I learned of missionary teacher, Maria Fearing, this year while posting Black Presbyterian facts during Black History month. Once again, I came away awestruck by the resilience and determination of another 19th century African American woman who refused to let circumstances or the dictates of others determine her destiny.
Maria was born enslaved on the William O. Winston Oakhill Plantation in Gainesville Alabama on July 26, 1838. She served as a house slave there. She learned bible stories and about missionaries in Africa alongside the children of her owner. Thus, were planted the seeds for what she hoped and dreamed to do with her life if she gained her freedom.
After emancipation, her father, Jesse, took the surname Fearing for his family from a former owner. She learned to read and write when she was thirty-three years old and became a teacher through the Freedman’s Bureau School in Talledega, Alabama.
In 1891, Maria responded to an appeal for volunteers from the presbyterian African American missionary, William Sheppard, to work in Luebo, the Congo (now Zaire). However, she was rejected by the denomination because of her age, fifty-six. Undaunted, she went anyway as a self-supporting missionary in 1894, thanks to her own finances and support from the women of a local congregational church.
She labored in Luebo for two years before finally receiving full missionary status and a salary. While there, she learned the Baluba-Lulua language and helped to translate the Bible into it. She also founded the Pantops Home for Girls. The Home provided shelter and support for orphaned girls and girls she helped rescue from enslavement. She continued there for more than twenty years, finally retiring from the mission field at the age of seventy-eight.
She returned to Selma, Alabama, where she taught in a church school until age ninety-three. She never married or had children and died in 1937 at the age of ninety-nine. For her achievements, she was inducted into the Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame in 2000.
In her poem, “Still I Rise,” Maya Angelou describes herself with the line “I am the dream and the hope of the slave.” Maria’s story proves that not all slaves left their hopes and dreams to be fulfilled by future generations. Once freed, she lived out her hopes and dreams in her own time. She made her life her legacy.
In the face of societal attempts today to erase the achievements of people of color and women of all races from American history, I’m proud to be among those spreading the accomplishments of women like Maria Fearing far and wide.
Contest: For a chance at a $10 Amazon gift card, leave your impression of Maria and/or other women like her that you know of in the comments.
Put It In A Book
Inside Stranded: A Boys Behaving Badly Anthology
Trapped in a book by a sorcerer for rejecting his sexual advances, an ex-slave’s daughter discovers her one hope of rescue – a nosy thief.
Excerpt:
A multiple volume encyclopedia stood on shelves at chest level in a far corner. Morlu would want his wealth within easy reach. Sekou pulled down the first volume and rifled through the pages. Paper currency of all types fluttered to his feet like leaves whirling from the branches of bombax trees in winter.
Clever, Dibia. But not clever enough.
Sekou chuckled and rifled through volume after volume. By the time he reached Z a pile of money lay on the floor. He scooped the cash into his swag sack, laughing quietly at his haul.
He thrust the last volume back into place, knocking a slender manuscript off the shelf.
The Story of Aziza.
He recognized the title of the book with which Morlu had taunted him. He picked it up, fanned the pages with his thumb. A sigh drifted past him. Startled, he crouched and looked left then right. Only the night breeze disturbed the silence. He fanned through the pages again. This time a scent – light like rain, sweet like honey – graced the air.
He stared at the face of a withered old hag on the book’s cover. The image had repulsed and fascinated him. The gaze in her eyes shone with intelligence and defiance, so unlike the villagers lionizing the dibia at this moment.
Sekou opened to the flyleaf. There the image of a black beauty stared back at him. Her skin was as smooth as the hag’s was wrinkled, but the same intelligent defiance shone in her eyes. He traced the outline of her chin jutting forth with pride.
“So, ladies…” He feathered his fingers along her full lips then examined the woman on the cover again. “To which one of you does this story belong?”
Buylink: Amazon – https://amzn.to/3dLd9rM
