Brawley, Edward McKnight

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Brawley, Edward McKnight

March 18, 1851
January 13, 1923

Edward McKnight Brawley, a minister, was born free in Charleston, South Carolina, to James M. and Ann L. Brawley. In 1861 he was sent to Philadelphia, where he attended grammar school for three years and graduated from the Institute for Colored Youth in 1866. From 1866 to 1869 he worked as an apprentice to a shoemaker in Charleston. Brawley was baptized in the Shiloh Baptist Church in Philadelphia in 1865, and thus began a life of religious involvement.

In 1870 he entered Howard University in Washington, D.C., to study theology. The following year he transferred to Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and in 1875 he became the first African American to receive a bachelor's degree from that school. Three years later, Brawley received a master's degree from Bucknell. In 1885 he received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from the State University of Louisville.

Brawley was an active educator and administrator. In 1875 he was ordained as minister of the white Baptist church in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and was commissioned by the predominantly white American Baptist Publication Society (ABPS) to work as a missionary in South Carolina. Under these auspices, Brawley organized Sunday schools into a state convention over which he presided as secretary and financial agent. He remained in South Carolina until 1883, when he became president of the Alabama Baptist Normal Theological School, later renamed Selma University. At Alabama Baptist he overhauled the curriculum and brought it up to college status. Brawley also helped found Morris College in Sumter, South Carolina, and assumed the position of president in 1885.

Throughout his career Brawley was committed to integration, and his involvement in the ABPS was indicative of his desire to bring black and white Christians together. He believed black Baptists "should merge race feeling in the broader spirit of an American Christianity." In 1890, in an effort to give greater public recognition to black Baptists, black ministers within the ABPS invited black Baptists to be writers and agents for the organization. The all-white Southern Baptist Convention responded with outrage and protest and threatened to withdraw support from the ABPS. Most black Baptists condemned the ABPS for succumbing to southern white racism, and many advocated greater separation from white Baptists. Brawley's was one of the few conciliatory voices. Rather than dealing with the crisis at hand, he reviewed what the ABPS had accomplished for black people and urged reconciliation. This incident widened the chasm between Brawley and many other black Baptists. After this conflict the ABPS tried to appease black ministers and in 1890 recruited Brawley to edit the Negro Baptist Pulpit, the first collection of theological and denominational articles ever written and edited by black Baptists.

In January 1877 Brawley married Mary Warrick. By the end of the year his wife and child had died. In December 1879 he married Margaret Dickerson, with whom he had four children. Their eldest son, Benjamin Brawley, author and historian, was born in 1882. From 1912 until 1920, Brawley served as minister of White Rock Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina. He also taught biblical history at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Brawley wrote several religious texts, including a book on evangelism entitled Sin and Salvation, and edited the Baptist Tribune and The Evangel. Brawley died on January 13, 1923, ending a long career in the ministry, education, publishing, and writing.

See also Baptists