Morris, Elias Camp

Impact on the world

Elected the first president of the National Baptist Convention upon its 1895 founding in Atlanta, a merger of three earlier Black Baptist organizations formed partly in response to a white-run publication's decision to rescind an invitation for Black authors to contribute after objections from the Southern Baptist Convention; Morris led the new denomination until his death in 1921, building it into what remains today the largest predominantly Black Christian denomination in the United States, with membership exceeding seven million.

Life & background

Morris earned his bachelor's degree from Roger Williams University in Nashville before going on to earn a Doctor of Divinity degree from the University of Louisville in 1892 and a PhD from Alabama A&M University in 1902, an unusually extensive formal education for a Black religious leader of his era. He was elected the first president of the National Baptist Convention at its founding 1895 meeting in Atlanta, where leaders of the American National Baptist Convention, the Baptist Foreign Mission Convention, and the National Baptist Educational Convention united into a single national body specifically to consolidate Black Baptist influence after white religious publishers had rescinded an opportunity for Black authors under pressure from the Southern Baptist Convention. Under his two and a half decades of leadership, the convention expanded foreign missionary work into Africa, Central America, and the West Indies, established schools and medical institutions training generations of Black religious leaders both domestically and abroad, and in 1896 created the National Baptist Publishing Board, which produced hymnals and Sunday school materials for Black congregations nationwide. He remained president until his death in 1921, the same period that saw growing internal tension over the Publishing Board's independence that would eventually split the denomination into two competing organizations in the years following his death; the convention he founded remains, more than a century later, the largest historically and predominantly African American Christian denomination in the United States.

Sources

1. BlackPast.org; Encyclopædia Britannica; Encyclopedia.com; Tennessee Encyclopedia