James Solomon Russell

James Solomon Russell (December 20, 1857 – March 28, 1935), born enslaved in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, shortly before the American Civil War, became an Episcopal priest and educator in the postwar period.

[1] James Russell was born to Araminta, an enslaved African-American woman on the Hendrick plantation in Mecklenburg County.

After the Union victory in the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery, the senior Russell rejoined his family.

[2] James began attending a local school whose schoolmaster allowed tuition to be paid in labor and farm products.

As part of his elementary school curriculum, Russell required students to recite the Apostles' Creed daily.

A local Episcopalian matron gave him a Book of Common Prayer, and Russell decided to become a member of that denomination.

Mrs. Pattie Buford of Lawrenceville brought Russell's ambition to the attention of Bishop Francis McNeece Whittle.

He sent a local priest to Hampton to investigate and secured Russell's admission in 1878 to the newly created Bishop Payne Divinity School in Petersburg, Virginia.

He worked in Lawrenceville, initially holding separate services for African Americans at St. Andrew's, the majority white Episcopal Church.

The following year, the diocese authorized funds to build a church for his Black parishioners, and to buy a horse to aid in his missionary travels.

But the white-dominated Virginia legislature passed amendments Constitution on 1902 instituted poll taxes and Jim Crow Laws had begun.

Archdeacon Russell was awarded an honorary degree from the Virginia Theological Seminary (the first African American thus honored) in 1917.

[10] In 1995, the Diocese of Southern Virginia added James Solomon Russell to its liturgical commemorations on the anniversary of his death.