Tuskegee Talks. Ministerial Training and Qualifications.

Philadelphia: Press of International Printing Co., 1902. 8vo (9” x 6”), red cloth over boards, front cover stamped in silver. Frontis. portrait of H. T. Johnson, viii, 49 pp. CONDITION: Good, dings and wear to front cover, some pencil underlining.

A compilation of lectures delivered to Tuskegee students by African American preacher and author Henry T. Johnson on ethics, theology, and pastoral practice.

As noted in the Preface, preacher, author and editor Henry Theodore Johnson (1857–1910) gave these lectures to the students of Phelps Hall Bible Training School, an institution connected with the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Tuskegee, Alabama. Johnson’s personal presence is said to have added much to the force of these lectures. “It was an inspiration to listen to him,” Edgar J. Penny, Dean of Bible Training School, writes. It is noted in the Introduction that only a few books exist on “the Negro’s ideas and directions regarding ethics, theology and pastoral practice…produced for us or by us. A score of points of state, conduct, style of utterance and mode of pastoring, never treated by those who write, not for the freedman, but for the freedmen, must be treated and observed in respect to our ministry.”

The work includes a Chapel Address to Tuskegee Students; Office, Duty and Rewards of Christian Workers; Ministerial Danger Signals; Ministerial Properties; Sermon Building; Delivery of Sermon; Some Organic Demands; The Preacher an Industrial Factor; The Preacher a Race Man, and The Minister a Moral Factor. Johnson begins his first address to the Tuskegee students as follows: “The privilege of visiting Tuskegee has been a long coveted one on the part of your platform guest. Your immense undertaking, extensive capacities and astounding accomplishments are sufficiently overmastering to sweep a timid man from his feet.” Some of the sections are followed by brief question and answer exchanges. Johnson’s other published works include Lux Gentis Nigrae (1903), Pulpit, Pew and Pastorate (1904), and Wings of Ebony (1904).