Johnette Gordon-Weaver is an American historian, genealogist, and activist. She is active in the restoration and historical preservation of black history in Williamsburg, Virginia. In October 2023, she became the first woman of color to join the Williamsburg Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, one of the society's oldest and largest chapters. She is also the co-founder of Williamsburg History.
Gordon-Weaver is a media consultant for Williamsburg Action, an organization formed after the Murder of George Floyd that is focused on racial justice and equality in Williamsburg. [1] She participated in the city's George Flyod protest. [2]
She is active in Reservation, the Village Initiative, and other organizations and projects that restore and preserve African-American history in Williamsburg. [3] [4] She serves on some of the organization's advisory boards. [5] Gordon-Weaver wrote an essay that was included in a history book published by College of William & Mary's Bray School Lab. [6] She is also an oral historian. [7]
In 2021, she served as a narrator at a Black History Month service at Triangle Block, a historically black business area in Williamsburg. [8] [9]
She spoke at Williambsurg's fourth annual National Day of Racial Healing. [10]
Gordon-Weaver is the daughter of Myrtle Gordon. [9] She is the sixth-great-granddaughter of Anthony Roberts, a freedman who served as a waggoner in the 1st Virginia Regiment during the American Revolutionary War. [11] [12] She is a descendent of students at the Williamsburg Bray School, a school for free and enslaved black children in Williamsburg, Virginia. [6]
In October 2023, she became the first woman of color to join the Williamsburg Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, one of the society's oldest and largest chapters. [11] [13] Her patriot ancestor, Roberts, is the first free African-American patriot recognized by the organization at the national level. [11]
She is Baptist and is a member of First Baptist Church. [14] [15]
Williamsburg is an independent city in Virginia, United States. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 15,425. Located on the Virginia Peninsula, Williamsburg is in the northern part of the Hampton Roads metropolitan area. It is bordered by James City County on the west and south and York County on the east.
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), alternatively the Great Commission Baptists (GCB), is a Christian denomination based in the United States. It is the world's largest Baptist organization, the largest Protestant, and the second-largest Christian body in the United States. The SBC is a cooperation of fully autonomous, independent churches with commonly held essential beliefs that pool some resources for missions.
The National Society Daughters of the American Revolution is a lineage-based membership service organization for women who are directly descended from a patriot of the American Revolutionary War. A non-profit group, the organization promotes education and patriotism. Its membership is limited to direct lineal descendants of soldiers or others of the American Revolution era who aided the revolution and its subsequent war. Applicants must be at least 18 years of age and have a birth certificate indicating that their gender is female. DAR has over 190,000 current members in the United States and other countries. The organization's motto is "God, Home, and Country".
The National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) was formed on May 15, 1869, to work for women's suffrage in the United States. Its main leaders were Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It was created after the women's rights movement split over the proposed Fifteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, which would in effect extend voting rights to black men. One wing of the movement supported the amendment while the other, the wing that formed the NWSA, opposed it, insisting that voting rights be extended to all women and all African Americans at the same time.
William Marrion Branham was an American Christian minister and faith healer who initiated the post-World War II healing revival, and claimed to be a prophet with the anointing of Elijah, who had come to prelude Christ's second coming; some of his followers have been labeled a "doomsday cult". He is credited as "a principal architect of restorationist thought" for charismatics by some Christian historians, and has been called the "leading individual in the Second Wave of Pentecostalism." He made a lasting influence on televangelism and the modern charismatic movement, and his "stage presence remains a legend unparalleled in the history of the Charismatic movement". At the time they were held, Branham's inter-denominational meetings were the largest religious meetings ever held in some American cities. Branham was the first American deliverance minister to successfully campaign in Europe; his ministry reached global audiences with major campaigns held in North America, Europe, Africa, and India.
Wyatt Tee Walker was an African-American pastor, national civil rights leader, theologian, and cultural historian. He was a chief of staff for Martin Luther King Jr., and in 1958 became an early board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He helped found a Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) chapter in 1958. As executive director of the SCLC from 1960 to 1964, Walker helped to bring the group to national prominence. Walker sat at the feet of his mentor, BG Crawley, who was a Baptist Minister in Brooklyn, NY and New York State Judge.
Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins was an American novelist, journalist, playwright, historian, and editor. She is considered a pioneer in her use of the romantic novel to explore social and racial themes, as demonstrated in her first major novel Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South. In addition, Hopkins is known for her significant contributions as editor for the Colored American Magazine, which was recognized as being among the first periodicals specifically celebrating African-American culture through short stories, essays and serial novels. She is also known to have had connections to other influential African Americans of the time, such as Booker T. Washington and William Wells Brown.
The Black church is the faith and body of Christian denominations and congregations in the United States that predominantly minister to, and are also led by African Americans, as well as these churches' collective traditions and members.
Adam Clayton Powell was an American pastor who developed the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, New York as the largest Protestant congregation in the country, with 10,000 members. He was an African American community activist, author, and the father of Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Born into poverty in southwestern Virginia, Powell worked to put himself through school and Wayland Seminary, where he was ordained in 1892.
As of 2014, approximately 15.3% of Americans identified as Baptist, making Baptists the second-largest religious group in the United States, after Roman Catholics. By 2020, Baptists became the third-largest religious group in the United States, with the rise of nondenominational Protestantism. Baptists adhere to a congregationalist structure, so local church congregations are generally self-regulating and autonomous, meaning that their broadly Christian religious beliefs can and do vary. Baptists make up a significant portion of evangelicals in the United States and approximately one third of all Protestants in the United States. Divisions among Baptists have resulted in numerous Baptist bodies, some with long histories and others more recently organized. There are also many Baptists operating independently or practicing their faith in entirely independent congregations.
Historians generally agree that the religious life of African Americans "forms the foundation of their community life". Before 1775 there was scattered evidence of organized religion among Black people in the Thirteen Colonies. The Methodist and Baptist churches became much more active in the 1780s. Their growth was quite rapid for the next 150 years, until their membership included the majority of Black Americans.
Kate Waller Barrett, née Katherine Harwood Waller, was a prominent Virginia physician, humanitarian, philanthropist, sociologist and social reformer, best known for her leadership of the National Florence Crittenton Mission, which she founded in 1895 with Charles Nelson Crittenton. Her causes included helping the "outcast woman, the mistreated prisoner, those lacking in educational and social opportunity, the voteless woman, and the disabled war veteran." Although comparatively little known today, she was "[o]ne of the most prominent women of her time".
Black nationalism is a nationalist movement which seeks representation for Black people as a distinct national identity, especially in racialized, colonial and postcolonial societies. Its earliest proponents saw it as a way to advocate for democratic representation in culturally plural societies or to establish self-governing independent nation-states for Black people. Modern Black nationalism often aims for the social, political, and economic empowerment of Black communities within white majority societies, either as an alternative to assimilation or as a way to ensure greater representation and equality within predominantly Eurocentric cultures.
The National Baptist Convention, USA, incorporated as the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., and more commonly known as the National Baptist Convention, is a Baptist Christian denomination headquartered at the Baptist World Center in Nashville, Tennessee and affiliated with the Baptist World Alliance. It is also one of the largest predominantly and traditionally African American churches in the United States, and was the second largest Baptist denomination in the world in 2016.
The Williamsburg Bray School was a school for free and enslaved Black children founded in 1760 in Williamsburg, Virginia. Opened at Benjamin Franklin's suggestion in 1760, the school educated potentially hundreds of students until its closure in 1774. The house it first occupied is believed to be the "oldest extant building in the United States dedicated to the education of Black children".
Elizabeth Bray Allen also known as Elizabeth Bray Allen Smith Stith operated a large plantation after the death of her first husband, Arthur Allen. After the death of her second husband, she operated both the Allen and Smith estates. She provided the direction and funds to establish a free school for poor boys and girls in Smithfield, Virginia.
Gowan Pamphlet (1748–1807) was an American Baptist minister and freedman who founded the Black Baptist Church in Williamsburg, Virginia, United States. He was one of the first and, for a time, the only ordained African American preacher of any denomination in the American Colonies.
Edith Cumbo was a free mixed-race Black woman and entrepreneur who lived in Williamsburg, Virginia. Her life story is taught in the Advanced Placement American history curriculum to illustrate the challenges that free African Americans faced during the period of the American Revolution.
Karen Batchelor, formerly Karen Batchelor Farmer, is an American lawyer, community activist, and genealogist. In 1977, she became the first-known African American member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. As a genealogist, she co-founded the Fred Hart Williams Genealogical Society, which researches and preserves African-American family history. Batchelor is also a member of the Winthrop Society, the Associated Daughters of Early American Witches, the National Society of New England Women, and the Association of Professional Genealogists.
Georgia W. Benton is an American schoolteacher, businesswoman, and historian. In 2013, she became the first African-American member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in Georgia.