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    To Save My Race from Abuse: The Life of Samuel Robert Cassius
    To Save My Race from Abuse: The Life of Samuel Robert Cassius
    To Save My Race from Abuse: The Life of Samuel Robert Cassius
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    To Save My Race from Abuse: The Life of Samuel Robert Cassius

    By Edward J. Robinson

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    The story of a fascinating and important figure in black American religious history
     
    Samuel Robert Cassius was born to a slave mother and a white father in Virginia in 1853 and became a member of the Restorationist Movement (Disciples of Christ) while a coal miner in Indiana. For the rest of his long life (he died in 1931 at age 78), Cassius was an active evangelist, prolific publicist, dedicated leader of black Disciples, and an outspoken and uncompromising opponent of racism in religion and society.
     
    An indefatigable preacher, Cassius ranged throughout the Midwest, California, and the southwestern states, founding and encouraging black Stone-Campbell Restorationist congregations. After entering the Oklahoma Territory in 1891, he worked for three decades as an educator, newspaper editor, social activist, postmaster, and Justice of the Peace. Because he consistently incorporated social and racial issues into his religious writings, Cassius often found himself at odds with whites in the Stone-Campbell Movement, the very people he relied on for monetary support. He advocated a Booker T. Washington-style self-help ethos while at the same time firmly resisting racism wherever he encountered it. Largely invisible in a world dominated by such towering figures as Washington, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, and W. E. B. DuBois, Cassius lived a life of virtual obscurity beyond the circle of the Stone-Campbell Movement. His story is important because, as a racial militant and separatist, he presaged the schism that would engulf and fracture the Churches of Christ in the 1960s, when blacks and whites went their separate ways and formed two distinct groups in one religious fellowship.
     
    By combing through a plethora of primary sources that Cassius left behind in both religious and nonreligious journals, Edward J. Robinson has successfully reconstructed and recaptured the essence of Cassius’ complex and extraordinary life. This book offers the first full-length study of a man of remarkable attainment despite daily obstacles and resistance.
     
     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity Alabama Press
    Release dateSep 26, 2008
    ISBN9780817381486
    To Save My Race from Abuse: The Life of Samuel Robert Cassius
    Author

    Edward J. Robinson

    Edward J. Robinson teaches history and Bible at Southwestern Christian College in Terrell, Texas, while serving as the director of the Center for Student Success. He is the author of several other books, including Show Us How You Do It: Marshall Keeble and the Rise of Black Churches of Christ in the Lone Star State.

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      Book preview

      To Save My Race from Abuse - Edward J. Robinson

      RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE

      Series Editors

      David Edwin Harrell Jr.

      Wayne Flynt

      Edith L. Blumhofer

      To Save My Race from Abuse

      The Life of Samuel Robert Cassius

      EDWARD J. ROBINSON

      THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

      Tuscaloosa

      Copyright © 2007

      The University of Alabama Press

      Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

      All rights reserved

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      Typeface is AGaramond

      ∞

      The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

      Robinson, Edward J., 1967–

         To save my race from abuse : the life of Samuel Robert Cassius / Edward J. Robinson.

               p. cm. — (Religion and American culture)

         Includes bibliographical references and index.

         ISBN-13: 978-0-8173-1555-9 (cloth : alk. paper)

         ISBN-10: 0-8173-1555-1 (cloth : alk. paper)

        1. Cassius, Samuel Robert, 1853-1931. 2. African American evangelists—Biography. 3. Restoration movement (Christianity)—History. 4. Racism—Religious aspects—Christianity—History. 5. Race relations—Religious aspects—Christianity—History. 6. African Americans—Religion. I. Title.

         BV3785.C37R63 2007

         286.6092—dc22

         [B]

                                                                                                      2006024303

      ISBN 978-0-8173-8148-6 (electronic)

      To Toni

      Contents

      Acknowledgments

      Chronology of Samuel Robert Cassius

      Introduction

      PART I: THE EDUCATION OF A BLACK MAN

      1. I Am What I Am: The Formative Years

      2. The Three Emancipators: Encounters in the Nation's Capital

      3. The Molding of a Mind: Personal Influences and Literary Sources

      PART II: THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE STONE-CAMPBELL MOVEMENT

      4. Do You Believe the Bible?: Samuel Robert Cassius's Use of Scripture

      5. The Whole Thing Is a Pious Fraud: Samuel Robert Cassius and the Missionary Society Controversy

      PART III: FROM HEAVEN TO HELL: THE OKLAHOMA EXPERIENCE

      6. No Race Suicide on This Ranch: Race, Family, and Finances

      7. The Booker T. Washington of Oklahoma: Samuel Robert Cassius and the Tohee Industrial School

      8. Tried in the Fire: Life in Black Oklahoma

      PART IV: A RACE MAN AND GLOBE-TROTTER IN PROGRESSIVE AMERICA

      9. Mind Poisoning: The Racial Thought of Samuel Robert Cassius

      10. The Setting of a Sun: The Legacy of Samuel Robert Cassius

      Epilogue

      Notes

      Bibliography

      Index

      Photographs

      Acknowledgments

      This book would have been impossible without the encouragement and assistance of the following people: John L. Robinson; Fred Bailey; Calvin Bowers; Michael W. Casey; Bob Chada; Doug Foster; E. Stanly Godbold, Jr.; David Edwin Harrell, Jr.; Don Haymes; David Holmes; Richard Hughes; Rick Hunter; Robert Jenkins; Connie Lester; Greta Leverett; John F. Marszalek; Tom Olbricht; William E. Parrish; Jack Reese; Hans Rollmann; Jerry Rushford; Ellen Schoenrock; Lady Vowell Smith; Jerry Taylor; Bobby Valentine; and David Wray. I especially thank my wife, Toni, and our three daughters, Clarice, Ashley, and Erika, who have endured my preoccupation with this important project. I affectionately dedicate this book to my greatest supporter.

      Chronology of Samuel Robert Cassius

      1853 Born in Gainesville, Virginia (Prince William County), son of Jane, a slave, and James W. F. Macrae

      1860 Sold along with mother to an unknown buyer

      1863-64 Relocates to Washington, D.C., and attends public schools

      1874 Marries Effie Festus-Basil

      1883 Converts to Disciples of Christ (Restoration Movement) in Brazil, Indiana

      1885 Begins preaching in Indiana and Illinois

      1889 Relocates and preaches in Sigourney, Iowa

      Publishes first known extant article in Christian Evangelist

      1895 First wife dies

      1897 Becomes postmaster of Tohee, Oklahoma Territory

      Starts paper Industrial Christian

      1898 Publishes Negro Evangelization and the Tohee Industrial School

      Suspends paper Industrial Christian

      Marries second wife, Selina Daisy Flenoid

      1899 Opens Tohee Industrial School

      1900 Publishes The Letter and Spirit of Giving and the Race Problem

      1901 A son dies

      1905 House and library destroyed by fire

      Joins Negro Protective League

      1906 Postmastership ends

      1907 Oklahoma enters Union

      1909 Becomes president of the Missionary Executive Board of the Colored Disciples of Oklahoma

      Crops devastated by tornado

      1920 Publishes The Third Birth of a Nation

      1922 Relocates to Cambridge, Ohio

      1924 Relocates to Minneapolis, Minnesota

      1924 Relocates to Los Angeles (the Watts residential area), California

      1925 Reissues The Third Birth of a Nation

      1926 Relocates to Colorado Springs, Colorado

      1931 Dies in Colorado Springs

      Introduction

      Samuel Robert Cassius (1853-1931), an ardent black evangelist and a scrupulous race man¹ in Churches of Christ, straddled two complex worlds. In the world of religion, Cassius toiled as a passionate preacher in the Stone-Campbell Movement,² relying on white believers for financial support as he advanced the pure Gospel³ among African Americans. Cassius constantly pled with white Christians for monetary assistance, even as he vigorously protested and detested the paternalism and racism he faced in his chosen religious community. In the world of race, Cassius, an ex-slave, worked to elevate his people in an anti-black society that discounted black Americans and portrayed them as intellectually inept, habitually immoral, and naturally demonic. Cassius angrily rejected those stereotypes in sermons, writings, and deeds. Cassius's preoccupation with the evangelization of black people in America merged with his thinking about race so seamlessly that his racial thought and his religious behavior became virtually indistinguishable.

      A telling illustration of Cassius's fusion of race and religion emerged in 1920 when Thomas H. Kirkman, a white preacher for Churches of Christ along the Ohio-West Virginia border, invited Cassius to proclaim the Gospel to blacks in the Ohio Valley. Kirkman, confident in Cassius's preaching ability, arranged two evangelistic appointments for him. We have the offer of the colored Baptist meeting house in Point Pleasant, W. Va., for a meeting at that place. We have a place in Gallipolis, Ohio, where he can preach the Gospel to his own race, Kirkman wrote.⁴

      Cassius enthusiastically accepted Kirkman's proposal, planning his Gallipolis arrival for June 12. I am making my way to this point, without the promise of a cent, and I hope that it will result in much good to the cause of Christ. Brethren, don't forget my family while I am out in the field. Two white Christians, A. Allinder from West Virginia and Rena Carpenter from California, gave Kirkman three dollars for the Gallipolis meeting and helped make it possible for Cassius to travel from Oklahoma in order to preach in the Ohio Valley.⁵

      A week after beginning the preaching campaign in Gallipolis, Cassius confessed to mixed emotions about his efforts. He expressed disappointment that there had been no baptisms, no visible results, but he was optimistic to be preaching in a very promising field. Cassius reported that Pentecostal groups sought to destroy his evangelistic meeting: The Holy Rollers, the Jesus Only, and three and four other white bands are doing all they can to kill our meeting. Yet he rejoiced that the Ohio Valley was one of the greatest fields of labor I have seen for many years, just think of it! Attempting to forestall any questions about his presence in Ohio, he remarked that he was doing what every other preacher ought to do, ‘preaching the Gospel.’ Equally impressed with the collaboration and camaraderie of Christians of Ohio and with Kirkman's efforts to have the Word of God preached to all people, regardless of race or color, Cassius hoped to make this the greatest trip of my life.⁶

      Disappointment dogged Cassius, however, through the seven-week preaching tour in Gallipolis, because he had not won a single soul. Returning from Ohio to his Guthrie, Oklahoma, home, Cassius reflected on his experiences in the Ohio Valley and attributed his lack of success to unpleasant weather conditions, lamenting, I have been hindered by rain during the past seven weeks. Therefore, I feel sure that the weather was the cause of our seeming failure. Indeed, the Gallipolis Daily Tribune reported that on June 12, the day Cassius arrived in Gallipolis, the region experienced a severe rain and hail storm. On July 15, lightning struck and killed a horse in the area, and nine days later the paper reported one of the worst storms they ever saw, marked by hail and a tremendous downpour of rain.⁷

      Even the thousand-mile journey home offered the black evangelist no respite; weather might moderate, but the era's racism held distressingly stable. Traveling through Ohio, a weary, hungry, and penniless Cassius approached the house of a white preacher for the Disciples of Christ, whose house of worship and parsonage covered a half a block. Cassius knocked on the door and explained to the minister his deplorable condition. The man treated me, Cassius grumbled, just like some mean people treat tramps. I was tired and rest broken, but he told me that if I would clean the water out of his cistern he would help me out of my cramp. Initially reluctant and indecisive, Cassius consented to do the job to earn money for travel fare to Oklahoma; but more importantly, he compromised with the minister in order to save African Americans from verbal abuse and racial stereotypes. At any other time I would not have done it, but I thought I saw where that man would have used my refusal to work as a text to abuse the rest of the Negro race as being lazy brutes.⁸ In the mind of Cassius, many white Americans were prone to attach derogatory labels to all African Americans because of the misdeeds of one black man. If one low-down, drunken negro does a despicable act, Cassius had earlier written, it is charged up to the entire race.⁹

      After performing what he deemed a humiliating task, Cassius admitted proudly, I did his work and did it well, even though I had to ruin my clothes to save my race from abuse. Feeling cheated, however, because he received a mere one dollar for five dollars' worth of work, he acknowledged the white preacher got the best of me, made me do his dirty work for nothing, but he will not be able to say that all negroes are worthless brutes. Cassius felt the white clergyman, who preached for the richest church in the city, had debased and degraded him, but Cassius preferred personal humiliation over group disgrace; he sacrificed clothing, body, and pride to rescue black Americans from the verbal damnation of white America.¹⁰

      For Cassius, the phrase to save my race from abuse carried not merely theological importance; it also bore racial and social significance. Despite the dehumanizing experience of cleaning out a white preacher's cistern for a meager one dollar, Cassius exhibited a sense of relief, knowing that man will not have the chance to curse the rest of the negro race through me.¹¹ Cassius's racial consciousness was as strong as his religious convictions; saving the souls of black folk from the wrath of God went hand in hand with rescuing their names and reputations from the condemnation of white America. Cassius crafted words and actions to the same end, elevating African Americans both spiritually and socially.

      Cassius's life as a dynamic man of faith confirms W. E. B. Du Bois's assessment of the black American's double consciousness. Du Bois felt that One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.¹² Du Bois's insight into the emotional turmoil roiling within black Americans was equally true for Cassius particularly and the African American religious community generally.

      Church historians C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, expanding on Du Bois's metaphor of double consciousness, have discerned a dialectic at work in America's black church and have identified six polarities in the black religious community. The first dialectic is between priestly and prophetic functions, the former stressing the spiritual life of black parishioners with the latter emphasizing the community involvement of its members. The second dialectic, that between otherworldly and this-worldly, focuses first on heavenly matters even while accentuating social and political involvement in the present. The third dialectic, universalism and particularism, acknowledges an all-encompassing Gospel which endorses black consciousness while recognizing particularistic racial views. The fourth dialectic underscores both the communal and the privatistic. On the one hand, the black church seeks to address the economic, educational, social, and political concerns of its members even as it concentrates on religious and spiritual needs. The fifth dialectic manifests charismatic and bureaucratic emotional traits and characteristics in worship and produces organizational forms with financial and membership records. The final dialectic contrasts accommodation with resistance. In some respects, white churches influence black congregations, yet at the same time African American leaders resist the hegemony of white clergymen.¹³

      Cassius lived out these six dialectical polarities, and each elucidates his complexity and intricacy as both a racial reformer and a racial theologian. The plight of black people in postbellum America compelled Cassius to tightrope between two worlds. As a black preacher in a predominantly white religious fellowship, Cassius violated traditional evangelistic roles in order to uplift his race by working as a political and social activist. Cassius, first and foremost a passionate evangelist, displayed priestly and prophetic traits as both a church and community leader. He sought a better life in the other world, but he also labored to improve life for himself and black Americans in this world, as a farmer, entrepreneur, and educator. A pro-claimer of a universal Gospel, Cassius expressed concern for all men, but his priority was the evangelization of black people in this country. Working to evangelize African Americans, Cassius had to fight his way through the apathetic societal attitudes and racist mentalities of white Christians who seemingly cared more about foreign than domestic sinners. Cassius, therefore, often challenged the racial views of the very white believers he relied on for monetary support. These were the two complicated and contradictory worlds in which Cassius lived and moved.

      However, the divergent worlds in which Cassius functioned led to his divided mind. Like many contemporary African Americans in the age of Booker T. Washington, Cassius possessed what historian August Meier has called a divided mind.¹⁴ As an evangelist in the Stone-Campbell Movement, Cassius felt the doctrinal tug-of-war between the loyals and progressives. The former opposed instrumental music and evangelism through missionary societies; the latter endorsed them. Even though Cassius sided with the loyals, he often appealed to the progressives for monetary support. As a black man in politically Progressive America, Cassius became entangled in the tension between the Bookerites and anti-Bookerites. Certainly a disciple of Booker T. Washington, Cassius yet incorporated the racial militancy of Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, and W. E. B. Du Bois.¹⁵ Like Washington, Cassius pursued moral and economic uplift, but unlike the Tuskegee Wizard, Cassius unabashedly demanded immediate civil and political rights for fellow black Americans, as attested by his involvement in the Negro Protective League in Oklahoma. The dichotomy of religious preoccupation and social activism shaped Cassius's complex and contradictory mind.

      A thoroughgoing study of Cassius's life reveals the paradoxes of the America of his times and the variegated ways in which any black preacher of integrity was obliged to navigate those troubled waters. An analysis of his religious career and his racial thought further discloses the context of his life both in the Stone-Campbell Movement and in Progressive America as well. J. E. Choate, professor emeritus of philosophy at David Lipscomb University, comments on Cassius in a biography of black cleric Marshall Keeble, the premier evangelist in twentieth-century Churches of Christ: Never at a loss for words, S. R. Cassius was given to speaking his mind in a very plain fashion. Church historian Earl I. West notes Cassius's preoccupation with the race problem in American society and his frustration with white Christians' indifference to the predicament of blacks in the United States: Cassius thought long about his race, hoping to convince the white man of his people's character and potential. If he failed, it was because he was toying with an idea whose time had not yet come. More recently, Calvin Bowers, author of a history of black Churches of Christ in southern California, has argued that Cassius was the first of a long line of California dreamers who would work in preaching the gospel and developing churches among the black people of Los Angeles.¹⁶ Cassius relocated from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to California in 1924 to help his son Amos Lincoln Cassius establish a Church of Christ in Los Angeles. But aside from these brief references, Cassius has been generally ignored in Restoration Movement historiography.

      Most of Cassius's writings, however, appeared in two popular religious journals, the Christian Leader and the Gospel Advocate, and remain available. Of the many journals issued by members of the Stone-Campbell community, Cassius considered these two papers the only ones worth reading.¹⁷ He penned the majority of his descriptions of his evangelistic endeavors and his addresses on race in the Christian Leader, an important and influential paper which Christians in Cincinnati, Ohio, published from 1886 until 1960. The bulk of Cassius's voluminous discussions on race and experiences in religion lie in the pages of the Christian Leader, which many members of Churches of Christ in the South have since forgotten. In 1904, Cassius praised the journal as the only church paper that gives to the negro an unrestricted welcome.¹⁸ Cassius seized this open-door opportunity to become the most recognized black preacher in Churches of Christ. In this great mass of colored people, he wrote, I presume we have about one hundred thousand members, and perhaps two hundred and fifty preachers, of which number I am sure that I am the most widely known, and I think I can say that I have done as much to call the attention of the white Christians to the needs of my race as any man living in my time.¹⁹

      Appropriating a mixture of biographical, historical, chronological, and thematic methods to capture the essence of his religious life and his racial thought, this book offers the first detailed study of Samuel Robert Cassius's life and intellect. After an assessment of Cassius's transition from slavery in Virginia to a study of his residence in the nation's capital, the narrative examines his conversion to the Stone-Campbell Movement and that entity's white leaders who contributed to his religious development as well as the literature that molded his intellect. Next, the study compares and contrasts Cassius's biblical hermeneutics in the context of his chosen fellowship, followed by an exploration of the racial and racist mentalities Cassius encountered and challenged in Churches of Christ. Then his three-decade experience as a preacher, farmer, postmaster, educator, and family man in the state of Oklahoma are probed, leading to an analysis of his 1925 publication, The Third Birth of a Nation, in which Cassius delineated his racial and religious ideology. The book closes with an assessment of Cassius's evangelistic activities in his declining years.

      While Marshall Keeble's fame surpassed that of Cassius by the 1930s, Cassius stood unchallenged as the most vocal and visible African American preacher in Churches of Christ during the Progressive Era, 1890-1920. And while scholars have focused on such illuminating figures as Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells, Marcus Garvey, and W. E. B. Du Bois, Cassius represents a black search for truth rather closer to the hopes, aspirations, and disappointments of the black common folk. When explaining the mission of his life, Cassius declared, It is my purpose to try, as far as in me lies the power, to make the Church of Christ see its duty to the Negro of the United States.²⁰ In doing so, I got it fixed in my head that my race had need of me, and even when I could not provide food, I gave more thought to the needs of my race than to the needs of my family.²¹ These words epitomize the essence of Cassius's life. He committed himself wholly to solving the race issue in American society, designing everything he did and said to uplift black Americans. He at times neglected his family and his health for the needs of his race, convinced that God would take care of me and mine, and say, brethren, I have not been mistaken.²² This book, then, represents an attempt to understand the American past more fully while rescuing an important, imperfect, and complex black evangelist and race man from undeserved obscurity.

      I

      The Education of a Black Man

      1

      I Am What I Am

      The Formative Years

      But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.

      —1 Corinthians 15:10¹

      Meadow Farm, a nine-hundred-acre verdant and luxurious estate, lay a few miles outside Gainesville in Prince William County, Virginia. Consisting of well-watered fields, sprawling meadows, bluegrass, and plentiful fruit trees, this plantation with its country stores nourished a comfortable and convenient life for the estate's white owner and his family. Twenty-three black slaves maintained the property, cultivating the crops, grooming the livestock, manicuring the lawn, caring for the owner's children, cleaning the Big House, and cooking for both the white owners and for fellow black bondsmen. A local newspaper praised Meadow Farm as unsurpassed by any in the State for health, and affords the Best Society.²

      In the fall of 1852, James W. F. Macrae, Meadow Farm's owner, a powerful politician, an influential physician, and a chronic alcoholic, cornered one of his young, vibrant, and intelligent house slaves, Jane, and raped her.³ Nine months later this illicit union, altogether typical of life in the Old South, produced a mulatto baby boy, Samuel, one of the half-million new people in the United States. The infant's first name reflected his mother's religious piety and devotion to God, while his middle and last names, Robert and Cassius, were probably self-bestowed after emancipation.⁴ An active toddler on Macrae's plantation, precocious Samuel felt the rumblings that the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Brooks-Sumner affair, the Dred Scott case, and John Brown's raid stirred in the 1850s. These events dramatically impacted Cassius's life and symbolically presaged the turmoil which engulfed his adult career.

      Because of his debauchery and the impending Civil War, the brutal Macrae sold Cassius and his mother. According to Cassius's description, It hurt [Macrae] so much to think that there was a possibility of losing his slaves, ‘he got on a drunk,’ and made such a debt that my mother and myself had to be sold ahead of the time of sending slaves South. Cassius claimed that Macrae's relative Gen. Robert E. Lee, not wanting my mother and myself sold to an outsider, bought us in on the day of the sale. We were sold from the block at the Court House in Warrenton, Virginia in the summer of 1860. Cassius's assertion is difficult to verify, since Lee never owned slaves until his father-in-law, George Washington Parke Custis, died in 1857, bequeathing him an estate that included 196 slaves and instructing him to free them within five years. Lee fulfilled Custis's wishes and manumitted his slaves in the winter of 1862-63, and neither Cassius nor his mother was named among the slaves Lee inherited and freed.⁵

      Despite the ambiguity and mystery surrounding Cassius's claim, his literate mother gave him emotional strength and a sound intellectual foundation in his formative years.

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