The New Abolition by Gary Dorrien

Author:Gary Dorrien
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300216332
Publisher: Yale University Press

BUILDING A SOCIAL GOSPEL CONSTITUENCY

By then he had made a career move that rescued him from the whims and politicking of bishops. In 1912 Ransom ran for editor of the A.M.E. Church Review. He campaigned with a dramatic flair, imploring that the church’s quarterly journal be politically nonpartisan, committed to principles and ideals instead of parties, fiercely committed to justice, and sufficiently ambitious to take on “the great international and world questions of peace and war, arbitration, colonization and the exploitation and government of the backward people of the earth.” Ransom took no interest in “supine” or “colorless” journalism. He stood for journalism “that has backbone, conviction, principle, on all the great questions of government which so vitally affect the moral, intellectual, social, and industrial welfare of the people.” He upped the drama: “The audience is assembled, the stage is set; we now await the rising curtain to reveal in the foreground the black Garrisonian journalist who will make good this solemn declaration: ‘I am in earnest. I will not equivocate. I will not excuse. I will not retreat a single inch—And I will be heard.’”68

The A.M.E. Church Review was the brainchild of Benjamin Tanner, who founded it in 1884. At the time Tanner was editor of the Christian Recorder. He was frustrated that few African American authors got published in white journals, and he enlisted Turner’s support for an AME journal; Turner pushed it through. L. C. Coppin succeeded Tanner as editor of the journal after Tanner became a bishop in 1888. H. T. Kealing, a Texas layperson, succeeded Coppin in 1896 but died in office. C. V. Roman, a medical college professor, was appointed by the publication board to finish Kealing’s term. Roman taught at Meharry Medical College in Nashville and had been educated in Canada. He came to the 1912 General Conference expecting to be elected in his own right as the incumbent editor. He was genteel and high-minded, with a tendency to look down on preachers, causing him to underestimate Ransom’s ability and appeal. Though Ransom had been driven out of Chicago and Boston, he had a following that prized him as the Du Bois of black Methodism. Ransom won the election handily. Shortly afterward he received one of Du Bois’s typically terse and puckish letters, flashing delight:

My dear Dr. Ransom:

Let me congratulate you upon your election to the Editorship of the Review. It is about time you had a new picture taken, and I should like a copy of [it for] the Crisis.

Very sincerely yours,

W. E. B. Du Bois69

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