The Blessing of Ham: Genesis 9:1 in Early African American Biblical Scholarship

Much of the recent scholarship on Noah’s curse (Genesis 9:20–27) has focused on how the myth of Ham has factored into debates over slavery and other anti-Black biblical interpretations. Yet Sylvester A. Johnson argues convincingly that in the late nineteenth century, the “myth of Ham” was used primarily to explain racial origins rather than to justify or condemn slavery. To provide nuance to Johnson’s point, this article argues that some influential nineteenth-century African American scholars whom Johnson discusses interpreted the story of racial origins in the myth of Ham as an outgrowth of a divine blessing that Ham shared with his brothers in Genesis 9:1–19. This blessing, they argued, was unrelated to Noah’s curse of Canaan in Genesis 9:20–27. This article focuses on the exegetical arguments made by James W. C. Pennington, Alexander Crummell, Benjamin Tucker Tanner, and George Washington Williams.