Byron Gunner | |
---|---|
Born | Marion, Alabama, U.S. | July 4, 1857
Died | February 9, 1922 Reading, Pennsylvania, U.S. | (aged 64)
Alma mater | Talladega College |
Occupation(s) | Minister, educator, newspaper publisher, civil rights activist |
Spouse | Cicely Savery |
Children | 4, including Mary Frances Gunner |
Rev. Byron Gunner (1857–1922) was an American minister, educator, newspaper publisher, and civil rights activist.[1] He was one of the seventeen African-American founders of the Niagara Movement, representing Rhode Island.
Byron Gunner was born on July 4, 1857, in Marion, Alabama, to parents Caroline (née Jackson) and Joseph Gunner, a carpenter.[2][3] Gunner was educated in American Missionary Association schools in Marion.[1][4]
He graduated in 1880 in theology from Talladega College, a private historically black college.[1] He also studied at Oberlin College.[4]
He worked as a teacher in Paris, Texas, from 1880 until 1884 through the American Missionary Association after graduation, a Protestant-based abolitionist group from Albany, New York.[1] During this time he also published the People's Informer newspaper.[1]
In 1884, Gunner was ordained a minister in New Orleans, followed by five years as a pastor at St. Paul Congregational Church (now known as Church of Jesus Christ New Iberia) in New Iberia, Louisiana.[1][5][6] In c. 1888, the St. Paul Congregational Church under the leadership of Gunner supported the founding of the Howe Institute, an African-American private Baptist primary and grammar school in New Iberia.[7] He was outspoken about the effects of "race problems" while living in New Iberia; and according to Booker T. Washington, Gunner had heard that a white mob was coming for him so he abruptly left the city.[6][8]
In 1890, Gunner moved to serve as pastor at the newly opened First Congregational Church in Lexington, Kentucky.[1] Gunner spoke to the American Missionary Association on "men of color in the Southern pulpit" in 1891, which was published in The American Missionary journal (v. 45, no. 12).[9][10] In 1893, he married Cicely Savery, the daughter of William Savery, one of the three founders of Talladega College.[1] Together they had four children, including Mary Frances Gunner.[1] While living in Lexington, Gunner became active against the Kentucky's Separate Coach Law of 1892, a Jim Crow law requiring separate coaches on railway trains for white and black passengers in the state.[1][11][12] Gunner proposed legislation and lectured across the state against the law.[1]
In 1895, Gunner moved to the New England-area. From 1898 to 1905, he served as the pastor at Union Congregational Church in Newport, Rhode Island.[3] Gunner was one of the seventeen founders of the Niagara Movement, representing Rhode Island.[13] During this time in Rhode Island, Gunner became acquainted with W. E. B. Du Bois and with William Monroe Trotter; he remained in contact with both men until his death.[4]
In 1907, he became the pastor of the Brook Chapel in Hillburn, New York;[3] and his wife Cicely was involved with the Brook Chapel Sunday School and the Brook School.[4] He became president of the National Equal Rights League by 1910, where he continued to serve within the organization's leadership through about 1920.[4] In August 1916, he called Black Americans to join for the formation of a National Race Congress in a publication in the Cleveland Advocate newspaper.[9]
Around 1920, Gunner served as a short-term pastor of the Presbyterian church in Reading, Pennsylvania.[4] He died on February 9, 1922, in Reading, Pennsylvania, after suffering from an intestinal issue.[1][3][14] At the time of his death, his wife was at her mother's funeral.[1]