Day 22 – Daniel Coker

This devotional is part of the Black Missionary Heroes Past and Present Series.

Daniel Coker (1780–1846)

Missionary to Sierra Leone

Read Isaiah 43:1–3

Daniel Coker was born Isaac Wright but changed his name after fleeing to New York and becoming a minister. He was a writer, activist, and a founder of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, who eventually emigrated from the United States to Sierra Leone as a missionary and colonist. Coker was born in 1780 in Maryland to Susan Coker, a white indentured servant, and Edward Wright, a slave father. Standing up to racial discrimination in the Methodist Church, Coker called upon African American Methodists to withdraw from the white-dominated church and establish their own organization. Coker left the United States in 1820 with eighty-four other African Americans who would become settlers in Liberia.

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