ABSTRACT
The African-American elite never strongly embraced the idea of African colonization. The passage of the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution, as well as those contained in the Civil Rights Act of 1865, seemed to indicate a favourable attitude on the part of some whites toward permitting some political and economic participation by blacks. In the years between Reconstruction and the First World War, Bishop Turner exhorted black people to go to Africa. Despite laws against educating blacks, Turner learned to read and write. At 16 he became a travelling preacher in the southern Methodist Church. While visiting New Orleans he discovered the existence of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and immediately switched denominations, eventually becoming a bishop of considerable influence. Turner’s vision, almost a century before that of Martin Luther King, was of black and white social equality.
