“We are haunted by our history of racial injustice in America because we don’t talk about it. Ending mass incarceration and achieving equality, justice, and fairness for all Americans starts with learning and sharing the truth about our past.” (Bryan Stevenson). Returning to the “EJI From Slavery to Mass Incarceration Museum, Reflection Room.”
Henry Highland Garnet was born in 1815 then, New Market, now Chesterville, Maryland. He escaped slavery to New York City in 1824 where he pursued education, attending the ‘African Free School’. Apart from basic studies, he studied Navigation and found work aboard several Ships. In 1829 he returned from a voyage to hear that his family had attracted the pursuit of Slave Hunters. While his Parents got away his Sister was captured. So angered, he took a knife to pursue the Slave Hunters until his friends convinced him otherwise.
Garnet continued his education at several institutions. The Oneida Institute in Whitesboro, NY is where he finished his studies in 1840. He has now received a Calling to Presbyterian Church Ministry, the service of which he remained his entire life. He served as the first pastor of the Liberty Street Negro Presbyterian Church in Troy, New York, beginning in 1842. His association with the ‘American Anti-Slavery Society’ yielded a tireless activist in the fight to end slavery. Working with William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass he became well-known for his skills as an orator.
In 1843 the “National Convention of Free People of Colour” was held in Buffalo, NY. His Message: “An Address to the Slaves of the United States” became known as “Call to Rebellion”. Rather than try to sway whites to end slavery, he encouraged the slaves to obtain their freedom themselves by rising up against their owners. The Convention refused, by vote, to endorse his Call to Action:
“Two hundred and twenty seven years ago, the first of our injured race were brought to the shores of America. They came not with glad spirits to select their homes in the New World. They came not with their own consent, to find an unmolested enjoyment of the blessings of this fruitful soil. The first dealings they had with men calling themselves Christians, exhibited to them the worst features of corrupt and sordid hearts; and convinced them that no cruelty is too great, no villainy and no robbery too abhorrent for even enlightened men to perform, when influenced by avarice and lust. Neither did they come flying upon the wings of Liberty, to a land of freedom. But they came with broken hearts, from their beloved native land, and were doomed to unrequited toil and deep degradation. Nor did the evil of their bondage end at their emancipation by death. Succeeding generations inherited their chains, and millions have come from eternity into time, and have returned again to the world of spirits, cursed and ruined by American slavery.” (Henry H. Garnet, 1843)
In 1850, Garnet traveled to England and Scotland with the message of Abolitionism. By 1852, Garnet serves as a missionary to Jamaica. He returns to the United States as pastor to the Shiloh Church in New York City. His adamance upon radical means on the part of slaves has diminished his influence within the abolitionist movement, but some say he is precursor to John Brown’s mission of 1859.
As the ‘Civil War’ commenced, and the “1863 Draft Riots” take footing in New York City, Garnet became the target of public anger over the issue of slavery. When a mob sought to attack him, they came to his home from which he and his family had fled.
By 1864 Garnet is in service as Pastor at Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C. He aided the war-related displaced and distressed; and assisted government workers in developing programs to help formerly enslaved people. To commemorate Congress’s adoption of the ’13th Amendment’ banning slavery, they felt that a public religious service was in order. Rev. Henry H. Garnet was chosen by President Abraham Lincoln to receive the honor of becoming the first African American to speak in the Capitol Building in D.C. His sermon was delivered on Sunday, February 12, 1865 entitled “Let the Monster Perish”:
“Let us view this demon, which the people have worshipped as a God. Come forth, thou grim monster, that thou mayest be critically examined! There he stands. Behold him, one and all. Its work is to chattelize man; to hold property in human beings. Great God! I would as soon attempt to enslave Gabriel or Michael as to enslave a man made in the image of God, and for whom Christ died. Slavery is snatching man from the high place to which he was lifted by the hand of God, and dragging him down to the level of the brute creation, where he is made to be the companion of the horse and the fellow of the ox.” (Henry H. Garnet, 1865).
In 1881, President James A. Garfield appointed Garnet to serve as United States Minister and Counsel General to Liberia. Henry H. Garnet died February 13, 1882 within two months of his arrival in Liberia.
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