ABSTRACT
Christian theology provided James William Charles Pennington with categories of interpretation, and the African-American church provided the one social setting in which African-Americans could be themselves, control their own organization, and develop leadership and political skills. By emphasizing the necessity of evangelical Protestants to seek societal reform, Pennington was critical of many white Protestants who emphasized personal piety apart from social action. One criticism of the Text Book History is that Pennington devoted more attention of deflating the intellectual inferiority of the African-American argument than to the facts of African-American historical experience. In addition to showing that African-Americans were not inferior to whites intellectually even though they were prevented from establishing great civilizations in his time, Pennington was the first, or among the first, to propose a theory of education combining vocational training with classical and higher education.
