A Black Preacher Addresses Congress

Henry Highland Garnet "could not escape notice," English Professor Carla Peterson writes in The New York Times.

On Sunday, Feb. 12, 1865, Henry Highland Garnet, minister of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, entered the halls of Congress. He could not escape notice. He was, his friend Alexander Crummell later wrote in his Eulogium on Garnet’s life, “tall and majestic in stature, over six feet in height, with a large and noble head, its front both broad and expansive, his chest deep and strong, his limbs straight and perfectly moulded.” Garnet was in the House of Representatives that morning at the invitation of William Henry Channing, chaplain of Congress, to deliver a sermon. Channing’s request was hardly a surprise; after all, the Capitol had served as a church for many decades, and preachers had long spoken in its halls. What was astonishing was that Garnet was a black man, no longer relegated to the galleries but standing at the speaker’s dais. 

To read more of English Professor Carla Peterson's piece that appeared in The New York Times, click here.