The Reverend Jennie Johnson and African Canadian History, 1868-1967

by Nina Reid-Maroney

Overview

This first scholarly treatment of a fascinating and understudied figure offers a unique and powerful view of nearly one hundred years of the struggle for freedom in North America.

After her conversion at a Baptist revival at sixteen, Jennie Johnson followed the call to preach. Raised in an African Canadian abolitionist community in Ontario, she immigrated to the United States to attend the African Methodist Episcopal Seminary at Wilberforce University. On an October evening in 1909 she stood before a group of Free Will Baptist preachers in the small town of Goblesville, Michigan, and was received into ordained ministry. She was thefirst ordained woman to serve in Canada and spent her life building churches and working for racial justice on both sides of the national border.
In this first extended study of Jennie Johnson's fascinating life, Nina Reid-Maroney reconstructs Johnson's nearly one-hundred-year story — from her upbringing in a black abolitionist settlement in nineteenth-century Canada to her work as an activist and Christian minister in the modern civil rights movement. This critical biography of a figure who outstripped the racial and religious barriers of her time offers a unique and powerful view of the struggle for freedom in North America.

Nina Reid-Maroney is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Huron UniversityCollege at Western (London, Ontario) and a coeditor of The Promised Land: History and Historiography of Black Experience in Chatham-Kent's Settlements

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781580464475
Publisher:	BOYDELL & BREWER INC
Publication date:	04/01/2013
Series:	ISSN , #5
Pages:	196
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.70(d)

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations viii

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1 "In Their Adopted Land": Johnson's Family in Canada 9

2 "As Lively Stones": Abolitionist Culture in Johnson's Dresden 34

3 A Resurrection Story: Conversion and Calling 48

4 Wilberforce University 65

5 Ordination 82

6 Flint 104

7 "God Forbid That I Should Glory": Johnson and History 126

Notes 135

Bibliography 167

Index 179

Editorial Reviews

The Reverend Jennie Johnson tells the story of a remarkable figure whose varied accomplishments represent an important legacy for black history in Ontario and an example for women's rights. Reid-Maroney's account of Johnson's long life moves from the Underground Railroad era into the later, seldom explored time period that followed. Beautifully written and thoroughly researched.

Bryan Prince

Winner of the Ontario Historical Society's 2013 Alison Prentice Award, which recognizes the best book on women's history in Ontario published in the past three years.

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Winner of the Ontario Historical Society's 2013 Alison Prentice Award, which recognizes the best book on women's history in Ontario published in the past three years.

The Reverend Jennie Johnson tells the story of a remarkable figure whose varied accomplishments represent an important legacy for black history in Ontario and an example for women's rights. Reid-Maroney's account of Johnson's long life moves from the Underground Railroad era into the later, seldom explored time period that followed. Beautifully written and thoroughly researched. --Bryan Prince, author of One More River to Cross and A Shadow on the Household.

From the Publisher