William Henry Sheppard: Pioneer African-American Presbyterian missionary, human rights defender, and collector of African art, 1865--1927

Rev. William Sheppard (1865-1927) born in the last weeks of the American Civil War achieved numerous unprecedented feats as a missionary, art collector, minister, human rights advocate, and explorer in both the United States and Africa. Reared and educated in the era of Reconstruction in Virginia, Sheppard came of age amid major social changes for African Americans. Sheppard rejected a career as a Presbyterian minister in the South in favor of working as a missionary in the newly established Congo Free State in 1888.;Sheppard's life can be divided into three critical units: (1) his birth and developmental years, 1865-1890, (2) his missionary years, 1890-1910, and (3) his post missionary career in Staunton and Louisville, 1910-1927. Sheppard received a good primary education that was buttressed by study at Hampton Institute, and gaining an advanced diploma he decided to enter the ministry. In 1883, he started his studies at Tuscaloosa Theological Institute, and he completed his M.Div. in 1887 he finished his religious study. He entered the ordained ministry. He pastored in Montgomery and Atlanta between 1887 and 1890.;In 1890, Sheppard set off to establish the American Congo Presbyterian Mission with Rev. Samuel Lapsley. In Congo, he traveled into the remote Kasai province of the newly formed Congo Free State. While tropical disease felled Lapsley, Sheppard flourished, and became a noted explorer and linguist. He became friends with the renowned Bakuba people. While in Africa he helped create a more understanding image of Africans, and he also played a vital role in exposing the atrocities committed against Africans by the Belgians.;Sheppard spent his last years in Louisville Kentucky, and there he was instrumental in improving the lives of poor blacks there. His early NAACP membership and love of Africa art left an indelible impact on the coming generations of African Americans. Sheppard could easily be considered a proto-founding father of the Harlem Renaissance. He died in 1927.