Hardback
October 15, 2020
9780813179810
English
238
11 b&w halftones, 1 map
9.00 Inches (US)
6.00 Inches (US)
1.05 Pounds (US)
$35.00 USD, £45.00 GBP
v2.1 Reference
Electronic book text
October 15, 2020
9780813179834
9780813179810
English
238
11 b&w photos, 1 map
9.00 Inches (US)
6.00 Inches (US)
$60.00 USD, £45.00 GBP
v2.1 Reference
Electronic book text
October 15, 2020
9780813179841
9780813179810
English
238
11 b&w photos, 1 map
9.00 Inches (US)
6.00 Inches (US)
$60.00 USD, £45.00 GBP
v2.1 Reference

A Higher Mission

The Careers of Alonzo and Althea Brown Edmiston in Central Africa

In this vital transnational study, Kimberly D. Hill critically analyzes the colonial history of central Africa through the perspective of two African American missionaries: Alonzo Edmiston and Althea Brown Edmiston. The pair met and fell in love while working as a part of the American Presbyterian Congo Mission—an operation which aimed to support the people of the Congo Free State suffering forced labor and brutal abuses under Belgian colonial governance. They discovered a unique kinship amid the country's growing human rights movement and used their familiarity with industrial education, popularized by Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute, as a way to promote Christianity and offer valuable services to local people.

From 1902 through 1941, the Edmistons designed their mission projects to promote community building, to value local resources, and to incorporate the perspectives of the African participants. They focused on childcare, teaching, translation, construction, and farming—ministries that required constant communication with their Kuba neighbors. Hill concludes with an analysis of how the Edmistons' pedagogy influenced government-sponsored industrial schools in the Belgian Congo through the 1950s.

A Higher Mission
illuminates not only the work of African American missionaries—who are often overlooked and under-studied—but also the transnational implications of black education in the South. Significantly, Hill also addresses the role of black foreign missionaries in the early civil rights movement, an argument that suggests an underexamined connection between earlier nineteenth-century Pan-Africanisms and activism in the interwar era.

About the Author

Kimberly D. Hill, assistant professor of history at University of Texas at Dallas, is a contributor to Alabama Women and Faith and Slavery in the Presbyterian Diaspora. She lives in Dallas, Texas.

Reviews

"A Higher Mission is a well-written and fascinating history of the religious motivations and educational methods of African American Presbyterian missionaries to the Belgian Congo. The manuscript brings to light the understudied and important archives of Alonzo and Althea Brown Edmiston, and Hill's deep familiarity with the material is evident."—Andrew E. Barnes, author of Global Christianity and the Black Atlantic: Tuskegee, Colonialism and the Shaping of African Industrial Education

"This book explores the missionary careers of the Edmistons, one of the most famous African American missionary couples in American history. With nuance and sensitivity, Kimberly Hill uncovers how the Edmistons were caught between racism in America and imperialism in Congo, and between industrial education and intellectual qualifications as competing visions. Their faithfulness and perseverance in the face of racial prejudice testifies to the enduring importance of African American mission history. I highly recommend this fine study."—Dana L. Robert, Truman Collins professor of World Christianity and History of Mission at Boston University and editor of African Christian Biography: Stories, Lives, and Challenges

"Richly instructive and rigorously researched, A Higher Mission is an important addition to the historiography of US mission work in colonial Africa."—Christopher Tounsel, Associate Professor of History, University of Washington

"In A Higher Mission, Kimberly D. Hill deftly tells the remarkable story of one Black missionary couple who survived the purge and struggled, over the course of more than three decades, to negotiate the challenges posed by White Presbyterian leadership that was increasingly committed to upholding racist colonial policy....(It) succeeds in mining archival sources to document the multiple, often conflicted, legacies of not only the Edmistons but also the APCM (American Presbyterian Congo Mission) and the wider field of African American missionaries in colonial Africa."—Journal of African American History

9780813179810 : a-higher-mission-hill
Hardback
238 Pages
$35.00 USD
9780813179834 : a-higher-mission-hill
Electronic book text
238 Pages
$60.00 USD
9780813179841 : a-higher-mission-hill
Electronic book text
238 Pages
$60.00 USD

Other Titles from New Directions In Southern History

Law and Society in the South

John W. Wertheimer
Dec 2021 - University Press of Kentucky
$30.00 USD - Paperback / softback
$45.00 USD - Electronic book text

Lum and Abner

Randal L. Hall
Dec 2021 - University Press of Kentucky
$35.00 USD - Hardback
$60.00 USD - Electronic book text

The Long Civil War

edited by John David Smith, Raymond Arsenault, with contributions by Michael J. Birkner, Paul A. Cimbala, Stanley Harrold, James R. Hedtke, James Oliver Horton, Lois E. Horton, Daniel Kilbride, Diane Miller Sommerville, Stephen J. Whitf...
Jul 2021 - University Press of Kentucky
$40.00 USD - Hardback
$45.00 USD - Electronic book text
$45.00 USD - Electronic book text

Other Titles in HISTORY / United States / State & Local / South (AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, WV)

The Antislavery Movement in Kentucky

Lowell H. Harrison
Dec 2025 - University Press of Kentucky
$12.95 USD - Electronic book text

Transylvania

John D. Wright, Jr.
Dec 2025 - University Press of Kentucky
$30.00 USD - Paperback / softback
$12.95 USD - Electronic book text

Appalachian Ghost

Raymond Thompson
Mar 2024 - University Press of Kentucky
$40.00 USD - Hardback
$40.00 USD - Electronic book text
$40.00 USD - Online resource

Other Titles in Social & cultural history

Dirt Don't Burn

Larry Roeder, Barry Harrelson
Sep 2023 - Georgetown University Press
$29.95 USD - Hardback

Multicultural Cities of the Habsburg Empire, 1880–1914

Catherine Horel
Jul 2023 - Central European University Press
$105.00 USD - Hardback

Texts and Contexts from the History of Feminism and Women's Rights

edited by Zsófia Lóránd, Adela Hîncu, Jovana Mihajlović Trbovc, Jovana Trbovc, Katarzyna Stańczak-Wiślicz
Jun 2023 - Central European University Press
$115.00 USD - Hardback