Disciples History Moment for February 9, 2025
In observance of Black History Month, it is fitting to remember the work of African Americans in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the Stone-Campbell Movement. One of the most outstanding and influential of Black Disciples was Preston Taylor. Preston was born a slave in 1849 in Louisiana and served during the Civil War as a drummer in the Union army.
After the war he was a stonecutter, porter and baggage master on the railroad. After resigning from the railroad, around 1870 he was called to become a pastor. He became a minister with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and settled in Mt. Sterling, Kentucky. In 1874 he founded the High Street Christian Church in Mt. Sterling, but by 1886 he moved to Nashville and was preaching at the Gay Street Christian Church there to spread the gospel among black Southerners.
In 1917 he organized the National Christian Missionary Convention which united black Disciples in national and global mission. As an educator he helped to establish property for the Christian Bible College in New Castle, KY, and assisted in forming the Tennessee Agriculture State Normal School for Negroes (now Tennessee State University). During the 1880s he traveled widely, holding evangelistic meetings, establishing new congregations and giving black Disciples a sense of belonging in a denomination that had, far too often, segregated its people.
Preston Taylor died in 1931 at 82 years of age.
Rev. Kevin K. Adams
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