Alexander Crummell

Alexander Crummell (March 3, 1819 – September 10, 1898) was an American minister, author, abolitionist, and academic. Born to free African-American parents in New York City, Crummell attended various educational institutions and was ordained as an Episcopal priest in the United States. He was a member of Prince Hall Freemasonry.

Crummell went to England in the late 1840s, where he raised money by lecturing about American slavery, and studied for three years at Cambridge University. In the early 1850s, Crummell moved to Liberia, where he worked to convert Africans to Christianity and educate them, as well as to persuade African-American colonists of his ideas. Crummell lived and worked in Liberia for 20 years but did not gather wide support for his ideas.

After returning to the United States in 1872, Crummell was called to St. Mary's Episcopal Mission in Washington, DC. In 1875, he and his congregation founded St. Luke's Episcopal Church, the first independent Black Episcopal church in Washington, DC. Crummell served as rector there until his retirement in 1894.

Crummell is best known for developing concepts of Pan-Africanism, as well as his writings on race relations in America and the Black American colonization of Liberia.