An Autobiography

The Story of the Lord's Dealings with Mrs Amanda Smith the Colored Evangelist

Amanda Smith author J E Dodson editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc

Published:28th Jul '88

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

An Autobiography cover

Amanda Berry Smith was a trail-blazing black woman evangelist of the nineteenth century. She became a member of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal congregation in Philadelphia in 1865, a time when women were denied positions of authority in the denomination. By the time of her death in 1915 the church had conceded to women the positions of congregational stewardess, conference evangelist, and denominational deaconess. Her autobiography, first published in 1893, not only captures the spirit of the woman who became a celebrity of Christian evangelism around the world; it also tells us much about black women's historical struggle to be accepted into the ministry and polity of denominations.

The union of religion and political agitation...remains constant throughout the century....It is most evident in the spritual autobiographies of evalgelists like Jarena Lee, Julia Foote, and Amanda Smith. Smith's 1893 account of her career in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, where she rose from deaconess despite the significant opposition of male preachers, is all the more striking against the backdrop of her childhood experience of slavery. In the transport of her own conversion experience, the young Amanda Smith ran to a mirror to see whether her color had changed. * Eric J. Sundquist in The New York Times Book Review *

ISBN: 9780195052619

Dimensions: 225mm x 145mm x 44mm

Weight: 871g

608 pages