Black Fire: African American Quakers on Spirituality and Human Rights
January 1, 2012
Edited by Harold D. Weaver, Jr., Paul Kriese, and Stephen W. Angell, with Anne Steere Nash, Quaker Press of Friends General Conference, 2011. 278 pages. $23.95/paperback; $11.95/eBook.
Now available as an audiobook! (2025) Narrated by Lance Danton and Je Nie Fleming
Black Fire is an anthology by African American Quakers and others with ties to Quakerism. The first chapter covers the works of seven women and men speaking and writing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The succeeding eleven chapters each give a more detailed overview of the work of a single individual living in the twentieth century. Some of the writers were life-long Friends, others held membership for only part of their lives, and still others had a strong affinity with Friends but were never practicing Quakers. Readers will no doubt recognize the names Sojourner Truth, Sarah Mapps Douglass, and Bayard Rustin; there are also lesser-known authors such as Elizabeth (a woman formerly held in slavery), and Ira De Augustine Reid.
In the United States, the writings and teachings of people of color have often been overlooked and silenced by whites, whether out of deliberate malice or unthinking expediency. Sad as it is to say, white Friends have often participated in this behavior as well.
It is in this context that Harold D. Weaver Jr., Paul Kriese, and Stephen W. Angell offer Black Fire: African American Quakers on Spirituality and Human Rights. This book is an important step in reclaiming many neglected facets of Quaker history. It is also, as Emma Lapsansky-Werner points out in her foreword, only a first step, with much more still to uncover.
Lapsansky-Werner references “the persistent myth that ‘black people are not drawn in great numbers to the Religious Society of Friends because they prefer a more active style of worship—with music, more demonstrativeness, and not so much silence.’” This myth has arisen as European American Friends attempt to answer the question: “Why are there so few African American Friends?”
White Friends pursuing this question without resorting to stereotypes might find parts of an answer in the writings of African American Friends presented here. Anthropologist Vera Green conducted a series of interviews in the 1970s concerning the relationship of Quakers to the African American community, the results of which appear in the final chapter of Black Fire. Friends interested in anecdotal evidence may also find the reflections of black Friends such as George E. Sawyer and Barrington Dunbar instructive.
A pair of traps well-meaning white people often fall into are expecting people of color to lead us and teach us on matters of race and racism, and overlooking the other insights they have to offer. Black Friends can teach us much about race relations, but they can also teach us many things unconnected to racism. With this in mind, the editors of Black Fire present two themes: spirituality and human rights.
Howard Thurman speaks on mysticism and on “the universal element in religious thought and service,” and William Boen meditates on becoming “fit to die.” Those interested in exploring the philosophy of silent worship and other aspects of Quaker faith will value the three essays by N. Jean Toomer collected in Black Fire: “The Basis of Friends Worship and Other Inward Practices,” “What to Do in the Meeting for Worship,” and “Keep the Inward Watch.”
Mahala Ashley Dickerson recounts her struggles as a lawyer working in the segregated South of 1950. Bill Sutherland (writing with Matt Meyer) offers a pragmatic analysis of nonviolence, discussing it in terms of spirituality, philosophy, and practical application. And Charles H. Nichols collects the first-person accounts of women and men held in slavery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
My reactions to the essays collected in this book were mixed. Some of them inspired and excited me. Others addressed topics which unfortunately do not interest me, and many of the older texts were written in a style I find archaic and difficult to read. History buffs, committed theologians, and folks who enjoy studying Quaker practice in detail will have better luck on those counts than I did.
Beyond satisfying personal interests, the book stands as a milestone in the process of reclaiming suppressed elements of our history as a faith community. In Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship: Quakers, African Americans, and the Myth of Racial Justice, Donna McDaniel and Vanessa Julye highlight the tendency of European American Friends to hold African Americans at a distance, even those who are members of our own Religious Society. That gap remains, and this book has the potential to help us in the difficult work of bringing our Society more harmoniously together.
Lincoln Alpern is a white social justice activist. He is a member of Scarsdale Friends Meeting in New York, and also attends Yellow Springs Friends Meeting in Ohio.
