Walker Lewis

Quacko Walker Lewis was an early African American abolitionist, Freemason, and Mormon elder from Massachusetts.

Family and personal history

Lewis was born August 3, 1798 in Barre, Massachusetts to Peter P. Lewis and Minor Walker Lewis. His full name was Quacko Walker Lewis, named after his maternal uncle, Kwaku Walker (Kwaku meaning "boy born on Saturday" in Ghanian, and also spelled Quacko, Quork, Quock, Qualk, etc.) [Newbell Niles Puckett, Black Names in America: Origins and Usage, (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co.), pp. 197, 417-418, 422, and 433-444.]

Kwaku Walker was born in Massachusetts in 1753 to slaves Mingo and Dinah, who were owned by the prominent Caldwell family of Worcester County. Months before his promised emancipation at the age of 21, his owners died and he became the property of Nathaniel Jennison, a cruel and violent man. Educated by the next generation of Caldwells who were now all abolitionists, in 1781 Kwaku Walker sued his owner for his freedom, basing his legal case upon the newly passed Massachusetts state constitution which guaranteed that all men are created free and equal. In 1783, the case went before the state Supreme Judicial Court, and Kwaku won not only his own freedom, but the emancipation of all slaves in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the second state to do so (Vermont had freed its slaves in 1776).

Kwaku's namesake, Walker Lewis, was one of nine children born to Minor Walker and Peter P. Lewis, and was raised in an educated, socially committed, politically active, and well-connected middle class black family. While Walker was still a young boy, Peter and Minor Lewis moved their family to Cambridge, Massachusetts. There, Walker Lewis became a successful barber and earned enough money to purchase a residential and commercial building in Boston, Massachusetts.

In March 1826, Walker Lewis married Elizabeth Lovejoy (daughter of Peter Lovejoy, who was black, and Lydia Greenleaf Bradford, who was white) and their first child, Enoch Lovejoy Lewis, was born three months later. At this point in time, Lewis moved his young family to Lowell, Massachusetts, where the burgeoning industrial revolution was bringing new wealth to the state through the cotton mills. In Lowell, along with his brother-in-law, John Levy, Lewis opened a barbershop on Merrimack Street and eventually they purchased a two family home in the Centralville section of Lowell.

Freemasonry and abolitionism

While in Boston, Lewis was initiated into African Freemasonry about 1823, participating in Boston's African Lodge #459. In 1825, he became the sixth Master and a year later was its Senior Warden. After the African Lodge declared its independence from the Grand Lodge of London and became its own African Grand Lodge, Walker Lewis was the Grand Master of African Grand Lodge #1 for 1829 and 1830 (see: Prince Hall Freemasonry).

Around the time of his marriage to Elizabeth Lovejoy in 1826, Walker Lewis and Thomas Dalton helped organize the Massachusetts General Colored Association (MGCA), the first such all-black organization in the United States. In 1829, the MGCA helped David Walker (no relation) to publish the radical, 76-page "Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World" which demanded unconditional and immediate emancipation of all slaves in the USA. Walker Lewis personally assisted in this endeavor by arranging to have the same Boston printer who published the Articles for the African Grand Lodge, to print the controversial "Appeal". In 1831, Walker Lewis served as President of the African Humane Society in Boston, which provided funeral expenses for the poor, assisted widows, built the African School in Boston, and also sponsored a "settlement project" for African Americans who wanted to return to settle in Liberia.

In Lowell during 1840s and 1850s, Walker's home was a stop on the Underground Railroad, and he even housed for quite some time the escaped slave, Nathaniel Booth. Walker Lewis and many of his brother and sisters and their families were actively involved in the abolition and equal rights movement throughout Massachusetts and the Northeast.

Conversion to Mormonism

Sometime about 1842, Lewis, who had fellowshipped with the Episcopal Church, officially converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon). It is believed he was baptized by Apostle Parley P. Pratt. One year later, in the summer of 1843, Lewis was ordained an Elder in the LDS Church by William Smith, an Apostle and brother to Joseph Smith, becoming the third black man known to hold the Mormon priesthood (The first two were Elijah Abel and a man only known as Black Pete). Walker's firstborn son, Enoch Lovejoy Lewis, also joined the Mormon Church, but probably did not hold the priesthood. Enoch later married a white Mormon woman named Mary Matilda Webster in Cambridge, on September 18, 1846. They too lived in Lowell, Massachusetts, where Enoch ran a used clothing store (mainly to assist escaping slaves from the south to change their appearances with new and better clothing), while his father, Walker Lewis, would barber their hair into different hairstyles to further disguise them.

Priesthood ban

Meanwhile, at Winter Quarters, Nebraska, Brigham Young was dealing with the erratic behavior of a half-African, half-Indian Mormon musician named William McCary (who probably also held Mormon priesthood). On March 26, 1847, Young confronted McCary and made a clear statement that Mormon priesthood bestowal was not race-based, but only based on the man's personal worthiness. Young specifically told McCary, "Its nothing to do with the blood for [from] one blood has God made all flesh, we have to repent [to] regain what we av lost - we av one of the best Elders an African in Lowell" here referring to Walker Lewis. Unfortunately, Young's view of both Lewis and blacks holding priesthood radically changed by the end of that year.

Just weeks later, William Ivers Appleby, a conservative Mormon Elder, arrived in Lowell, Massachusetts as a missionary, to discover that the most prominent Mormon there was an African-American Elder, and a radical abolitionist, Walker Lewis. And not only that, but Walker's son has married a white Mormon woman, which incensed the missionary. Appleby promptly wrote a letter to Brigham Young on May 31, 1847, informing the new Mormon president that,

At Lowell - I found a coloured brother by name of -Lewis- a barber, an Elder in the Church, ordained some years ago by William Smith. This Lewis I was informed has also a son [Enoch] who is married to a white girl [Mary Matilda Webster Lewis] . and both members of the Church there. Now dear Br. I wish to know if this is the order of God or tolerated in this Church ie to ordain Negroes to the Priesthood and allow amalgamation [inter-racial marriage] . If it is I desire to Know, as I have Yet got to learn it.

Appleby had sent the letter to Young at Winter Quarters, Nebraska, but Young was actually in Utah, and therefore did not receive Appleby's missive until the first of December 1847, when he returned to Winter Quarters. Quite coincidentally, Appleby himself arrived in Winter Quarters on December 2. Young read Appleby's letter and then had him personally report to Young and the eight Apostles who were then in Nebraska. According to the minutes of the Quorum of the Twelve for December 3, 1847, Young confided to the Apostles that he would have both Enoch Lovejoy Lewis and his wife Matilda killed "if they were far away from the Gentiles" ^{[citation needed]} instead of living in Massachusetts. Young continued,

when they mingle seed it is death to all. If a black man & white woman come to you & demand baptism can you deny them? the law is their seed shall not be amalgamated. Mulattoes r like mules they cant have children, but if they will be Eunuch for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake they may have a place in the Temple. ^{[citation needed]}

Young later (in 1863) reiterated,

Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so. ("Journal of Discourses", vol. 10, p. 110) [http://journalofdiscourses.org/Vol_10/refJDvol10-24.html]

After settling in Utah in 1848, Brigham Young announced a priesthood ban which prohibited all men of black African descent from holding the priesthood. In connection, Mormons of African descent could not participate in Mormon temple rites such as the Endowment or sealing. These racial restrictions remained in place until 1978, when the policy was rescinded by President of the Church Spencer W. Kimball. [http://scriptures.lds.org/od/2]

Moves

In 1850 Walker Lewis began to prepare to migrate to Utah with the main body of the Mormons. Lewis left Massachusetts at the end of March 1851 and arrived in Salt Lake City about October 1. He received his Patriarchal Blessing under the hands of Patriarch John Smith, an uncle of Joseph Smith. After arriving, he asked a black Mormon from Connecticut, Jane Elizabeth Manning James, to marry him as his polygamous wife, but she turned him down. Otherwise, Lewis was completely ignored by his fellow Mormons. The missionaries and Apostles who had stayed in his home, eaten his food, and worshiped God under his roof refused to even acknowledge his presence now that he was in Salt Lake City.

Even worse, two months after Walker's arrival, Brigham Young loudly stumped for, and the Territorial Legislature (composed only of high-ranking Mormon leaders) dutifully passed, the "Act in Relation to Service." This new territorial law not only made slavery legal in the state of Utah, but Section Four of the statute seemed directly pointed at Walker Lewis and his son, Enoch, for it provided harsh punishment for "any white person... guilty of sexual intercourse with any of the African race," regardless of their being married, consenting adults. This anti-miscegenation law was not repealed in Utah until the 1960s.

After only six months in Salt Lake, Walker Lewis left with the spring thaw and returned to Lowell, Massachusetts. There were difficult times on Lewis's return to Lowell; his daughter-in-law, Mary Matilda Webster Lewis, died from "exhaustion" just after Christmas 1852 in the State Hospital at Worcester, Massachusetts. His son, Enoch Lovejoy Lewis, married again--this time to African American Elisa Richardson Shorter--in 1853, at a time when he was slowly going insane.

Death

Walker Lewis died on October 26, 1856 in Lowell of "consumption" (tuberculosis). Lewis may have returned to St. Anne's Episcopal Church where his wife Elizabeth Lewis was an active member, as Reverend Theodore Edson conducted his funeral services, and Lewis was buried in the family lot in the Lowell Cemetery, a beautiful, private, cemetery.

Troubles for the Lewis family continued as Enoch Lewis became so insane that he was institutionalized. Linus Child, a former state Senator, Agent of the Boott Cotton Mills (Lowell), and close friend of Walker and Elizabeth Lewis, acted as Enoch's guardian; Child also served as guardian for their young son, Walker Lewis, Jr.

References

*cite journal
last =O'Donovan
first = Connell
authorlink =
coauthors =
title = The Mormon Priesthood Ban and Elder Q. Walker Lewis
journal = John Whitmer Historical Association Journal
volume = 26
issue =
pages = 47-99
publisher = John Whitmer Historical Association (Independence MO)
year= 2006
url =http://people.ucsc.edu/~odonovan/elder_walker_lewis.html
doi =
id =
accessdate =

See also

*Blacks and the Latter Day Saint movement

External links

* [http://library.uml.edu/clh/Prof/Pro.Html "Profiles in Courage: African Americans in Lowell" by Martha Mayo, Center for Lowell History, University of Massachusetts Lowell]
* [http://www.masshist.org/endofslavery/ "Quork Walker Case: End of Slavery" by Massachusetts Historical Society]
* [http://www.mass.gov/courts/sjc/constitution-slavery-e.html "Quork Walker Case" by Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court]
* [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2h38.html "Quock Walker Case: Africans in America" by PBS/WGBH]