(Receive our blog posts in your email by clicking here. If the author links in this post are broken, please visit our Free PDF Library and click on the author’s page directly.)
Today we pay tribute to three African-American Presbyterian ministers associated with Selma, Alabama. Each of these was also a part of the Reformed Presbyterian (Covenanter) Church of North America (RPCNA); two of them later joined the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS). The information we have about their lives is limited, but intriguing. Yet they were ground-breaking pioneers who are worthy of remembrance.
Lewis Johnston, Jr. (1847-1903) - Johnston was the first African-American ordained to the ministry in the RPCNA, on October 14, 1874, as learn from his entry in William Melancthon Glasgow’s History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in America (see also Glasgow’s The Geneva Book) and William J. Edgar, History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, 1871-1920, p. 57. His father also served as a ruling elder with him at the RPCNA congregation in Selma. He founded Geneva Academy (soon renamed Knox Academy) in Selma, Alabama on June 11, 1874. An educator, a court clerk, a newspaper editor and publisher and a published poet as well as a minister, his death was widely noticed in the newspapers, including John W. Pritchard’s The Christian Nation for June 3, 1903. The following was written by Edward P. Cowan, Secretary of the Board of Freedmen (PCUSA). Tragically, four of Johnston’s sons were later killed in the Elaine Massacre of 1919.
Rev. Lewis Johnston, a member of White River Presbytery and principal of Richard Allen Institute, of Pine Bluff, Ark., died on the morning of March 7th 1903.
Mr. Johnston was born in Allegheny City, Pa., December 12th, 1847. His parents were Presbyterians and they brought him up in the fear of God in that faith. He finished in the public schools at an early age and enlisted in the army. At the close of the war he received an honorable discharge, after which he returned home and entered Geneva College, near Bellefontaine, Ohio. After finishing his college education he entered the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Allegheny City and finished his course there in four years.
His first two year’s work as a missionary was at Selma, Ala. Leaving there, he went to Pine Bluff, Ark., where he spent twenty-five years in active and earnest service, teaching for several years in county and city schools. After that he commenced a missionary school, which grew so rapidly that with the good people of Pine Bluff a school building was erected. At that time his work was under the care of the Southern Presbyterian Church. The school continued to grow until friends of the work were compelled to provide a larger building for its accommodation. By this time his work had been transferred to the Board of Missions for Freedmen.
During the years of his ill health he only failed to preach one Sabbath. He did much for his race and worked for the Master even to the last day of his life. He leaves a wife and seven children to mourn his loss. The citizens of Pine Bluff of both races paid marked tribute to his memory. “He being dead, yet speaketh.” [The Assembly Herald, Vol. 8, No. 5 (May 1903), p. 201]
The Richard Allen Institute was founded in 1886 by Rev. Lewis Johnston and his wife, Mercy.
George Milton Elliot (1849-1918) - While Johnston was the founder and first principal of the Richard Allen Institute (named for Richard Allen, another secretary of the Board of Freedmen, PCUSA), Elliot served as its third principal. Born near Isle of Wight, Virginia, he later studied with Johnston at Geneva College and at RPTS. He also ministered in Beaufort, South Carolina; and founded the St. Augustine Industrial Institute in St. Augustine, Florida, serving as its first principal; among other travels and accomplishments. He was also one of the founders and a President of the Alabama State Teachers Association. Nathan R. Johnston considered Elliot to be a good friend and provides interesting anecdotal information about him, as well as his portrait, in Johnston’s autobiographical work Looking Back From the Sunset Land: Or People Worth Knowing. In one instance, N.R. Johnston speaks warmly of Elliot’s 1888 address to the ASTA where we know, from other sources, that Elliot told his audience: “Teachers, you are the shapers of thought and the molders of sentiment, not of this age and of this generation alone, but of ages and generations to come. You are making history by those you teach….You are the few that are moulding the masses.” biographical details are given to us in Glasgow’s History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in America and The Geneva Book, and in Owen F. Thompson’s Sketches of the Ministers of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America From 1888 to 1930, but Edgar sums up the story (p. 108) of Elliot, who began with the RPCNA, but later joined the PCUS.
The first pastor of the Selma RP Church was George Milton Elliot, a black man born in Virginia in 1849 and a graduate of Geneva College in 1873 and of Allegheny Seminary in 1877. Pittsburgh Presbytery ordained him in 1877, and he was installed as the pastor of the Selma RP Church that year. Elliot had already become Principal of Knox Academy in 1876, so he oversaw both the church and the school in their earliest days. In 1886, Elliot resigned both positions and became a missionary in different locations in the American South for the rest of his life, working with the Presbyterian Church.
Solomon Ford Kingston (1860-1934) - In addition to tributes about Kingston from the pens of Rev. J.M. Johnston, Rev. R.J. McIsaac, and Rev. W.J. Sanderson which appeared in the May 23, 1934 issue of The Covenanter Witness, Kingston’s biography is told in Thompson’s Sketches and in Alvin W. Smith, Covenanter Ministers, 1930-1963. Further details are given in Glasgow’s The Geneva Book, and in David M. Carson, Pro Christo et Patria: A History of Geneva College, which includes pictures of Kingston and informs us that as a student there he was “a noted athlete and a talented entertainer” (p. 27). Thompson begins:
S.F. Kingston, son of [Benjamin] and Betty Kingston, was born in October, 1860, near Selma, Alabama. His parents were born in slavery and were uneducated. They were members of the Baptist Church. He united with the Reformed Presbyterian Church at Selma, Alabama, in 1877, under the pastorate of the Rev. Lewis Johnston. He attended Burell Academy, Knox Academy and Geneva College, graduating from the latter in 1885. He entered the Reformed Presbyterian Seminary in Allegheny (now North Side Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania, in 1888 and completed the course in 1891. He was licensed to preach the Gospel by Pittsburgh Presbytery April 9, 1890, and was ordained to the Gospel Ministry by the same Presbytery at Wilkinsburg on March 27, 1891. He was appointed to work in Selma, and took up work in that Mission as Stated Supply. Later a regular Gospel call was made upon him by the congregation and on May 13, 1903, he was installed pastor over that congregation by a Commission of Illinois Presbytery. He resigned from that charge in 1927, and has been employed since by organizations engaged in social and charitable service. He was born a Baptist and united with the Reformed Presbyterian Church as a young man. He spent two years in Birmingham, Alabama, as City Missionary. He also taught two years at Greensboro, Alabama. In 1893 he was united in marriage with Miss Anna Rose Patterson of New Brighton, Pennsylvania. Mrs. Kingston died March 1, 1922, at Selma, Alabama, her home.
Smith concludes Kingston’s biographical sketch:
S.F. Kingston, whose biographical sketch appears in Thompson's Sketches of the Ministers up to the year 1930, when that volume was published, was in that year living in Selma, Alabama, and was employed by organizations engaged in social and charitable service. He had resigned his charge as pastor of the Selma congregation in 1927, after having served the Lord and the church in the Southern Mission about thirty-six years. During the years which followed his resignation, there was no letting up of his interest in the advance of Christ's kingdom. He departed this life on March 28, 1934.
Edgar adds the following concerning Kingston (p. 108):
The second pastor of the Selma RPC was Solomon Kingston. The son of illiterate slaves, Kingston joined the Selma congregation in 1877 at age seventeen, attended Knox Academy, finished Geneva College in 1885, and graduated from the Allegheny RP Seminary in 1891. His wife, Anna Rose Patterson from New Brighton, Pennsylvania, conducted Sabbath school at Valley Creek, and their daughter was principal of the East Selma School for a time. Kingston was stated supply in the Selma RPC from 1891-1903 and then its officially installed pastor from 1903-1927, for a total of thirty-six years in Selma.
These three men did much to teach and preach the gospel, and advance the kingdom of God in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Their names are not widely known, but they should be. It is wished that more was known about them, but taking what we have, we give God the glory for their place and part in church history. Let us remember and appreciate their labors for God’s glory. Their legacy in Selma endures.
