William Henry Ferris (July 20, 1874 – 1941) was an author, minister, and scholar.

Early life

He was born in

New Haven, Connecticut New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,02 ...

, the son of David H. and Sarah Ann Jefferson Ferris. His grandparents were free at the time of his father's birth. His father joined the Union Army voluntarily at the age of 17. His mother's father escaped from captivity on plantation and later purchased the freedom of his wife and children.

Education and career

A graduate of

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

(1895) with a BA, Ferris subsequently took on the role of writer and lecturer. He was a

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 ...

student from 1897 to 1899, graduating

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

with an MA in journalism in 1900. After teaching at Tallahassee State College, Florida Baptist College (1900–01), he worked for a number of newspapers from 1902 to 1903. He continued teaching during the years 1903–1905 at Henderson Normal School and

Kittrell College Kittrell College was a two-year historically black college located in Kittrell, North Carolina from 1886 until 1975. It was associated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church. After the college closed, many of its facilities became the Kitt ...

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...

. Ferris became pastor of Christ Congregational Church from 1904 to 1905. In 1908 he wrote a book entitled "Typical Negro Traits". From 1910 to 1912 he was given charge of the "colored" missions of A.M.E. Zion Church of Lowell and Salem, Massachusetts as a lecturer at white churches. He went on to write ''The African Abroad; or his Evolution in Western Civilization: Tracing his development under Caucasian Milieus'' in 1913. Ferris held positions as Assistant President General of the

UNIA-ACL The Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) is a black nationalist fraternal organization founded by Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican immigrant to the United States, and Amy Ashwood Garvey. The Pan-African o ...

and Associate Editor of the

Negro World ''Negro World'' was the newspaper of the Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA). Founded by Garvey and Amy Ashwood Garvey, the newspaper was published weekly in Harlem, New York, and distr ...

Activism

He was a participant in the March 5, 1897, meeting to celebrate the memory of Frederick Douglass which founded the

American Negro Academy The American Negro Academy (ANA), founded in Washington, DC in 1897, was the first organization in the United States to support African-American academic scholarship. It operated until 1928,Smith and encouraged African Americans to undertake classic ...

led by

Alexander Crummell Alexander Crummell (March 3, 1819 – September 10, 1898) was a pioneering African-American minister, academic and African nationalist. Ordained as an Episcopal priest in the United States, Crummell went to England in the late 1840s to raise money ...

. Over the coming decades, Ferris remained active among the scholars, editors, and activists of this first major African American learned society, refuting racist scholarship, promoting black claims to individual, social, and political equality, and studying the history and sociology of African American life. Ferris worked with

William Monroe Trotter William Monroe Trotter, sometimes just Monroe Trotter (April 7, 1872 – April 7, 1934), was a newspaper editor and real estate businessman based in Boston, Massachusetts. An activist for African-American civil rights, he was an early opponent of ...

and the

Boston Guardian The ''Boston Guardian'' was an African-American newspaper, co-founded by William Monroe Trotter and George W. Forbes in 1901 in Boston, Massachusetts, and published until the 1950s. In April 2016, an unrelated publisher launched its own ''Boston ...

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 ...

and the

Niagara Movement The Niagara Movement (NM) was a black civil rights organization founded in 1905 by a group of activists—many of whom were among the vanguard of African-American lawyers in the United States—led by W. E. B. Du Bois and William Monroe Trotter. ...

, and

John Edward Bruce John Edward Bruce, also known as Bruce Grit or J. E. Bruce-Grit (February 22, 1856 – August 7, 1924), was an American journalist, historian, writer, orator, civil rights activist and Pan-African nationalist. He was born a slave in Maryland; ...

and the

Negro Society for Historical Research The Negro Society for Historical Research (NSHR) was an organization founded by John Edward Bruce and Arthur Alfonso Schomburg in 1911. Bruce and Schomburg originally met because of their Masonic involvement and began attending a Sunday Men's Club ...

. At the suggestion of Trotter, Ferris came to Washington in January 1903 and spoke in opposition to the more conservative approach to black rights of

Booker T. Washington Booker Taliaferro Washington (April 5, 1856November 14, 1915) was an American educator, author, orator, and adviser to several presidents of the United States. Between 1890 and 1915, Washington was the dominant leader in the African-American c ...

in front of the

Bethel Literary and Historical Society The Bethel Literary and Historical Society was an organization founded in 1881 by African Methodist Episcopal Church Bishop Daniel Payne and continued at least until 1915. It represented a highly significant development in African-American society ...

on January 6, 1903. As a reply,

Richard W. Thompson Richard Wigginton Thompson (June 9, 1809 – February 9, 1900) was an American politician. Thompson was born in Culpeper County, Virginia. He left Virginia in 1831 and lived briefly in Louisville, Kentucky before finally settling in Lawrence Cou ...

spoke in front of the Second Baptist Lyceum on January 25 in support of Washington. In 1999, Jacqueline M. Moore argued that Thompson's paper failed to hold his ground against Ferris, who was present at the talk.Jacqueline M. Moore, Leading the Race: The Transformation of the Black Elite in the Nation's Capital, 1880–1920 University of Virginia Press, 1999, p. 68 The Second Baptist Lyceum met again on February 3 to hear a paper by Jesse Lawson in favor of Washington. In support of Washington were Robert H. Terrell, Bishop

Alexander Walters Bishop Alexander Walters (August 1, 1858 – February 2, 1917) was an American clergyman and noted civil rights leader. Born a slave in Bardstown, Kentucky, just before the Civil War, he rose to become a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal ...

, Dr. William Bruce Evans, J. H. Ewing, and Thompson, and those against were Ferris, Armond W. Scott, Lafayette M. Hershaw, T. M. Dent, Shelby James Davidson, and Mrs. Ida D. Bailey. Terrell, Evans, Lawson, and Thompson all owed positions or favors to Washington's influence.

John C. Dancy John Campbell Dancy (May 8, 1857 – December 5, 1920) was a politician, journalist, and educator in North Carolina and Washington, D.C. For many years he was the editor of African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion church newspapers ''Star of Zion ...

, George H. White, Mrs.

Anna Evans Murray Anna Evans Murray (1857–1955) was an American civic leader, educator, and early advocate of free kindergarten and the training of kindergarten teachers. In 1898 she successfully lobbied Congress for the first federal funds for kindergarten class ...

wife of Daniel Murray, Reuben S. Smith, Kelly Miller, Prof. Lewis Baxter Moore, and John P. Green were neutral. This controversy continued into the summer where important meetings in Louisville and Boston saw heated argument which even led to blows and Trotter's and Granville Martin's imprisonment.Almost a Riot Over a Picture. Negroes Object to Booker Washington Painting, Washington Bee (Washington (DC), District of Columbia), Saturday, July 11, 1903, Volume: 23 Issue: 6 Page: 1 Piece: One of Two In 1922 was working on a volume entitled ''The African in Western Lands''. The ''

African Times and Orient Review The ''African Times and Orient Review'' was a pan-Asian and pan-African journal launched in 1912 by Dusé Mohamed Ali, an Egyptian-British actor and journalist, with the help of John Eldred Taylor. It is thought to have been "Britain's first Blac ...

'' published an article by Ferris in which he praised an article previously contained in the same journal by

Marcus Garvey Marcus Mosiah Garvey Sr. (17 August 188710 June 1940) was a Jamaican political activist, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator. He was the founder and first President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African ...

References

External links

The Official UNIA-ACL Website

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ferris, William H. Ferris, William Henry Ferris, William Henry Ferris, William Henry Ferris, William Henry Yale University alumni Writers from New Haven, Connecticut Harvard Divinity School alumni