Henry McNeal Turner Henry McNeal Turner ( February 1 , 1834 – May 8 , 1915 ) was a minister , politician , and the first southern bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church ; he was a pioneer in Georgia in organizing new congregations of the independent black denomination after the American Civil War . Born free in South Carolina , Turner learned to read and write and became a Methodist preacher . He joined the AME Church in St . Louis , Missouri in 1858 , where he became a minister ; later he had pastorates in Baltimore , Maryland and Washington , DC . In 1863 during the American Civil War , Turner was appointed as the first black chaplain in the United States Colored Troops . Afterward , he was appointed to the Freedman ' s Bureau in Georgia . He settled in Macon and was elected to the state legislature in 1868 during Reconstruction . He planted many AME churches in Georgia after the war . In 1880 he was elected as the first southern bishop of the AME Church after a fierce battle within the denomination . Angered by the Democrats ' regaining power and instituting Jim Crow laws in the late nineteenth century South , Turner began to support black nationalism and emigration of blacks to Africa . He was the chief figure to do so in the late nineteenth century ; the movement grew after World War I . Biography . Turner was born free in Newberry , South Carolina to Sarah Greer and Hardy Turner , both of African and European ancestry . Some sources say he was born in Abbeville , South Carolina . His father ' s parents were a white mother , who was a plantation owner , and a black father ; according to " partus sequitur ventrem " , her children were free , as she was . According to family tradition , his paternal grandfather , renamed David Greer , was imported as a slave to South Carolina from Africa . Traders noticed he had royal Mandingo marks and did not sell him into slavery ; Greer worked for a Quaker family and married a free woman of color . Turner grew up with his mother and maternal grandmother . South Carolina law at the time of Turner ' s birth prohibited teaching blacks to read and write . As a youth , he worked as a custodian for a law firm in Abbeville , where his intelligence was noted by sympathetic whites ; they taught him to read and write . Career . At the age of 14 , Turner was inspired by a Methodist revival and swore to become a pastor . He received his preacher ' s license at the age of 19 from the Methodist Church South in 1853 . He traveled through the South for a few years as an evangelist and exhorter . In 1858 he moved with his family to Saint Louis , Missouri . The demand for slaves in the South made him fear that members of his family might be kidnapped and sold into slavery , as has been documented for hundreds of free blacks . The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 seemed to increase the boldness of slave traders and people they hired as slavecatchers . In St . Louis , he became ordained as a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church ( AME ) and studied the classics , Hebrew and divinity at Trinity College . He also served in pastorates in Baltimore , Maryland and Washington , DC , where he met influential Republicans . Marriage and family . In 1856 , Turner married Eliza Peacher , daughter of a wealthy black contractor in Columbia , South Carolina . They had 14 children , four of whom lived to adulthood . After her death in 1889 , Turner married Martha Elizabeth DeWitt in 1893 ; Harriet A . Wayman in 1900 ; and Laura Pearl Lemon in 1907 . He outlived three of his four wives . Civil War . During the American Civil War , Turner organized one of the first regiments of black troops ( Company B of the First United States Colored Troops ) , and was appointed as chaplain to it . He was the first of the 14 black chaplains to be appointed during the war . After the war , he was appointed by President Andrew Johnson to work with the Freedman ' s Bureau in Georgia during Reconstruction . White clergy from the North also led some Freedmen ' s Bureau operations . Political influence . Following the Civil War , Turner became politically active with the Republican Party , whose officials had led the war effort and , under Abraham Lincoln , emancipated the slaves throughout the Confederacy . He helped found the Republican Party of Georgia . Turner ran for political office from Macon and was elected to the Georgia Legislature in 1868 . At the time , the Democratic Party ( United States ) still controlled the legislature and refused to seat Turner and 26 other newly elected black legislators , all Republicans . After the federal government protested , the Democrats allowed Turner and his fellow legislators to take their seats during the second session . In 1869 , he was appointed by the Republican administration as postmaster of Macon , which was a political plum . Turner was dismayed after the Democrats regained power in the state and throughout the South by the late 1870s . He had seen the rise in violence at the polls , which repressed black voting . In 1883 , the United States Supreme Court ruled that the " Civil Rights Act of 1875 " , forbidding racial discrimination in hotels , trains , and other public places , was unconstitutional . Turner was incensed : In the late nineteenth century , he witnessed state legislatures in Georgia and across the South passing measures to disfranchise blacks . He became a proponent of black nationalism and supported emigration of American blacks to Africa . He thought it was the only way they could make free and independent lives for themselves . When he traveled to Africa , he was struck by the differences in the attitude of Africans who ruled themselves and had never known the degradation of slavery . He founded the International Migration Society , supported by his own newspapers : " The Voice of Missions " ( he served as editor , 1893 - 1900 ) and later " The Voice of the People " ( editor , 1901 - 4 ) . He organized two ships with a total of 500 or more emigrants , who traveled to Liberia in 1895 and 1896 . This was established as an American colony by the American Colonization Society before the Civil War , and settled by free American blacks , who tended to push aside the native African peoples . Disliking the lack of economic opportunity , cultural shock and disease , some of the migrants returned to the United States . After that , Turner did not organize another expedition . Church leadership . As a correspondent for " The Christian Reporter " , the weekly newspaper of the AME Church , he wrote extensively about the Civil War . Later he wrote about the condition of his parishioners in Georgia . When Turner joined the AME Church in 1858 , its members lived mostly in the Northern and border states ; total members numbered 20 , 000 . His biographer Stephen W . Angell described Turner as " one of the most skillful denominational builders in American history . " After the Civil War , he founded many AME congregations in Georgia as part of a missionary effort by the church in the South . It gained more than 250 , 000 new adherents throughout the South by 1877 , and by 1896 had a total of more than 452 , 000 members nationally . In 1880 , Turner was elected as the first bishop from the South in the AME Church , after a hard battle within the denomination . Although one of the last bishops to have struggled up from poverty and a self - made man , he was the first AME Bishop to ordain a woman to the order of Deacon . He discontinued the controversial practice because of threats and discontent among the congregations . During and after the 1880s , Turner supported prohibition and women ' s suffrage movements . He also served for twelve years as chancellor of Morris Brown College ( now Morris Brown University ) , a historically black college affiliated with the AME Church in Atlanta . During the 1890s , Turner went four times to Liberia and Sierra Leone , United States and British colonies respectively . As bishop , he organized four annual AME conferences in Africa to introduce more American blacks to the continent and organize missions in the colonies . He also worked to establish the AME Church in South Africa , where he negotiated a merger with the Ethiopian Church . Due to his efforts , African students from South Africa began coming to the United States to attend Wilberforce University in Ohio , which the AME church had operated since 1863 . His efforts to combine missionary work with encouraging emigration to Africa were divisive in the AME Church . Turner crossed denominational lines in the United States , building connections with black Baptists , for instance . He was known as a fiery orator . He notably preached that God was black , scandalizing some but appealing to his colleagues at the first Black Baptist Convention when he said : He died while visiting Windsor , Ontario in 1915 . Turner was buried in Atlanta . After his death , W . E . B . Du Bois wrote in " The Crisis " magazine about him : " Turner was the last of his clan , mighty men mentally and physically , men who started at the bottom and hammered their way to the top by sheer brute strength , they were the spiritual progeny of African chieftains , and they built the African church in America . " Writings . The following four items are available online through the University of North Carolina , at their " Documenting the American South " website .