The Recovered Life of Isaac Anderson

By Alicia K. Jackson

Owned by his father, Isaac Harold Anderson (1835–1906) was born a slave but went on to become a wealthy businessman, grocer, politician, publisher, and religious leader in the African American community in the state of Georgia. Elected to the state senate, Anderson replaced his white father there, and later shepherded his people as a founding member and leader of the Colored Methodist Episcopal church. He helped support the establishment of Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee, where he subsequently served as vice president.

Anderson was instrumental in helping freed people leave Georgia for the security of progressive safe havens with significantly large Black communities in northern Mississippi and Arkansas. Eventually under threat to his life, Anderson made his own exodus to Arkansas, and then later still, to Holly Springs, Mississippi, where a vibrant Black community thrived.

Much of Anderson’s unique story has been lost to history—until now. In The Recovered Life of Isaac Anderson, author Alicia K. Jackson presents a biography of Anderson and in it a microhistory of Black religious life and politics after emancipation. A work of recovery, the volume captures the life of a shepherd to his journeying people, and of a college pioneer, a CME minister, a politician, and a former slave. Gathering together threads from salvaged details of his life, Jackson sheds light on the varied perspectives and strategies adopted by Black leaders dealing with a society that was antithetical to them and to their success.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Release date: Nov 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781496835161

Alicia K. Jackson

Alicia K. Jackson is associate professor of history at Covenant College. She earned her PhD from the University of Mississippi and is a contributor to Southern Religion, Southern Culture: Essays Honoring Charles Reagan Wilson, published by University Press of Mississippi.

Book preview

PRAISE FOR THE RECOVERED LIFE OF ISAAC ANDERSON

Sparked by her discovery of a ‘mustard yellow all-but discarded brochure’ on Isaac Anderson at Lane College, historian Alicia K. Jackson engaged in a near-decade-long quest to recover his extraordinary life as a founding minister of the CME Church, a Reconstruction politician, a school founder, an editor-publisher, a Lane College trustee, and a successful entrepreneur in the post-Emancipation South.

—LOGAN HAMPTON, president, Lane College

"Alicia K. Jackson provides the first biography of minister Isaac Anderson (1834–1906) through impressive research that creatively throws light on shadows and uncertainties in the written record of his life. Isaac Anderson’s unique story gives voice to a history often silenced or ignored. After emancipation, Anderson helped lead the new Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, was elected to the Georgia senate, and was a publisher and educator. The Recovered Life of Isaac Anderson is an outstanding monograph that illuminates crucial issues in the history of enslavement, the Black church, and Reconstruction."

—JOHN PATRICK DALY, SUNY Brockport

"With the publication of The Recovered Life of Isaac Anderson, Alicia K. Jackson sets a new standard for biographies of nineteenth-century African American leaders. Using genealogical and other local records, she pieces together the background story of a mixed-race man born enslaved on the Georgia frontier who becomes, with freedom, one of the first Black elected officials in the state. Readers have Jackson to thank for reclaiming the inspirational story of the remarkable Isaac Anderson."

—GLENN T. ESKEW, Distinguished University Professor, Georgia State University

"The Recovered Life of Isaac Anderson is a deeply researched, compelling narrative of Reconstruction-era Black political participation and religious development brought to life through the biography of Colored Methodist Episcopal minister Rev. Isaac Anderson. Covering the major themes of Black religious and political life after emancipation, including freed people’s engagements with the Freedman’s Bureau, the establishment of independent Black churches, convict leasing, and Black exodus, this volume revises narratives about the racial politics of the CME Church, while further illuminating the well-established narrative of Black churches as a catalyst for Black political participation and Black politics."

—NICOLE TURNER, assistant professor of religious studies, Yale University

THE RECOVERED LIFE OF ISAAC ANDERSON

Alicia K. Jackson

University Press of Mississippi / Jackson

The University Press of Mississippi is the scholarly publishing agency of the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning: Alcorn State University, Delta State University, Jackson State University, Mississippi State University, Mississippi University for Women, Mississippi Valley State University, University of Mississippi, and University of Southern Mississippi.

www.upress.state.ms.us

The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of University Presses.

Frontis photo courtesy of Carolyn B. Cunningham

Copyright © 2021 by University Press of Mississippi

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

First printing 2021

∞

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Jackson, Alicia K., author.

Title: The recovered life of Isaac Anderson / Alicia K. Jackson.

Description: Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021026158 (print) | LCCN 2021026159 (ebook) | ISBN 978-1-4968-3514-7 (hardback) | ISBN 978-1-4968-3513-0 (trade paperback) | ISBN 978-1-4968-3516-1 (epub) | ISBN 978-1-4968-3515-4 (epub) | ISBN 978-1-4968-3518-5 (pdf) | ISBN 978-1-4968-3517-8 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Anderson, Isaac Harold, 1835–1906. | Anderson, William Jackson, d.1890. | Colored Methodist Episcopal Church—History. | Slaves—United States—Biography. | African Americans—Biography. | African American religious leaders—Biography. | African American politicians—Biography. | African American educators—Biography. | BISAC: HISTORY / African American & Black | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / American / African American & Black Studies

Classification: LCC BX8473.A53 J33 2021 (print) | LCC BX8473.A53 (ebook) | DDC 287/.8—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021026158

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021026159

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

One of the hopes of this project is to help shed light on how the pernicious ideology of white supremacy weaponizes language. At times, the author felt it necessary to quote words that would be inappropriate in a spoken context in order to analyze how language functions in that instance. This is in no way an endorsement of the use of such slurs in a nonacademic context.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Recovered Life of Isaac Anderson

Chapter One: 1868

Chapter Two: William Jackson Anderson

Chapter Three: Isaac Anderson

Chapter Four: Georgia

Chapter Five: 1870

Chapter Six: Exodus

Chapter Seven: Promised Land

Chapter Eight: The Colored Methodist Episcopal Church

Epilogue: The Forgetting

Notes

Index

To my grandparents, who shaped my love for history and whose stories I can finally tell

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THIS IS A STORY THAT WAS ALMOST NEVER TOLD, WHETHER BECAUSE OF self-doubt that was reinforced by others or sheer weariness. But for God, it wouldn’t have been written. He provided support and encouragement along the way through various people, and among them were Samuel Shepherd and Ted Ownby, both of whom represented the best of the history profession. I can say, without a doubt, that over the years in which this story was written, I would not be where I am today apart from their support. Samuel Shepherd was there for the harrowing calls of frustration and for the joyful personal and professional moments, and I owe much to him and to Julie, his wife, for being pillars of support to me and my family. Ted Ownby, who has unswervingly supported my scholarship, first told my wonderful former editor, Vijay Shah, about my book, and during one of the lowest periods of my career, he bought me dinner, listened to a litany of my struggles for at least an hour, and encouraged me to persevere. Though I have called, texted, and even FaceTimed him accidentally, never once did I feel like I was a bother to him even though he was certainly busy with his own projects and students.

A huge thank you also goes to my editor, Emily Bandy, who has been a champion of my book, and to Charles Reagan Wilson, who first introduced me to the study of Southern religion and led me to write about the Colored Methodist Church. He always encouraged my research. Thank you to Nancy Bercaw, a good friend who read early drafts of my manuscript, offering useful feedback and support afterward, and to John M. Giggie, Luke Harlow, Story Matkin-Rawn, and Bonnie Martin, all of whom not only read my work, but also spent time discussing my research and providing helpful suggestions to strengthen my manuscript. Jessica Lepler, Charles Irons, Lillie J. Edwards, Scott Nesbit, Nicole Meyers Turner, and Paul Harvey helped me think through larger issues raised by Isaac Anderson’s life, and I thank these consummate historians as well.

I am indebted to the Louisville Institute for graciously awarding me a Grant for Researchers in 2016, which provided the funds to travel throughout the South and conduct research essential to uncovering Isaac Anderson’s story. Jeff Hall, vice president of academic affairs at Covenant College, supported me by funding grants to conduct my research, and Paul Morton, my department chair, gave me a course reduction to aid in the publication of my book. Michelle Pickard and Brian Hecker, two of my colleagues, were tenacious in tracking down documents essential to my research, and John Holberg, director of the Covenant library, graciously shared his research skills and expertise in deciphering nineteenth-century cursive writing, which proved invaluable to the project.

Thank you to archivist Wilmetta Jackson at Fort Valley State University for always being willing to help and for embracing my project as if it were her own, and thank you to Jack Wood and Evelyn Keele at the Jackson Public Library for helping me understand Anderson’s life after his move to Jackson, Tennessee. Thank you to Kayla Barrett, Steven W. Engerrand, and the wonderful staff at the Georgia Archives; the Madison, Tennessee, county archives; Brian Shelter at Drew University Archives; Brandon C. Wason at Pitts Theological Library; and Bobby Mitchell, of the Marshall County Historical Association. I extend a special thank you to Marilyn Windham, who has encouraged me to keep researching and helped me in every way she could to aid in the publication of this book. Without Marilyn’s help, this book would have never been written. Thank you to William Mills who was always willing to direct me to sources and answer questions about life in and around Houston County.

I am grateful to Blanche Johnston, whom I first met years ago. She was gracious enough to tell me about Isaac H. Anderson, her grandfather, and was the first to give me details about him and the relationship he had with his father, William Jackson Anderson. Years after her passing, I would meet other descendants of Anderson who shared with me their stories about a man who shaped their lives decades after his passing. Among them were Joel Anderson, Bert Berry, Louis and Carolyn Cunningham, and Debbie Cannon. Moreover, a book like mine certainly could not have been written without tremendous support from my friends from family. Thank you Diana Cochran and Erika Mosteller for always being willing to encourage my work and self-care especially when the struggles of Isaac Anderson’s world were all too familiar to my day-to-day world.

Thank you to my parents, John and Gloria Kaigler, who always encouraged me to strive for my dreams to be a historian, and thank you to my children Olivia, Jack, and Ella, who have been such a bright light in my life! One of my greatest honors is that I am your mother and that you have been with me through this journey, which makes the completion of this book even more meaningful. Learning cemetery etiquette, including not stepping on gravestones as we spent hours in the middle of the July heat trying to find gravesites, dropping your mother off to conduct research at an old prison, sitting in a café drinking hot butter beer, photographing abandoned buildings, swimming in hotel pools, visiting museums, and spending a lot of time at the library are adventures that I hope you will never forget.

Last, to my best friend, editor, and husband, Randolph Jackson Jr., thank you! When we first met, you promised to support me and my work, and you have more than lived up to your promise. You have moved so I could pursue my dream, taken care of the children when I needed to write or conduct research, stayed up virtually all night keeping your promise to edit my work, and have been my biggest supporter, telling your friends, acquaintances, and even people I do not know, about my book. When people recognize you as Reverend Jackson and call me Mrs. Jackson, you are first to make it known that your wife is Dr. Jackson. We are a team, and I could not have done any of this without your love and support.

THE RECOVERED LIFE OF ISAAC ANDERSON

INTRODUCTION

The Recovered Life of Isaac Anderson

WHETHER TOLD BY MY PATERNAL GRANDPARENTS FROM SOUTH MISSISsippi or my maternal grandparents from South Georgia, stories have always been a part of my life. The stories I heard as a child were of Br’er Rabbit, John the Conqueror, and intermittent episodes from the adventures of my family members as young adults. These stories became a Morse code of sorts signaling everything from who could be trusted to how hardships in life should be handled. As I grew up, these stories matured with me and recentered themselves on subjects like injustice and painful family memories.

My grandparents often told these stories to me in vague generalities, fearing for my safety despite decades of distance from the actual events. These vague generalities or silences, as defined by Elsa Barkley Brown, are characteristic of the ways in which most Black Americans communicated and operated in the rural South following emancipation, and these silences checker studies in African American history for a myriad of reasons, ranging from restrictions of literacy to cross-cultural fear and mistrust. Many significant stories of African American history have been lost or forgotten as a result, and historians bear an honorable burden of uncovering those silences when and where they are able.¹ As a historian and a recipient of stories containing many silences, Isaac Harold Anderson has been my burden since the spring of 2003 and the basis of over a decade of work and research.

My awareness of Isaac Anderson began with a mustard yellow all-but-discarded brochure that I found while doing research at Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee. His picture on the brochure was that of a light-skinned man with a high forehead, broad nose, and clear eyes. In it, he is wearing a bow tie and white shirt, what could be described as a typical preacher’s suit, an expression giving the sense of an impending smile reserved for later use, and a complexion signaling biracial parentage. In nineteenth-century America, he would have been listed in census records as mulatto.

The brochure, put together by his granddaughter, unearthed to me important details of Anderson’s life: His date of birth, his service in the Georgia legislature, his eventual move to Jackson, Tennessee, the name of his second wife, the accomplishments of his descendants, and his support for the poor and underprivileged. Two bits of information remained obscure like half-buried relics in the sand: The first was a reference implying a descendance from a William Jackson Anderson; the second, an omission of any reference to his mother. Historians are trained to examine not only details lying in plain sight, but also empty spaces where details should be. In slave narratives and oral histories, former slaves often convey a vague memory or a first name of their mothers, but for Isaac Anderson, nothing of his ancestry existed in the mysterious brochure other than the name of William Jackson Anderson.

Isaac Anderson served as a registrar near Fort Valley, a delegate to the Georgia Constitutional Convention of 1867–1868, a candidate for the state’s legislature in 1868, a state Senator, and one of only five Black elected officials in Georgia in 1870. By 1874, he was one of the last two Black officials to serve in the Georgia Senate until Leroy Johnson in 1962. Today, Fort Valley is a notable community and home to Fort Valley State University, one of the oldest historically Black colleges and universities in Georgia, but with such a rich history, most African Americans living there do not recognize his name. He has no plaque or monument, and no notable references in the church that he helped to start and fund.

Silences shroud many of the Black politicians who, following Reconstruction, stayed in the South and whose stories descended into relative obscurity over time as noted by Reconstruction historian Eric Foner in Freedom’s Lawmakers.² A major cause for these shrouds of silence are histories of Reconstruction that have downplayed Black leadership and regarded Black leaders as either radical or inept. W. E. B. DuBois would be the first to challenge these histories in 1935 with his work Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880.³

Until the last forty years, much of the scholarship exploring Reconstruction has been shaped by William Dunning who attributed many of the failures of Reconstruction to Black leadership and ultimately, to the Black community. The William Dunning school of thought at Columbia University influenced a cadre of doctoral students including C. Mildred Thompson. In Reconstruction in Georgia: Economic, Social, Political 1865–1872, Thompson softened some of Dunning’s arguments but bemoaned the change in status of Blacks following Emancipation. When the compulsory methods of slavery disappeared, there was absolutely no power to keep the negro steadily and regularly at work, she wrote. Everywhere negroes worked more lazily than they did as slaves.⁴

Although scholarship on the role of former slaves’ active participation in Reconstruction in Georgia has expanded, many historians still maintained aspects of earlier negative perspectives on Black agency. As Alan Conway wrote in The Reconstruction of Georgia, the Negro as a laborer, was at his most unreliable and irresponsible, quite happy to take a vacation from work at the expense of the Freedmen’s’ Bureau. Nearly twenty years later in Black Politicians and Reconstruction in Georgia, Edmund Drago points to the Black minister as a problematic figure during Reconstruction arguing, As antebellum preachers, slave and free, [Black ministers] had mastered the art of compromise in order to bring the Gospel message to the slaves … Translated into politics, this produced a certain conservatism [where] they were acutely aware of the intellectual and material gulf between themselves and native born whites.⁵

Only since the 1990s have large studies investigated the experience and agency of Blacks in Georgia without the filter of Dunning’s perspectives. The first major study challenging earlier assumptions about the racial and political acquiescence of Black leaders was Joseph P. Reidy’s From Slavery to Agrarian Capitalism in the Cotton Plantation South: Central Georgia, 1800–1880. Here, Reidy provided a broader, more in-depth understanding of Reconstruction and the active role that former slaves adopted in grassroots efforts and as leaders in their communities. Susan O’Donovan also shares this perspective of Black agency during this period in Becoming Free in the Cotton South.

While many scholars have discounted the history of Black participation in Reconstruction as formulated by Thompson, Conway, and Drago, their perspectives remain prevalent with many who are not conversant with recent historical scholarship. Consequently, their perspectives still dominate the understanding of this period in many commercial and nonacademic publications. Most scholarship about the role of Black Georgians during Reconstruction available to most Georgians is still primarily told through the perspective of Thompson, Conway, and Drago. Their work (252 copies combined) can be found in Georgia’s public libraries. In comparison, the state’s libraries only have 8 copies of O’Donovan and Reidy’s work combined, with nearly half of those only available electronically.⁶ The dominance of these ideas in popular thought may offer an explanation for why it was not until 1984 that Robert Benham was elected to the Georgia Supreme Court where he would have been the first African American ever elected to statewide office in Georgia.⁷ More recently, the dominance and persistence of these ideas also speaks to the significance of Stacy Abrams’s close gubernatorial run against Brian Kemp in 2018 where she almost won election to the highest state office and would have been the first Black woman to do so in the South. Moreover, Abram’s continued efforts arguably led to the election of Reverend Raphael Warnock in January 2021, making him only the fifth Black person elected to a statewide office as Georgia’s first Black Senator. Abram’s efforts are as much a challenge to the discounting of the significance of Black political participation during Reconstruction as they are today.

* * *

Isaac Anderson’s story presents a microhistory of a Black minister and politician who struggled against violence and economic deprivation in the rural South during Reconstruction. The narrative that blossomed from a simple, mimeographed brochure is the recovered story of a Black leader’s tenuous survival during this period and into the nadir of race relations. Anderson’s survival, like that of many Black leaders who remained in the South, required painful acquiescence and a crushing passivity that was needed to navigate biased waters in the South. Yet, survival for Black leaders also required a dangerous impassivity needed to stand against and overcome devastatingly unjust social realities, and these dynamics make Anderson’s story an important counterpoint to the Dunning perspective, which still permeates many histories of Reconstruction in Georgia.

The silences that cloaked Anderson created a void that pulled me further into a search to recover his life, and his life became a story bigger than the original brochure, which was simply an acknowledgment of a Black man living in Georgia during Reconstruction and serving his adopted community of Jackson, Tennessee. Like many African American leaders of his time, Anderson was well acquainted with betrayal and disappointment. He left no letters or diary by which others might know him, but threads of his life remain to be uncovered in a smattering of records from the Freedmen’s Bureau, columns from his denominational newspaper, documents from municipal courts, and details pieced together from his father’s life.

This narrative is a recovery of the lives of both Isaac and William Jackson Anderson, two men who are racially, politically, and culturally polarized yet locked in a tenuous relationship with one another within the context of Reconstruction in the rural South. William Jackson was both Anderson’s master and his father, and the story of these two men highlights the power in ideas of race and racial constructs that were insurmountable for Anderson. Although both men had remarkable potential and success, Anderson could never escape the fact that he was a Black man or his decision to be identified as such.

The bond in blood that held the two men together was tested not only by the racial norms of the day but also by their vastly differing political choices. Isaac Anderson was a radical Republican, which was a pejorative used by many white Southerners because his political affiliation and his concern for the rights of newly emancipated Blacks classified him as virtually un-American. William Jackson Anderson was a Democrat who supported the Confederacy with his money and his politics. The spring election of 1868 found both men campaigning from Houston County, but for different offices in the Georgia legislature. Though the election was pivotal in their lives, each would experience different outcomes and pressures. The election of 1868 also brought with it the first surge of coordinated Ku Klux Klan violence to emerge in Georgia.

The lives of Isaac and William Jackson Anderson challenge the neat boxes that often characterize relations among former slaves and their masters. During these years, former slaves embraced their freedom and demanded greater economic opportunity, while their former masters responded with violence and legal tactics designed to re-establish a permanent underclass. These realities are represented in the work of Roger Ransom and Richard Sutch’s examination of economic measures used by whites to undermine Southern Blacks during Reconstruction, and they are further emphasized in Eric Foner’s landmark work, Reconstruction. Moreover, in After Slavery: Race, Labor, and Citizenship in the Reconstruction South, Bruce E. Baker and Brian Kelly further explore the economic limitations imposed on former slaves by former masters, and they conclude that much scholarship in this area has often resulted in a steady output of studies emphasizing freedpeople’s agency, but little acknowledgement until recently that there were limits to the former slaves’ power to remake their world.⁸ William Jackson’s investments highlight the control of Black labor by the state’s railroad and cotton industry and by Georgia’s convict lease system which became a statewide source of labor through the work of former slaves. Anderson’s narrative gives an understanding of the convict lease system, which he opposed, though ironically, he himself would very likely have been trapped within its legalized slavery if not for his father.⁹

As scholars in the 1990s began to re-evaluate Black leadership during Reconstruction, they simultaneously began to examine the convict lease system in Georgia. Alex Lichtenstein, Matthew Mancini, Douglas A. Blackmon, and Talitha L. LeFlouria have examined the personal stories of Blacks caught in the convict lease system, and Georgia’s ranking as the state with the ninth highest incarceration rate in the nation further emphasizes the need to understand this history. In Georgia, three times as many Blacks are incarcerated than are whites, and the convict lease system which began this trend is a story that is essential to Isaac Anderson’s experience as both a pastor and a politician.¹⁰

As the struggle to control the labor of Blacks continued, different perspectives on the role of federal, state, and local government in upholding labor laws developed between Southern whites and newly freed people. Paul A. Cimbala’s Under the Guardianship of the Nation: The Freedmen’s Bureau and Reconstruction in Georgia, 1865–1870 demonstrates the hopes and disappointments experienced by Blacks living in Houston County who viewed the Freedmen’s Bureau as an extension of the federal government and as enforcers of the rights protected under the Fourteenth Amendment. Many Southern whites extenuated injustice through legal and extralegal methods and curtailed the social and political expression of freed people when they stood in opposition to state and local power structures that were central to Southern white identity. This embracing of Constitutional rights encouraged Anderson and other former slaves to assert their civil and legal rights by voting and running for political office during Reconstruction.¹¹

Anderson’s story is one of how the Black church functioned as a political institution. His political involvement progresses from the antebellum South through the post-Reconstruction Era as former slaves established a power structure within their communities and churches as referenced by Steven Hahn’s classic, Nation Under Our Feet. It was here that Blacks organized; churches became centers of education and civil engagement as typified throughout Anderson’s life.¹² It is no surprise that Black leadership was so closely tied to the church, which was the only space where a Black person could testify against a white person, thus creating a unique albeit limited space for Black ministers to speak to the white power structure.

Anderson’s story gives a more complete picture of Black ministers who contended with both intraracial and interracial politics immediately following Emancipation and were politically active within their own communities in ways that were visible and threatening to many Southern whites. In Houston County, political leadership among former slaves began with slave missions sanctioned by whites, and in these missions, Black pastors and lay leaders ministered to slaves who worshipped freely and distinctively as a group. With emancipation, these same men continued as community leaders, using their status as officially recognized clergy to organize their flocks into distinct congregations and their communities into solid political constituencies. Anderson’s story brings detail to how Black political organizing coincided with the creation of independent Black churches and their role as a viable means of political organization following Emancipation.

During Reconstruction, the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) and African Methodist Episcopal Church, Zion (AME Zion) contended with the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church (CME) for members as many freedmen joined Black-led denominations. Each denomination had a representative involved in Georgia’s politics, and these men played a critical role in fostering Black agency during Reconstruction as white Methodists from the North and South competed for influence among Black congregations. AME minister Henry McNeal Turner, AME Zion minister Tunis Campbell Sr., and Anderson, who was a CME minister, all served in the Georgia Constitutional Convention in the winter of 1867–1868. Later, all three would serve in the Georgia legislature: Henry McNeal Turner in the Georgia House; Tunis Campbell Sr. and Isaac Anderson in the Georgia Senate.¹³

Although a number of histories have been written about the CME Church including autobiographies of CME co-founders Lucius Holsey and Isaac Lane, none have examined Anderson’s life or his political career, and his narrative challenges the portrayal, dominant with many historians, of the CME Church as a nonpolitical entity in its early years.¹⁴ Uncovering Anderson’s ministerial and political involvement builds upon research on Black Methodism by highlighting the relationship between him and Henry McNeal Turner. Recovering his story expands upon research exploring intraracial tensions that developed during Reconstruction as former slaves established their own separate churches.¹⁵ Katherine Dvorak, Reginald Hildebrand, William Montgomery, Christopher Owen, Daniel Stowell, and Clarence Walker have produced work exploring this area and the complexities behind the creation of the CME Church at the dawn of what would become the Long Civil Rights Movement.¹⁶

Following Emancipation, Black churches offered former slaves political and social shelter by allowing them freedom of both worship and speech. In their churches, freedpeople could work through the traumas of slavery, the troubles of daily living, and share in a common presence of suffering with silent understanding. They could also verbalize their fear of Klan supporters who employed many of them. The Black church became a safe space, and the Black minister, a great comforter to his congregation. Isaac Anderson’s story builds upon research into Black churches established during Reconstruction, and uncovering his life furthers many studies of trauma by exploring how the Black church provided places of spiritual healing for freedpeople from slavery, violence, and the oppression that was part of their daily living.¹⁷ The legacy of such spaces was at the center of much discussion during the Obama administration as scholars debated whether or not the Black Church was dead.¹⁸ During the Trump administration, this discussion resurfaced as a racial divide between evangelicals, and Black Christians raised the question of safe spaces for people of color, yet during Reconstruction, this discussion was central to Anderson’s work and the creation of the CME Church.

Beginning in the late twentieth century, Black Americans, and especially Black millennials, began to seek safe spaces and economic opportunities in a reverse migration from the urban North to the South. This new migration is a homecoming of sorts rooted and intertwined in a strange intergenerational link with