NEWMAN, RICHARD, 1930- .
Black bishops, 1992 May 29.

MANUSCRIPT NUMBER 251

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CITATION:  Richard Newman Black bishops, MSS 251, Archives and Manuscripts Dept., Pitts Theology Library, Emory University. 

Richard Alan Newman was born on March 30, 1930 to Gordon Leon and Belle Newman of Watertown, New York.  He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Maryville College in 1952 and a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in 1955, as well as post-graduate work at Syracuse University from 1959 to 1961 and Harvard University in 1966. Dr. Newman was ordained as a minister of the Presbyterian Church in 1955 and served as the pastor of the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Syracuse, New York, from 1955 to 1960.    He was the Chairman of the Department of Social Sciences at Boston University from 1964 to 1973, Senior Editor of G.K. Hall and Co. in Boston from 1973 to 1979, and Executive Editor at Garland Publishing Inc. in New York from 1979 to 1981.  He also consulted for the New York Public Library and worked with the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University.  Dr. Newman has authored several books on African American history and religion, including "Prayers of Faith" (1976), "Black Power and Black Religion: Essays and Reviews" (1987), and "Go Down Moses: A Celebration of the African-American Spiritual" (1998).

This photocopied manuscript consists of seventy-one typewritten pages and a handwritten Table of Contents.  It is annotated with a bibliography.  The paper was originally presented as part of the program, "The Diversity of the African-American Religious Experience: A Continuing Dialogue," on May 29, 1992 at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York.  The complete title is, "Black Bishops: some African-American Old Catholics and their churches."  It examines the history of the African Orthodox Church, including the role of the Old Roman Catholic Church in its founding.  The section, "Wandering Bishops," contains short histories of a number of African-American bishops, as well as African-American Old Catholic congregations.  The text appeared in Newman's 1996 collection, "Words like freedom: essays on African-American culture and history."