Black Sis-tory: Amanda Berry Smith,19th century evangelist and missionary

Braving the freezing cold and deep snow, a 13-year-old Black girl, wearing a linsey-woolsey dress and wrap, thick stockings, and her brother’s heavy boots, undertakes a two-and-a-half-mile trek to a white schoolhouse.

She arrives at the schoolhouse “nearly freezing to death … I found I couldn't open (the door) and couldn't speak … someone came to me and took off my things and they worked with me, I can't tell how long, before I recovered from my stupor.”

Such tenacity characterized the life of Amanda Berry Smith.

Born into slavery on January 23, 1837, in Long Green, Maryland, Smith was the oldest daughter of Samuel and Miriam Berry’s thirteen children. In Autobiography: The Story of the Lord's Dealings with Mrs. Amanda Smith, the Colored Evangelist, she recalls that after long hours in the fields, her father made brooms and husk mats for sale. “(I)n harvest time, after working for his mistress all day, he would walk three and four miles, and work in the harvest field till one and two o'clock in the morning …” 

Eventually, Samuel’s industriousness earned him enough money to buy his family’s freedom and to move them to a farm in York County, Pennsylvania. Smith was seven years old when she attended “a little private school opposite where my mother lived … (but) only in the summertime. I had about six weeks of it.”

“Colored” children had few opportunities for a formal education, hence Smith taught herself to read by cutting letters out of newspapers that her father brought home and asking her mother to form words with them. “I shall never forget how delighted I was when I first read: ‘The house, the tree, the dog, the cow.”

Smith learned about courage from her parents. Their home was part of the Underground Railroad, a vast network of “stations” that helped runaways from slaveholding states escape to “free” states in the North and Canada. Samuel and Miriam harbored them in defiance of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, which “forcibly compelled citizens to assist in the capture of runaways.”

 One night, around twelve o’clock, slave trackers burst into their home. “There were six or seven white men, and they said, "We want that nigger you are harboring; he is a runaway nigger."

"’I am not harboring anybody,’" father said. Then they began to curse and swear and rushed upon him.” They beat Samuel, trampled the children, and nearly stabbed her mother. The terrified fugitive escaped by jumping out of the window, but the trackers’ bloodhound captured and held him.

In 1864, at age 17, despite her father’s objections because of her age, Smith married her first husband, Calvin Devine. “But it was not long before I wished I had not believed half he said, though in many things he was good … but when strong drink would get the better of him … (he) was very profane and unreasonable.” They had two children, but one died in infancy.

Shortly after the start of the Civil War, Devine joined the United States Colored Troops; he died in battle in 1863. Samuel supported herself and her surviving child, Mazie, by working as a washerwoman and cook.

In 1865, she married James Smith, a coachman and local preacher in the Philadelphia African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, where she experienced a religious conversion. However, the second marriage proved to be disastrous, and she suffered the death of the three she had with Smith.

After her husband’s death in 1868, Smith “felt her calling from God to preach, but was not allowed because she was a woman. Again, difficulty did not stop her. (She) was able to procure a letter of recommendation from Reverend Nelson Turpin to begin to teach and preach.” Smith traveled throughout New England and the middle states and became well-known for her teachings.

In her autobiography, she describes herself as an “independent missionary,” who traveled to England, Scotland, Ireland, India, and Africa, teaching the gospel, and converting souls.

In his introduction to Smith’s book, Bishop J.M. Thoburn of Calcutta (now Kolkata), recalled the impact of her presence in India. “The novelty of a colored woman from America, who had in her childhood been a slave, appearing before an audience in Calcutta, was sufficient to attract attention, but this alone would not account for the popularity which she enjoyed throughout her whole stay in our city.

 “She was fiercely attacked by narrow minded persons in the daily papers, and elsewhere, but opposition only seemed to add to her power … I have known many famous strangers to visit the city … but I have never known anyone who could draw and hold so large an audience as Mrs. Smith.”

During her 8-year ministry in Liberia and Sierra Leone, Smith adopted two African children.

Upon return to the United States, she raised money for her latest cause, the care of homeless Black children. “She published a small newspaper, Helper, to publicize and support the cause. With proceeds from her book and donations, in 1899, she opened The Amanda Smith Orphanage and Industrial Home for Abandoned and Destitute Colored Children, the first, and for some time, the only orphanage for Black children, in Harvey, Illinois. Fire destroyed the home in1918.

In 1912, illness forced Smith into retirement. A longtime admirer of her work, George Sebring, a pottery manufacturer, provided her with a home in Sebring, Florida, and “saw to it that she had no wants or worries for the rest of her life.”

In a 2020 blog, Kate Dolan wrote “Though most of us will never face the persecution overcome by Amada Smith, we do live in an ungodly world, and we should expect to face some persecution when we stand up for our beliefs … sometimes opposition is a sign that you are headed down the right path.”

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Amanda Berry Smith endured the deaths of four of her five children, two disastrous marriages, financial hardship, and opposition from religious leaders. Despite these early setbacks, she eventually gained recognition as a world-renowned preacher and evangelist.

*Black Sis-tory honors the contributions of unknown or forgotten Black women in American history.