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Monday, October 10, 2011

"Daniel Cooker" [1780-1846]

                                                                                                                     Born Isaac Wright in Maryland to an African American slave father and an English indentured-servant mother,minister and abolitionist received a rudimentary education while attending school as white half-brother valet.He escaped to New York while still a youth and took on his new name to avoid detection.In New York Daniel met Bishop Francis Asbury,who ordained him to the Methodist Church ministry around 1800.He returned shortly after to Baltimore and, with his freedom recently purchased,spoke out against slavery,writing an abolitionist pamplet, a dialogue between a Virginian and an an African minister,in 1810.He became leader of a society of black Methodist who desired  independence from white Methodist because of discrimination,and ran the African school in connection with his society. Daniel Methodist Society evolved into the independent African Bethel Church.In 1816 delegates,including Daniel and Richard Allen,from five black Methodist Socities gathered in Philadelphia to establish the independent African Methodist Episcopal Church.Elected as the first bishop of the new denomination, Daniel declined the post-perhaps because of dissension, over his light skin color-and Richard became the first bishop.Daniel returned to his Baltimore pastorate,but was expelled from the ministry from 1818 to 1819 for unknown offense. He left for Africa in 1820 as a missionary with the assistance of the Maryland colonization society.After spending some time in Liberia,he settled in Sierra Leone,where he was the Superintendent of a Settlement for "recaptured" Africans and helped find the west African Methodist church.

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