Alexander Crummell
In September 1898, Alexander Crummell died in Red Bank, closing a career that had spanned decades of work as a priest, missionary, religious leader, and university teacher. His death, recorded as occurring on September 10 of that year, brought to an end the life of a United States citizen whose formation had taken him through several distinct educational institutions across two continents.
Born on March 3, 1819, Crummell received his early education at the African Free School before continuing his studies at Whitestown Seminary and Yale Divinity School. He subsequently pursued further education in England, attending Queens' College at the University of Cambridge. This transatlantic educational arc shaped the trajectory of a career conducted in the English language and oriented toward religious and scholarly life. Crummell served in the capacities of priest and missionary, roles that placed him within institutional religious structures while also carrying him into active engagement with communities beyond those structures. He also worked as a university teacher, extending his engagement with learning into a formal academic setting.
The range of institutions at which Crummell studied — from the African Free School through to the University of Cambridge — reflects an educational history that moved across markedly different environments. His roles as priest, missionary, and university teacher placed him simultaneously within the church, the mission field, and the academy. He worked throughout his life as a citizen of the United States, carrying out his varied professional duties in the English language until his death in Red Bank in 1898.
Quotes by Alexander Crummell
Let our posterity know that we their ancestors, uncultured and unlearned, amid all trials and temptations, were men of integrity.
Those too impressed with material things cannot hold their place n the world of culture; they are relegated to inferiority and ultimate death.
Color is nothing, anywhere. Civilized condition differences men, all over the globe.
We should let our godliness exhale like th odor of flowers. We should live for the good of our kind, and strive for the salvation of the world.
If you are to be leaders, teachers, and guides among your people, you must have strength. No people can be fed, no people can be built up on flowers.
The greatness of peoples springs from their ability to grasp the grand conceptions of being. It is the absorption of a people, of a nation, of a rare, in large majestic and abiding things which lifts them up to the skies.
Strive to make something of yourself, then strive to make the most of yourself.
