A Methodist and an Activist Mai Gray, the first African-American woman to be president of United Methodist Women, was deeply dedicated both to the Methodist tradition and to fighting segregation. Born in Jackson, Tennessee, in 1922, Gray worked with her husband, a Methodist pastor, to build a coalition of leadership in the Central Jurisdiction, the...
African-American Missionary Bishop for Liberia Alexander Priestly Camphor was an African American missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He was born to slave parents in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. They died while he was a small child, and he was adopted and raised by Stephen Priestly, a white Methodist minister. Camphor was educated in Methodist Freedmen’s...
Educator and theologian Born into slavery in New Orleans, Bowen became a free man when his father purchased his family’s freedom in 1858. After the Civil War, in which his father served with the Union Army, Bowen attended Union Normal School in New Orleans. In 1878 he graduated with the first graduating class of New...
