Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer | |
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| Born | September , 1868 Pickens, South Carolina, U.S. |
| Died | May 24, 1936 (aged 67) |
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| Spouse | Jacob Moorer |
Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer (September 1868 [1] - May 24, 1936) was a poet and teacher in Orangeburg, South Carolina.
Moorer was born in September 1868, in Pickens, South Carolina. Her parents were Warren D. Jenkins and Mattie Miller.
She taught at the Normal and Grammar Schools, Claflin University, Orangeburg, South Carolina from 1895 to 1899.
In 1907, she published a collection of poems, Prejudice Unveiled and Other Poems. English Professor Joan R. Sherman described Moorer's poems as the "best poems on racial issues written by any black woman until the middle of the century." [2] Moorer attacks "lynching, debt peonage, white rape, Jim Crow segregation, and the hypocrisy of the church and the white press". [3]
Jenkins was also a very strong activist. Beyond her poetry, she was active in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), serving as State Vice-president in South Carolina in 1910. [4] In 1924, she attended the 1924 Methodist Episcopal Church General Conference where she gave a speech arguing that women should be allowed to be ordained within the Methodist Church. [5] During that conference, women were, indeed, given the right to be ordained as local deacons and elders.
In 1899, she married Jacob Moorer, an attorney in Orangeburg who frequently saw cases defending the rights of blacks against what he saw as a prejudiced legal system in South Carolina. In particular, he fought against the constitutionality of election law in the 1895 South Carolina Constitution.
Orangeburg, also known as The Burg, is the principal city in and the county seat of Orangeburg County, South Carolina, United States. The population of the city was 13,964 according to the 2020 census. The city is located 37 miles southeast of Columbia, on the north fork of the Edisto River.
The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, or the AME Zion Church (AMEZ) is a historically African-American Christian denomination based in the United States. It was officially formed in 1821 in New York City, but operated for a number of years before then. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church adheres to Wesleyan-Arminian theology.
Carrie Williams Clifford was an author, clubwoman, and activist in the women's rights and civil rights movements in the United States.
Anna Pauline "Pauli" Murray was an American civil rights activist, advocate, legal scholar and theorist, author and – later in life – an Episcopal priest. Murray's work influenced the civil rights movement and expanded legal protection for gender equality.
Georgia Blanche Douglas Camp Johnson, better known as Georgia Douglas Johnson, was a poet and playwright. She was one of the earliest female African-American playwrights, and an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance.
More than 1,500 African American officeholders served during the Reconstruction era (1865–1877) and in the years after Reconstruction before white supremacy, disenfranchisement, and the Democratic Party fully reasserted control in Southern states. Historian Canter Brown Jr. noted that in some states, such as Florida, the highest number of African Americans were elected or appointed to offices after the end of Reconstruction in 1877. The following is a partial list of notable African American officeholders from the end of the Civil War until before 1900. Dates listed are the year that a term states or the range of years served if multiple terms.
James D. Lynch was a missionary, public official, and state legislator in the United States. He was the first African-American Secretary of State of Mississippi, and a minister.
Ann Plato was a 19th-century African American educator and author. She was the second African-American woman to publish a book in the United States and the first to publish a book of essays and poems. As a young African-American girl writing in the 19th century, Plato has been described as an heir to Phillis Wheatley, who wrote her first published poem at the age of 13 in 1766. There is little biographical information on Plato, and most of her life is known from her only published work, Essays; including Biographies and Miscellaneous Pieces, in Prose and Poetry, which included the preface written by Reverend James W. C. Pennington, an abolitionist leader in Hartford, Connecticut, and a pastor.
Alice Dunbar Nelson was an American poet, journalist, and political activist. Among the first generation of African Americans born free in the Southern United States after the end of the American Civil War, she was one of the prominent African Americans involved in the artistic flourishing of the Harlem Renaissance. Her first husband was the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. After his death, she married physician Henry A. Callis; and, lastly, was married to Robert J. Nelson, a poet and civil rights activist. She achieved prominence as a poet, author of short stories and dramas, newspaper columnist, women's rights activist, and editor of two anthologies.
The civil rights movement (1865–1896) aimed to eliminate racial discrimination against African Americans, improve their educational and employment opportunities, and establish their electoral power, just after the abolition of slavery in the United States. The period from 1865 to 1895 saw a tremendous change in the fortunes of the Black community following the elimination of slavery in the South.
The ordination of women has been commonly practiced in Methodist denominations since the 20th century, and some denominations earlier allowed women to preach.
Henry McNeal Turner was an American minister, politician, and the 12th elected and consecrated bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). After the American Civil War, he worked to establish new A.M.E. congregations among African Americans in Georgia. Born free in South Carolina, Turner learned to read and write and became a Methodist preacher. He joined the AME Church in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1858, where he became a minister. Founded by free blacks in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the early 19th century, the A.M.E. Church was the first independent black denomination in the United States. Later Turner had pastorates in Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, DC.
Gloria Blackwell, also known as Gloria Rackley, was an African-American civil rights activist and educator. She was at the center of the Civil Rights Movement in Orangeburg, South Carolina during the 1960s, attracting some national attention and a visit by Dr. Martin Luther King of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Her activities were widely covered by the local press.
John Adams Sr. was an American minister, lawyer, and politician and a member of the unicameral Nebraska Legislature. He was born in Atlanta, Georgia, was a lawyer and minister in South Carolina, Washington state, and Colorado before settling in Omaha, Nebraska. While in South Carolina he took a civil rights case to the U.S. Supreme Court where he lost. He was the only black member of the Nebraska unicameral for much of his tenure from 1949 to 1962. He was an ordained minister and at the time of his death was presiding elder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). As a legislator, he was an outspoken champion of civil rights and fought for fair employment practices and pensions for retired teachers.
Jacob Moorer was a South Carolina lawyer and civil rights activist. He frequently fought cases in opposition to the elector provisions of the 1895 South Carolina Constitution, which he viewed as disenfranchising blacks. His most famous case was Franklin v. South Carolina, a murder case involving black sharecropper Pink Franklin which he and John Adams, Sr. appealed to the United States Supreme Court.
Franklin v. South Carolina, 218 U.S. 161 (1910) appealed the conviction of Pink Franklin for the murder of South Carolina Constable Henry H. Valentine in 1907. Franklin was a sharecropper who wished to leave his employer although his employer had advanced Franklin wages under a contract based on the so-called "peonage laws". A warrant was obtained and when Valentine came to the house, a shootout occurred, killing Valentine and injuring Franklin, his wife Patsy, and another constable who was there. The defense included claims that Franklin acted in self-defense and that the peonage laws were unjust. In appeal, the defense claimed that the make-up of the jury, all white based on the requirement that the jury be based on those who were eligible to vote, was based on unconstitutional racism in election laws stemming from the 1895 South Carolina constitution. Franklin's conviction was upheld in all appeals, including the appeal before the United States Supreme Court heard in April 1910.
Daniel Webster Davis was an American educator, minister, and poet. He taught and ministered in Richmond, Virginia, and became a popular author and speaker, going on several speaking tours around the United States and Canada. He also published two volumes of poetry that have received mixed critical assessment; some scholars have criticized him for perpetrating stereotypes of African Americans while others have argued that he was as radical as he could have been in his era.
George Marion McClellan was an American writer. Born in Tennessee, McClellan was educated at Fisk University and Hartford Theological Seminary. He worked as a Congregationalist minister and as a high school teacher and principal. His writing, generally self-published, included both prose and poetry. Critical assessment of McClellan's work is divided. Some see it as unoriginal, while others argue that it reveals emotional depth.
Marion B. Wilkinson was an African American suffragist, community activist, and first president of the South Carolina Federation of Colored Women's Clubs.
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