Today (July 7) in 1878, Francis Grimké was ordained as a Presbyterian minister. He was born in Charleston, SC to a white father (a slaveholding planter) and an enslaved mother (of European and African descent). He would eventually move North, graduate from Princeton Theological Seminary (studying under the Hodges and other leading Old School Presbyterian lights) and become the Pastor of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church in Washington, DC. To learn more about Grimké, read Thabiti Anyabwile’s The Faithful Preacher: Recapturing the Vision of Three Pioneering African-American Pastors – http://www.amazon.com/dp/1581348274/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_EYGUtb01XK65A7BB
Grimké famously said “Race prejudice can’t be talked down, it must be lived down.”
Read more, here: http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1801-1900/francis-grimkes-christian-critique-of-slavery-11630591.html