A Mysterious Life & Calling: From Slavery to Ministry in South Carolina

Lucky, associate professor of English and director of the Africana studies program at Villanova University, has truly uncovered a gem with this autobiography of Charlotte S. Riley, a former slave who became a reverend in the African Methodist Episcopal Church after emancipation. The original manuscript is cached within the Levi Jenkins Coppin collection at Ohio’s Wilberforce University, and this is the first contemporary edition. Lucky introduces the text with an abbreviated account of Riley’s life. She was born in Charleston, S.C., in 1839; received a “quasi-formal education” and married a free black man while a slave; then rose to prominence as a teacher, preacher, and church leader following emancipation. Riley’s narrative provides few details of her slave past and focuses mostly on her spiritual awakening and religious life after being freed. However, for students of pre–Civil War America, Riley’s unusual position vis-à-vis other slaves—her parents maintained their own home and she attended multiple trade schools—offers a new window into the mechanisms of enslavement, particularly in urban areas. Although the scope of this text is not very wide, the detailed descriptions of Riley’s rise in the Methodist Church, personal letters, and Lucky’s copious footnotes make this an important, informative achievement. (Jan.)