumbling block to mixed-race congregations. This tense friction continually pitted faith against injustice. The book addresses the trend, following the civil war, toward self-sufficient autonomy in the Black church. The failure of
Reconstruction
Reconstruction may refer to:
Politics, history, and sociology
*Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company
*''Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Union ...
dashed Black hopes of social parity and justice, which were met with violence and terror. Black resolve relied instead on inner resources, the spiritual power of prayer.
Washington latter remarked on the extraordinary patience of the Black church, as he told a journalist, "Between 1889 and 1920 there were 3,900 black people lynched and burned in this country. That's almost one a week. That's terrorism."
His first book in 1986 was a well-research, 702-page collection of writings and speeches of
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...
Included were newspaper and magazine pieces from the midst of the struggle, various interviews, and articles from academic and religious journals. Selected passages from King's five books fill the last third of the volume. It was later reissued.
Starting in 1976 professor Washington taught church history at the
Union Theological Seminary. He taught as well at neighboring
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
. He became in demand as a visiting professor, teaching at
Haverford College
Haverford College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Haverford, Pennsylvania. It was founded as a men's college in 1833 by members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), began accepting non-Quakers in 1849, and became coeducational ...
,
Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational liberal arts college in the United S ...
, and
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...
. As a minister he served on the board of the
American Baptist Church
The American Baptist Churches USA (ABCUSA) is a mainline/evangelical Baptist Christian denomination within the United States. The denomination maintains headquarters in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. The organization is usually considered mainl ...
, and also of the
National Council of Churches
The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, usually identified as the National Council of Churches (NCC), is the largest ecumenical body in the United States. NCC is an ecumenical partnership of 38 Christian faith groups in the Uni ...
. He was active at the
Riverside Church
Riverside Church is an interdenominational church in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, on the block bounded by Riverside Drive, Claremont Avenue, 120th Street and 122nd Street near Columbia University's Mornings ...
in New York City, under the Rev. Dr.
James A. Forbes
James Alexander Forbes, Jr. (born September 6, 1935) is the Senior Minister ''Emeritus'' of the Riverside Church, an interdenominational (American Baptist and United Church of Christ) church on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City. He ...
Jr. Forbes called his 1994 book "a source of inspiration to many" as it reflected "the dignity and power of the African-American religious heritage."
''Conversations with God'' (1994) surprisingly became a bestseller. The book presented passages from the prayers of 190 Blacks. Among them were
Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 1817 or 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became ...
and poet
Paul Lawrence Dunbar
Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872 – February 9, 1906) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born in Dayton, Ohio, to parents who had been Slavery in the United States, enslaved in K ...
,
W. E. B. Du Bois
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois ( ; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American-Ghanaian sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in ...
,
Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth (; born Isabella Baumfree; November 26, 1883) was an American abolitionist of New York Dutch heritage and a women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to f ...
, professor
Howard Thurman
Howard Washington Thurman (November 18, 1899 – April 10, 1981) was an American author, philosopher, theologian, mystic, educator, and civil rights leader. As a prominent religious figure, he played a leading role in many social justice movements ...
, poet
Esther Popel
Esther Popel (July 16, 1896 – January 28, 1958; also known as Esther Popel Shaw) was an African-American poet of the Harlem Renaissance, an activist, and an educator. She wrote and edited for magazines such as ''The Crisis'', the ''Journal of N ...
,
Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...
and
James Baldwin
James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer. He garnered acclaim across various media, including essays, novels, plays, and poems. His first novel, '' Go Tell It on the Mountain'', was published in 1953; de ...
, writer
Alice Walker
Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker (born February 9, 1944) is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. In 1982, she became the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which she was aw ...
and
James Alexander Forbes
James Alexander Forbes, Jr. (born September 6, 1935) is the Senior Minister ''Emeritus'' of the Riverside Church, an interdenominational ( American Baptist and United Church of Christ) church on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City. H ...
Jr. Many of the quotations given were by relatively unknown Christians, from various points along the difficult and painful, yet blessed history of the Black American church.
At the Riverside Church, Washington would join
Cornel West
Cornel Ronald West (born June 2, 1953) is an American philosopher, political activist, social critic, actor, and public intellectual. The grandson of a Baptist minister, West focuses on the role of race, gender, and class in American society and ...
for a daily lunch 'seminar'. "Jim was my best friend for twenty years," wrote West following his friend's death. Often James Forbes joined them for the lunch and table talk.
"We intensely debated the meaning of the Cross-the whence and whither of evil, the sources of struggle against suffering, and the mysterious grounds of hope. We favored those existential thinkers of lived experience-those who thought and lived with compassion and concern about death, despair, and injustice without the crutches of dogma or doctrine... . And we always rooted our fierce exchanges in the concrete reality of everyday Black people dealing with the absurdities and indignities of American life."
He died of a stroke suffered at home. Prof. Washington was survived by Patricia his wife of 26 years and Ayanna his daughter. His family had made their home in
Morningside Heights
Morningside Heights is a neighborhood on the West Side of Upper Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded by Morningside Drive to the east, 125th Street to the north, 110th Street to the south, and Riverside Drive to the west. Morningside ...
.
[Pace (1997).]
Bibliography
;Books
* Editor: ''Testament of Hope. The essential writings of Martin Luther King, Jr.'' (San Francisco: Harper & Row 1986);
reissued by Harper in 1992 as ''I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World''.
* ''Frustrated Fellowship: The Black Baptist Quest for Social Power'' (Macon:
Mercer University
Mercer University is a private research university with its main campus in Macon, Georgia. Founded in 1833 as Mercer Institute and gaining university status in 1837, it is the oldest private university in the state and enrolls more than 9,000 ...
1991, 2004).
* Editor: ''Conversations with God. Two centuries of African American prayers'' (Harpercollins 1994).
;Articles
* “Black Religion and American Evangelicalism,” Church History 45/1 (1976): 118–19.
* "The origins of Black evangelicalism and the ethical function of evangelical cosmology" in ''Union Seminary Quarterly Reiew'' 52/2 (1977): 104-116.
* “Black Apostles, Afro-American Clergy Confront the Twentieth Century,” Theology Today 36/4 (1980): 603–5.
* “Without Help or Hindrance: Religious Identity in American Culture,” Foundations 24/1 (1981): 87–89.
* “The Difficulty of Going Home: Reflections on Race and Modernity,” The Christian Century 101/25 (1984): 774–77.
* “Jesse Jackson and the Symbolic Politics of Black Christendom,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 480 (1985): 89–105.
* "The Grace of Interruptions: Toward a new vision of Christian history" in ''Union Seminary Quarterly Review'' 42/4 (1988): 37-53.
* “Retelling Carter Woodson's Story: Archival Sources for Afro-American Church History,” The Journal of American History 77/1 (1990): 183–99.
* "The crisis in the sanctity of conscience in America jurisprudence" in ''DePaul Law Review 42/1 (1992): 11-60.
* “John Wesley Edward Bowen, Sr: The Public Theodicy of an African-American Theological Educator, 1887-1915,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 47.3–4 (1993): 101–36.
* “Prayer in The Midst of Crisis,” The Living Pulpit 2.3 (1993): 8.
* “The Preciousness of Jesus And The Disinherited,” The Living Pulpit 3.1 (1994): 26–27.
* "Craven Images: The eiconics of race in the crisis of American church historiography" in ''The Agitated Mind of God. The theology of
Kosuke Koyama
was a Japanese Protestant Christian theologian.
Biography
Koyama was born in Tokyo in 1929, of Christian parents. He later moved to New Jersey in the United States, where he completed his B.D. at Drew Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. at Pri ...
'' (Maryknoll: Orbis Press 1996), edited by Akinade and Irvin.
* “Baptist Amnesia: Why Is There No Tombstone for the Black Baptist Tradition?,” American Baptist Quarterly 26.1 (2007): 44–62.
;Posthumous
Festschrift
In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...
*Quinton Hosford Dixie and
Cornel West
Cornel Ronald West (born June 2, 1953) is an American philosopher, political activist, social critic, actor, and public intellectual. The grandson of a Baptist minister, West focuses on the role of race, gender, and class in American society and ...
, editors,
''The Courage to Hope: From Black Suffering to Human Redemption: Essays in Honor of James Melvin Washington''
(Boston: Beacon Press 1999).
References
External links
Gale Contemporary Black BiographyJames Melvin Washington photo.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Washington, James
African-American historians
African-American educators
20th-century American educators
People from Knoxville, Tennessee
1948 births
1997 deaths
20th-century American historians
20th-century American male writers
American male non-fiction writers
20th-century African-American writers
African-American male writers
University of Tennessee alumni
Harvard Divinity School alumni
Yale Divinity School alumni
Union Theological Seminary (New York City) faculty
Columbia University faculty