05/31/2026
Born in South Carolina in 1834, Henry McNeal Turner was born free because his grandmother was a white woman and according to slave law, her children were considered to be free. Appointed by Abraham Lincoln, he became the first Black Chaplain in the US Army during the Civil War. Fighting for Union side, Turner encouraged black people to fight against slavery from the pulpit to the field. He even recruited for the army inside of his own church.
After the war ended, he lived in Macon, Georgia and founded a few AME churches that are still around today. He then became active in Georgia politics after the seeing the many failures of the Black Codes and the Reconstruction era. This made him realize that America could never and would never be our home. So he begin to advocate for emigration (that’s with an “e”) where African Americans would, as the name suggests, move back to Africa in order to have freedom without boundaries.
But Bishop Turner saw it as an opportunity for African Americans to create our own black nation on the African continent. And places like the newly former Liberia would be perfect for this! Although most of the African American community did not agree to leaving the country, Turner helped organized groups to leave for Liberia and helped to establish AME churches in Africa.
He ran for political office in Macon and served as the representative for the Georgia State Legislature in 1867. He was run out of office for a few years until President Ulysses Grant appointed Turner as postmaster of Macon, Georgia (person in charge of the post office). We even have our main post office named after him: Henry McNeal Turner Building. His speech “I Claim the Rights of a Man” addressed to the Georgia legislature in 1868 demanded that he and other elected officials be treated with respect and dignity.
