Henry McNeal Turner
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In 1863 during the American Civil War, Turner was appointed by the US Army as the first African-American chaplain in the United States Colored Troops. After the war, he was appointed to the Freedmen's Bureau in Georgia. He settled in Macon and was elected to the state legislature in 1868 during the Reconstruction era. An A.M.E. missionary, he also 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 because of its Northern roots.
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 the African continent. This movement had started before the Civil War under the American Colonization Society. Turner was the chief figure in the late nineteenth century to support such emigration to Liberia; most African-American leaders of the time were pushing for rights in the United States. Provided by Wikipedia
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Published: 2013.