Daniel Coker
Daniel Coker (1780–1846), born Isaac Wright, was an African American of mixed race from Baltimore, Maryland.
[1] In 1816, he helped found the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent black denomination in the United States, at its first national convention in Philadelphia.
In 1820, Coker took his family and immigrated to the British colony of Sierra Leone, where he was the first Methodist missionary from a Western nation.
F.C.O Coker was on the board of the first Lagos state government and played a key role in economic policy and created a tax system that is still used to this day.
Mrs. Oye Akintola-Williams nee Coker (Mama MUSON), who later became a professional health nurse, patron of the arts and ardent environmentalist.
Coker was the judge in the trial of Obafemi Awolowo, that found him guilty of malpractice and sent to prison, resulting in a huge shift in the political climate of Nigeria.
The remaining siblings would include Mrs. Hilda Omolola Johnson nee Coker SRN, SCM, a future founder and matron of Logemo Hospital; Chief H.T.O.
Coker would grow up to be a titan in the Nigerian medical field with an international reputation; his hospital carried out the autopsy of Moshood Abiola and was involved in a number of other high-profile operations.
He is a confidante to the Oba (King) of Lagos and sits on the Oba's board of directors A major player in the construction industry, his office building in Victoria Island, FABAC Centre, includes tenants such as Main One, Austrian Embassy and Adeniyi Coker Consultants Limited (ACCL).
Coker's grandchildren are amongst Nigeria's elite social scene and rub shoulders with other prominent members of society.
)[1] Beginning in the colonial period, Maryland had added restrictions on unions between white women and enslaved Black people.
Under a 1692 Maryland law, white women who had children with enslaved people would be punished by being sold as indentured servants for seven years and binding their mixed-race children to serve indentures until the age of twenty-one if the woman was married to the enslaved person, and until age thirty-one if she was not married to the father.
Growing up in a household with his white Coker half-brothers, Wright attended primary school with them, serving as their valet.
[3] Coker received a license to preach from Francis Asbury, a British missionary who had immigrated to the United States and planted numerous frontier churches during his career.
[5] Baltimore was a center of a growing population of free people of color, including several individuals manumitted after the Revolutionary War.
In 1818, church elders dismissed him from the Connection because of "undisclosed charges"; the following year, he was readmitted but could preach only with the approval of a local minister.
Made up of various leaders from the northern and southern United States, the ACS advocated resettling free African Americans in West Africa.
Both enslavers and some abolitionists supported the enterprise, the former believing that free people of color threatened the stability of the southern slave society.
Daniel Coker's having established our church here, he also played a mighty part among the early settlers of Sierra Leone.
