A new Wiki Page has been set up to collate the history of Black students and residents of Cambridge over the centuries. One of the tasks for historians is to cross-reference the names with records in the newspaper archives to get a more clear picture of their achievements and impact on both town and gown. Rev Alexander Crummell from the USA was one of the first students at Cambridge, and he gave a talk about the experience of Black people in the USA at a time when slavery as an institution had been legally abolished in the United Kingdom and the British Empire, but not in the United States of America.
The talk at the town hall pre-dated both the American Civil War and also the construction of the large hall on the Guildhall site. What is significant about this talk was the amount of money raised over £16 in 1848 money. This is nearly £2,000 in today’s money according to the Bank of England’s inflation calculator.
The article on Rev. Crummell’s speech at the Cambridge Town Hall in 1848, written up in the Cambridge Chronicle and Journal and digitised by the British Newspaper Archive, is transcribed below.
SPIRITUAL CONDITION OF the NEGRO RACE IN THE UNITED STATES.
“The Rev. Alexander Crummell, African Clergyman of the Episcopal Church in America, Rector of the Church of the Messiah, in the city of New York, delivered interesting lecture in the Town Hall, last Tuesday evening, on the Spiritual condition of the Negro Race in the United States. The room was densely filled.
“The Rev. Dr. Ollivant, Regius Professor of Divinity, occupied the chair, in the place of the Rev. Dr. Lee, Regius Professor of Hebrew, who had promised to preside, but was prevented by leaving Cambridge from so doing.
“Among the audience we noticed
- the Rev. J. N. Peill, Tutor of Queens’;
- Rev. J. Rowlands, Fellow of Queens’;
- Rev. H. A. Marsh, Dean of Trinity;
- Rev. J. G. Howes, Minister of Little St. Mary’s;
- Rev. C. Clayton, Tutor of Caius; &c. &c.
“Professor Ollivant stated that the Rev. Professor Scholefield and the Rev. W. Carus felt much interested in Mr. Crummell’s object, but that they were out of town and could not attend the meeting. After prayers had been offered by the Rev. C. Clayton,
“Mr. CRUMMELL rose and proceeded to inform the audience of the object for which he had come to England, and the necessity which had forced him to so he stated that physically, politically, intellectually, and spiritually, the Negro race in the United States were the most miserable and degraded condition. In the American Union they numbered in all about 3,400,000. Of these three millions were slaves.
“Their condition was abject and miserable to the last degree. They were bought and sold like cattle. A regular trade was kept up between the more northern slave states and the southern slave states. They were poorly fed and clothed; they were whipped and scourged; families were separated; they were overworked. No means were taken to educate them, because education of Negroes was forbidden by law. They were spiritually destitute: in many parts of the south there were, according to the representations of southern ministers themselves, hundreds and thousands of Negroes in some districts who had never heard of the plan of salvation through a Redeemer.
“Besides the three millions in slavery, Mr. C. said there were somewhere about ‘100,000 of his race in a state of freedom ; but their condition was but nominal freedom, being but little removed from a state of slavery. the southern states, the same laws which forbade the education of the negroes, and the customs which hindered their spiritual improvement, applied in like manner to those of their brethren who were free.
“In Brazil, in the Levant, in the French West Indian Islands and the Spanish West Indies, when a Negro became relieved from the yoke of slavery, he rose immediately to a condition of equality. But in the United States it was different. Caste, as strong as any that ever existed in India, met the coloured man in every relation of life.
“It was a spirit of perfect exclusion: it kept their children from the workshops of mechanics, because white apprentices would not work with coloured : it kept them from the cabins of steam-boats, and drove them to the Negro car on railroads: it excluded them from common schools where whites were taught: it shut them out of high schools, academies, and colleges in America. Even among the religionists of America the spirit prevails as strongly as among any other class of persons. In the churches Negro pews were stuck up in obscure corners for black and coloured people ; and at the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, black had always to wait till their white fellow-sinners had first communicated.
“The seminaries of the church were shut upon them, and black men were disciplined for having the presumption to apply for admission to them. In fine, the spirit caste was so universal and so stringent throughout the whole country that the negro race generally were in the most miserable and abject condition, victims of avarice, victims of the will and caprice of the whites, victims of their hate, and victims of their lust.
“Mr. Crummell, gave it as his deliberate opinion, that of the 3,400,000 of his race in the American States, there were not 100,000 who were receiving any intellectual advantages, or who were placed under the influence of the Gospel of Christianity.
“To help to meet the necessities of a portion of his race in the United States, Mr. Crummell had come to England, where, for the first time in his life, he was enjoying the hospitality of clergymen, of Christians, and gentlemen of the white race. He desired a’ld to build a church for a congregation composed of black and coloured people, in New York.
“Mr. Crummell dwelt upon the importance intellectual improvement of his race; it was the grand means for their elevation. Schools, colleges, and churches would do more for the Negro race in America than any thing. If they only had institutions from which they could send forth annually virtuous and capable men into all the avenues of life, slavery and caste would certainly recede, like mist beside the mountain before the glory of the morning sun. Not by agitation, not by railing, not by expressions of deep and ardent indignation, was the cause of the negro race in America to be advanced, so much as by aiding the heroic and active few of his race who in that country were anxious to establish a college for the culture of their children, and to build churches by which to rescue the masses from vice, irreligion, and ungodliness, and the infidelity to which too many were being driven the repulsiveness and the inconsistency of white Christians.
“These and the other matters alluded to by Mr. Crummell were most attentively listened to by the large auditory. The collection after the meeting, in aid of the fund fo the erection of the Church of the Messiah, in New York, was 16l‘. 12s.” (£16, 12 shillings).
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