I’m still finding out bits about the life of Rev. William Jackson, the African American minister, abolitionist, and military chaplain who declared himself a Unitarian in 1860, and was ignored by the American Unitarian Association.
I had Jackson’s birth date — 16 August 1818 — but not his date of death. Everett Hoagland, poet, retired professor, and UU, writes to me that Jackson died 19 May 1909, according to the reference librarian at the New Bedford Public Library.
Jackson is well worth a full book-length biography. He, with some others, helped to forcibly free an escaping slave imprisoned under the new Fugitive Slave Law in Philadelphia. He may have been a conductor on the Underground Railroad. He was converted to Unitarianism by Frances Harper, but was rebuffed by the A.U.A., and so remained a liberal Baptist. He was the first person of color to receive a commission as an officer in the U.S. Army, and served briefly as chaplain to the famous 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, before being transferred to the 55th when it was formed. And in the late nineteenth century, he was one of those middle class African Americans who began summering on Martha’s Vineyard. His life would make a great Ph.D. dissertation, or a great book.