Building a Diasporic Family: The Women’s Parent Mite Missionary Society of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1874–1920

Abstract

This article argues that the missionary language of the Women’s Parent Mite Missionary Society of the African Methodist Episcopal Church was cast in familial and kinship nomenclature that eschewed the evil of racial hierarchy. Although routine missionary vernacular about heathen Africa and its need for Christianization and civilization appeared in the rhetoric of AME women, they more deeply expressed a diasporic consciousness that obligated Black people on both sides of the Atlantic to resist Euro-American hegemony. The capacious embrace of the WPMMS for Black women—whether in the United States, the Caribbean, or Africa—actualized their vision for maternal and sisterly interaction in contrast to the racial condescension prevalent among white women in their respective American and European missionary groups.