ABSTRACT
In 1903, W.E.B.Du Bois’s literary and sociological classic The Souls of Black Folk was published. The book is a personal, poetic, and piercing collection of essays concerning various aspects of American life in the post-Civil War United States, with a particular focus on matters of race. Chapter 12, “Of Alexander Crummel,” recalls the true story of a young man who felt called to live a devoted religious life. Crummel was a brilliant, eloquent, contemplative individual with an unyielding passion to do the Lord’s work, to preach the Good News, and to lead others in Christian living. There was only one problem: he was black. When he sought to enter the seminary in order to be ordained, the veil of racism came quickly cascading down, as the “calm, good men, Bishops of the Apostolic Church of God…[declared that]…the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church cannot admit a Negro” (Du Bois 1989 [1903], 155).
