Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America

by Michael Harriot

To assuage the fears of the white faithful, the Anglican Church through the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (the church’s missionary arm) distributed ten thousand copies of two letters to the residents of the British colonies in 1727, assuring slaveowners that Christianity “does not make the least Alteration in Civil Property.”12 More relief came in 1794 when a group of well-meaning white liberals formed the Missionary Society for the Conversion of Negro Slaves. To further its prophetic cause, the group printed a Caucasian remix to the King James Bible that left out all the parts that might incite freedom in the hearts of the enslaved. The censored version removed 90 percent of the Old Testament and half of the New Testament,13 eliminating potentially seditious passages such as the story of the Israelites’ captivity and escape from Egypt, including Exodus 21:16 (King James Version), which reads, “And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.” Naturally, the curators of the Slavery Bible kept all the parts necessary to curate a crop of compliant negroes, including Ephesians 6:5 (King James Version): “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ.”