File #3083: "JULY 30 2025_George Woodbey TN Notebook_edited_Charles Holm.docx.pdf"

George Washington Woodbey’s Tennessee Notebook
Edited by Charles Holm​
July 2025

Charles Holm, “Woodbey, George Washington. “Untitled Tennessee Notebook, circa 1918.”,”
Black in Appalachia: Community History Digital Archive, accessed August 12, 2025,
https://blackinappalachia.omeka.net/items/show/2481

 George Washington Woodbey’s Tennessee Notebook
Written during an extended visit to Tennessee and Kentucky in 1917-1918, Rev. George
Washington Woodbey’s “Tennessee Notebook” contains recollections of his childhood in
Appalachia in upper Northeast Tennessee, where he was born enslaved in 1854. It provides an
autobiographical and personal account of Black life in Tennessee between 1854-1870, an account
of his activities and observations in the region in 1917-1918, and descriptions of people and
communities he visited, preached, and lectured at during this time, as well as reflection
commentary and observations on contemporary issues. It is a unique source for the study of
Black life, culture, history, religion, and politics.
The first half of Woodbey’s notebook through “The Lecture at Old Pleasant Grove Baptist
Church and the Visit to the Old Home,” he provides an autobiographical account of his early
years in upper Northeast TN from his birth in slavery through the Civil War and his family’s life
after emancipation in the first years of Reconstruction.
The second half consists of four entries titled “Southern Hospitality,” “What I Have Seen of the
Negro Schools,” “The Young Negro of the Past and Present,” and “Southern Prejudice, The After
Math [of] Slavery” addressing topics and themes including: economic explanations for the
demise of “proverbial” Southern hospitality; Black youth, parenting, and inherent nature of
“sin”; Black schools, Jim Crow segregation, and his philosophy of education; the National
Baptist Publishing Board, capitalism, and Black pride; slavery and racism in the US, the
persistence of anti-Black racism and its globalization; Baptist preaching, abolitionist agitation,
and socialism; the “signs” of progress and divine punishment for “slave holding.”
The notebook is a historically unique and uniquely personal account of Black life in upper
northeast Tennessee during the decade prior to the Civil War through the middle of
Reconstruction, written from the perspective of a nationally known Prohibitionist and later
Socialist Party leader, author, orator, and Baptist preacher from the vantage point of his long
“forgotten” return here in 1918.

2

Dedication
George Washington Woodbey’s “Tennessee notebook” is a historically unique and uniquely
personal autobiographical source, deeply tied to the political, cultural, and religious history of
upper northeast Tennessee and Black Appalachia. This edited version of his original handwritten
text is intended to make this source more accessible and useful to the public as well as scholars. I
hope it deepens and expands current understandings about George Woodbey’s life and work as a
formerly enslaved working class Black intellectual, Baptist preacher, and Socialist organizer.
Thank you to the Mark Carlock family, Precious Jackson, and Deb Hurt for encouraging my
research and for continuing to support and motivate my work. Special thank you to Deb Hurt, for
entrusting me with the Woodbey “papers” and believing in this project to digitize and archive
George Woodbey’s “Tennessee Notebook” for Black in Appalachia’s Community History Digital
Archive. Thank you, Samual Smith, descendent of Rufus Smith and Westly Smith. Thank you to
Donald Shaffer for your keen eye and friendship. Thank you to all my comrades in Black
Studies. To all the historians, librarians, museum workers, researchers, archivists, organizers, and
activists—thank you. Thank you, Black in Appalachia.
Charles Holm—July 29, 2025

Charles Holm is an educator and researcher currently based in northeast Nebraska. He received
his PhD in Black Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2021, and his MA in History
with a specialization in Ethnic Studes from the University of Nebraska Lincoln in 2014. If you
have comments or questions, or are interested in his research, he would love to hear from you.​
Email: crholm3 @ gmail.com
Website: https://charlesholm.substack.com/

1
Note on the Source
The surviving handwritten pages of George Washington Woodbey’s undated “Tennessee
Notebook” were written between his arrival in Johnson City in January 1918 and during or
shortly after his arrival in Mountain City in late March 1918 during his first and only extended
visit to Tennessee since leaving for Kansas in 1870 during Reconstruction.
In this edited version of the handwritten original text, I include his original handwritten page
numeration to make it easier for readers to follow along and compare it with the digitized
original. George Woodbey’s notebook pages begin on his page 60, in the middle of a sentence.
The early missing pages unfortunately have been lost or destroyed, but more than likely would
have shed light on his activities in Nashville and Kentucky in 1917 prior to his arrival in East
Tennessee in January 1918.
Following the first incomplete entry, the original notebook sections are numbered as in the
original, and titled based the original headings given in Woodbey’s handwriting: “6. The Lecture
at Old Pleasant Grove Baptist Church, And the Visit to the Old Home,” “7. Southern
Hospitality,” “8. What I Have Seen of the Negro Schools,” “9. The Young Negro of the Past and
Present,” “10. Southern Prejudice, The Aftermath of Slavery.” The title of the last entry is
written in the original as “Southern Prejudice The After Math Slavery.” I have standardized this
to, “Southern Prejudice, The Aftermath of Slavery.”
George Woodbey’s handwriting and the condition of the original notebook at times created
significant challenge. Dr. Donald Shaffer provided extensive comments on an early version of
the manuscript, which helped me correct and improve the clarity of the text. Dr. Shaffer also
picked up characteristics of Woodbey’s handwriting and details, such as the way he often omits
the letter “r” within a word or at the end of a word, how his lowercase “a” is often
indistinguishable from his lowercase “o.” Woodbey also often spells out two separate words,
which often are written as a single word. In the notebook, he also regularly leaves out a “s”
where a word is obviously meant to be pluralized, and in the original he sometimes omits articles
“a” “an” “and” and “the.”
The original notebook begins with a partial handwritten sentence, “gond father third wife, which
I have edited as “grandfather’s third wife.” I generally avoided marking such changes in the
interest of readability but where I have inserted a missing a word or words, or made more
significant alterations, have usually noted this in brackets or provided an explanatory footnote.

2
GEORGE WASHINGTON WOODBEY: BLACK RADICAL BAPTIST PREACHER
Historian Philip S. Foner deserves the most credit for “discovering” the largely “forgotten” life
of George Washington Woodbey (1854-1937), especially during his years as a leading Black
member and organizer for the Socialist Party of America (SP). In addition to his brief and still
widely cited biographical account of George Woodbey’s life, Foner republished a significant
number of his writings including What to Do and How to Do It: or Socialism vs. Capitalism
(1903), The Bible and Socialism: A Conversation between Two Preachers (1904), and The
Distribution of Wealth (1910). Since Foner’s efforts almost half a century ago, scholars have
continued to rely on his work and source material, and with a few exceptions have said little
about Rev. Woodbey’s early life in East Tennessee or his decades as a preacher and Prohibition
Party leader before joining the SP in 1901, and very little about his life after 1915.1
​
Philip Foner recovered much of George Woodbey’s life and ideas as a member of
Socialist Party of America between 1902 and 1915. His edited volume, Black Socialist Preacher
is still an incredible resource, containing many of George Woodbey’s most important writings on
socialism, even though it has long been out of print. This introduction to George Woodbey’s
“Tennessee Notebook” fills in the gaps left by Foner and others, providing a greatly expanded
account of his life beginning with his childhood in upper Northeast Tennessee through his final
decades prior to his death in 1937.2

1

Notes

George Washington Woodbey: Black Baptist Radical Preacher
Philip S. Foner, “Reverend George Washington Woodbey: Early Twentieth Century California Black Socialist,”
Journal of Negro History 61, no. 2 (April 1976): 136-157; Philip S. Foner, American Socialism and Black
Americans: From the Age of Jackson to World War II (Greenwood Press, 1977); Philip S. Foner, ed., Black Socialist
Preacher: The Teachings of Reverend George Washington Woodbey and his Disciple Reverend George W. Slater, Jr.
(Synthesis Publications, 1983). For some of the best discussions of Woodbey largely reliant of Foner’s biographical
account but which elaborate useful and original treatments of the political and religious significance of his ideas as a
Black socialist preacher, see Cornel West, Prophecy Deliverance: An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity
(1982, anniv ed. Westminster John Knox Press: 2002); Robert H. Craig, Religion and Radical Politics: An
Alternative Christian Tradition in the United States (Temple University Press, 1992); Jacob Henry Dorn, Socialism
and Christianity in Early 20th Century America (Greenwood Press, 1998); Winston James, “Being Red and Black in
Jim Crow America: On the Ideology and Travails of Afro-America’s Socialist Pioneers, 1877-1930,” in Time Longer
Than Rope: A Century of African American Activism, 1850-1950, edited by Charles M. Payne and Adam Green
(New York University Press, 2003), 336-399; Gary Dorrien, The New Abolition: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Black
Social Gospel (Yale University Press, 2015).

This account partially draws from research that appears in chapters 3 and 4 of my 2021 dissertation, and
incorporates additional materials and sources from ongoing research. For my earlier discussion of Rev.
Woodbey in relation to Black abolitionist and early Black socialist political thought see Charles Holm,
“‘To be Free from the Slavery of Capitalism’: David Walker, Peter H. Clark, and George Washington
2

3
Black in Appalachia—Early years in Tennessee, 1854-1870
George Woodbey was born in 1854 on the “plantation” of his “old master” in Johnson County,
which was located about halfway between the unincorporated community of Neva to the south
and Mountain City to the north, in the Maymead/Vaughtsville area, half a mile from Pleasant
Grove Baptist Church. When he visited this place in 1918 for the first time since leaving
Tennessee for Kansas in 1870, he noted that “the [rail]road now runs through the farm where I
was borned as also was my mother.” His mother Rachel (Wagner) was baptized in 1855 by Rev.
Valentine Bowers and became a member of Pleasant Grove Baptist, a church of mostly “slave
holders,” as George Woodbey described it in 1918. His maternal grandmother Milly Wagner and
her husband Jonas Vaught, were two of the four original “colored” members when Pleasant
Grove branched off from the Pine Grove Baptist congregation in 1845.3 Some of the church’s
“slave holder” members included his “old master Jacob “Rail Jake” Wagner and his wife, “old
mistress” Sarah Wagner, the parents of his “young master” Jacob Wagner Jr. and Sarah Wagner,
“young mistress Sarah.” Another solve holder, Joseph Wagner, had a daughter named Sara F.,
who later married Issac McQueen, who was living in a house built after the Civil War on the
former Wagner plantation, when he visited in 1918.
During the Civil War, in an article published in the Johnson City Staff that year, he said
his father, Charles Woodbey (Widbey/Woodby) “had been out in the war with the 13th Tennessee,
waiting upon Captain Isaac Taylor.”4 In another account published in the Mountain City Johnson
County News, he wrote the following description of how
When the Civil war broke out, I saw some of the first confederate soldiers which came
into the county under the command of Col. Folk, followed by General Morgan, who
camped near our place for a few weeks. The excitement of those days are yet uppermost
in my mind, as I was big enough to thoroughly take [in] the great joy, that animated the
Woodbey’s Early Black Socialist Thought,” PhD thesis, University of Texas, 2021, TexasScholarWorks,
http://dx.doi.org/10.26153/tsw/15254.
3
Pleasant Grove Baptist Church branched off from Pine Grove Baptist Church and chartered on January
20, 1845. See Johnson County Historical Society, History of Johnson County Vol I Sesquicentennial ed.
(Johnson County Tenn: Johnson County Historical Society., 1986), 66; John Trotwood Moore and Austin
P. Foster, Tennessee, The Volunteer State, 1796-1923 Vol. II (S.J. Clarke Publishing Co.: Chicago &
Nashville,1923), 414. Rev. Valentine Bowers served as the church’s first Elder. Jonas Vaught and Milly
Wagner were two of the four original “colored” charter members of the church, along with Luce Wagner
and Jude Widdy[sic]. See Johnson County Historical Society, History of Johnson County Vol I
Sesquicentennial ed. (Johnson County Tenn: Johnson County Historical Society, 1986), 66; John
Trotwood Moore and Austin P. Foster, Tennessee, The Volunteer State, 1796-1923 Vol. II (S.J. Clarke
Publishing Co.: Chicago & Nashville,1923), 414.
4
“Johnson City Fifty Seven Years Ago,” Johnson City Staff, 25 January 1918. For an interesting account
of the 13th Tennessee, see Melanie Storie, The Dreaded 13th Tennessee Union Cavalry: Marauding
Mountain Men (The History Press, 2013).

4
slave of these parts, when the smoked Yankees, as the negro soldiers were called, came
marching up the road by our place.5
At the end of the war, and now free, Charles and Rachel Woodbey moved with their children to
Carter county. He remembered his father “was instrumental in organizing the first subscription
school” for freedpeople in Johnson City, “in an old log shanty” on Roan Hill.6 Charles Woodbey
rented land and farmed on the C.C. Taylor estate. A county record in 1868 states it “ordered by
the court that Charles Woodby a man of color be appointed overseer of the road…from the fork
near C.C. Taylor to the county line.”7 George’s mother, Rachel (Wagner) Woodbey was involved
in the organization of the Baptist church, “an organic member” of the church “made by Rev.
William Jobe in 1866” that later became Johnson City’s Thankful Baptist. Rev. Job was a
formerly enslaved Baptist preacher and farm laborer, and it was he who gave George Woodbey
his first copy of the New Testament, and in 1937 he told a reported how, “The New Testament
was the only book I could get aside from my two school books. I read it over and over, and it
seemed so wonderful to me.” 8
Kansas and Nebraska, 1870-1902
5

“Noted Negro Visits Johnson City,” Johnson County News, 31 March 1918, clipping, George
Washington Woodbey Scrapbook (GWWS), private collection. Courtesy of Deb Hurt.
6
According to Woodbey’s Tennessee notebook, the first teacher was George Perkins, “a lame ex-union
soldier.” Elsewhere, he reportedly name the first teacher as “Mr. Thomas Harrison,” a formerly enslaved
educator “who had somehow managed to get a knowledge of letters during his life as a slave” and after
him “the late noted Dr. Hinkle [Hezekiah Hankal].” See “Johnson City Fifty Seven Years Ago,” Johnson
City Staff, 25 January 1918. Black families began using the “log shanty” as a school around 1867, and at
the time served as a meeting place three different congregations of Black worshippers. See Ned L. Irwin,
“Education,” History of Washington County Tennessee (Johnson City, Tennessee: The Overmountain
Press, 2001), 526; Ophelia Daniels, “Formative Years of Johnson City, Tennessee, 1885-1890: A Social
History,” MA thesis, Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State College, 1947; Harold G. Handy, “The
Langston School Experience: The Black Community,” MA thesis, East Tennessee State University, 1980;
Mary Henderson-Alexander, “Black Life in Johnson City, Tennessee 1856-1965: A Historical
Chronology,” MA thesis, East Tennessee State University, 2001; “Our History: Writings on Johnson
City,” Archives of Appalachia, East Tennessee State University,
https://archivesofappalachia.omeka.net/exhibits/show/jchistory.
7
Carter County, TN, County Court, "Minutes March 1863 - August 1869," (Elizabethton, TN: County
Court Clerk, 1868), 237.  Special thanks to Donald Shaffer, and especially Joe Penza, Archivist and
Records Clerk at the Elizabethton-Carter County Public Library, for assistance with this source.
8
1860, United States Federal Census, Jonesboro, Washington County, Tennessee, digital image s.v.
“William Jobe,” Ancestry.com; 1870, United States Federal Census, Johnson City, Washington County,
Tennessee, digital image s.v. “William Jobe,” Ancestry.com ; “‘Horace Leftwich’ copied by Sarah Hunter
Jackson,” (June 1941, Archives of Appalachia, accessed June 1, 2025,
https://archivesofappalachia.omeka.net/items/show/13135; “Thankful Baptist Church,” Washington
County TNGenWeb, accessed June 1, 2025,
https://tngenweb.org/washington/records-data/churches-of-washington-county/thankful-baptist-church/;
M.L. Brown, Associated Negro Press, “Ex-Slave, 83 Interesting Minister,” Omaha Guide, 30 January
1937, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn93062828/1937-01-30/ed-1/seq-2/.

5

Sometime in late 1870, the Woodbey family left Tennessee for Kansas, and join a small
community of other migrants who left the South in and around Emporia in Lyon county. In 1875,
George’s younger sister Mary was enrolled in school, but his formal school days came to an end,
after the death of his father shortly after the family arrived in Kansas. According to a
biographical article published in the Indianapolis Freeman newspaper in 1890,
On account of his father’s death he was obliged to quit school when but just beginning
his education, the third reader being his textbook at the time. A poor boy, working hard to
help his mother in support of the family, but he managed to read widely, devouring and
with powerful mind assimilating the truth in all the books he could get hold of.9
The socialist Appeal to Reason on October 31, 1903 in a short biography written by A.W. Ricker
described how the author of What to Do and How to Do It, or Socialism vs. Capitalism had been
a former “slave,” and after emancipation had “worked in mines, factories, on the streets, and at
everything which would supply food, clothing and shelter.” Specific details about the kind of
work he did, and where at this time, are unfortunately hard to find, but one report published in
the Carthage Banner of Carthage, MO on October 12, 1876, gives the following:
The Hayes and Wheeler club meeting last night was a grand success. Those who were not
present missed the best speech of the season. We refer to the remarks of the colored boy
orator of Jasper county—Mr. G.W. Woodbey… Woodbey is but a mere boy, a miner in
the Joplin mines; but is one of those natural born orators, a remarkably well read and
informed young man, who has but to be heard to be—not merely appreciated—but
realized.”
Despite the paternalistic language, the comments suggest that in 1876 George Woodbey had not
only continued his education despite the economic compulsion which had forced him to abandon
further schooling, but even while working in the Joplin mines, he was delivering political
speeches that made him a force to be realized.
The same year, George Woodbey started a Sunday school at the Second Baptist church in
Emporia, KS, and from there would go on to preach and organize new congregations in Wichita,
Atchison, St. Joseph, Missouri, and eventually Omaha, Nebraska alongside his first wife, Annie
R. Goodin. Annie R. Goodin was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1855, and had grown up in
Canada and Michigan, and unlike her future husband was able acquire more of a formal
education. Passionate about history, politics, and interested in questions of religion and
philosophy, as the daughter of a Baptist preacher, Annie Goodin also knew her Bible. After he
9

“Rev. George W. Woodby,” Indianapolis Freeman, 1 November 1890. See also “Rev. G.W. Woodbey,”
Enterprise (Omaha), 4 April 1896.

6
first heard her lecture, at one of Rev. Goodin’s religious meetings near Emporia, it took some
time before George could gather the confidence to introduced himself, intimidated both by her
beauty and more than anything her intellect.10 They married on November 13, 1873, in a
ceremony conducted by Annie’s father.
The next year, George Woodbey himself was called to the ministry as part of the small
Baptist congregation first organized by Annie’s father, Rev. Goodin, which later became
Emporia’s St. James Baptist Church. In an oral history of the church, the daughter of founding
members of the church named Edwina Buckner described how the early congregants were
formerly enslaved migrants and their families who carried with them to Kansas a “deep religious
faith that was born out of slavery and oppression.”11 There was no church in the early years, so
the congregation held services in homes and the basement of the Lyon county courthouse, and
had just 16 members in January 1872. The freshly ordained Rev. Woodbey, still working in the
mines, led its first Sunday School with 18 pupils in 1876.12 He and Mrs. Woodbey, the “other”
Rev. Woodbey, went on to organize a new congregation in Wichita in 1878, and peached in
several other locations in the Midwest before moving to Omaha in 1883 to organize the city’s
Mount Zion Baptist Church.13 By 1884, both Mr. and Mrs. Woodbey were regularly in demand as
lecturers and popular orators, and their activities were reported as far away as T. Thomas
Fortune’s nationally circulated New York Globe.14 They became active members of Omaha’s
African American community through the church, but also as lecturers, writers, club members,
celebration speakers, organizers, and activists.
In May 1885, he sued Omaha’s Boyd theater and its manager for discrimination after
being denied entry to an event he had a ticket for sponsored by the Women’s Christian
Temperance Union (WCTU), which his wife was a member of. Mrs. Woodbey became joined the
WCTU in the mid-1880s and for a time was the only “colored” member in the state, and her
influence can be seen in her husband’s outspoken support for women’s suffrage, pay equality,
10

See Charles Holm, “Remembering Reverend Annie Rebecca Woodbey,” Black Perspectives, November 8, 2023,
https://www.aaihs.org/remembering-reverend-annie-rebecca-woodbey/.
11

Lyon County Kansas Marriage Index vol. I, 4 May 1854 through 31 December 1889, second edition,
compiled September 1999 (Emporia, KS: Flint Hills Genealogical Society), 184; Frank Lincoln Mathew,
Who’s Who of the Colored Race: A General Biography of Men and Women of African Descent vol. I
(Chicago: 1915), 290-291, misstates Annie’s year of death as 1891; “120 Years of History, As told by
‘Edwina Buckner,’” in St. James Baptist Church 120th Anniversary (Emporia, KS: 1992). Lyon County
Historical Center and Historical Society.
12
“120 Years of History, As told by ‘Edwina Buckner,’” in St. James Baptist Church 120th Anniversary
(Emporia, KS: 1992). Lyon County Historical Center and Historical Society; Laura M. French, History of
Emporia and Lyon County Kansas (Emporia, KS: Emporia Gazette Print, 1929); Emporia News, 24
September 1880.
13
For a short account of their church organizing activities in the 1870s and 1880s, see “A Church
History,” September 12, 2023, Woodbey Speaks, Holm Writes History, accessed June 1, 2025,
https://charlesholm.substack.com/p/a-church-legacy.
14

“Nebraska Doings,” New York Globe, 21 June 1884.

7
and the rights of women in the Baptist church. In response to the Boyd’s theater incident,
Omaha’s Black community organized a “mass meeting” in protest, and two weeks later held a
large “civil rights meeting.” Rev. Woodbey spoke along with Black Knights of Labor activist
Edwin R. Overall, Dr. M.O. Rickets, Nebraska’s first African American medical doctor, and
several white veterans of the abolitionist movement. The meeting resolved “to protest against all
discrimination on account of race or color.”15 George Woodbey’s suit against Boyd’s theater,
according to the Omaha World Herald, was “the first ‘civil rights’ order ever brought in the state,
so far as is known.”16
In 1887, after a Black sex worker named Georgiana Clark was discovered dead under
“mysterious” circumstances in an Omaha police station, George Woodbey participated in a
community meeting organized to condemn the city justice system for failing to investigate
Clark’s death. According to one newspaper, Rev. Woodbey warned that “if things did not soon
take a different aspect, his race would retaliate and do such deeds of horror as would freeze the
blood in the veins of the civilized world.”17 A few years after his suit against Boyd’s theater and
the community organizing surrounding Georgiana Clark’s death, it came as no surprise that he
was involved in the founding of the Omaha and Nebraska National Afro-American League in
1890.18
George and Annie Woodbey joined the Prohibition Party after the 1884 election cycle.
The Prohibitionists aimed to abolish the “liquor trade,” and was much more complicated in terms
of its politics and appeal than the Christian conversative moralistic white middle class
caricatured image of the “temperance crusader” some have imagined. His own early temperance
activism amounted to little more than signing a petition to the Emporia city council in 1877. He
attended a temperance meeting in Kansas in 1881 where he spoke from the same stage as then
Kansas governor, John Pierce St. John. In 1884, St. John broke from the Republicans and ran as
the Prohibition Party’s candidate for President.19 In 1889, Rev. Woodbey joined a delegation of
Western Prohibitionists that included St. John, Helen M. Gougar, and other prominent party
figures and attended the National Prohibition Conference in Louisville, Kentucky. WCTU
president Frances E. Willard was among the conference’s keynote speakers.20

15

“Equality Before the Law,” Omaha Daily Bee, 15 May 1885; “Expressing Indignation,” Omaha Daily
Bee, 20 May 1885; “Emancipation,” Omaha Daily Bee, 30 May 1885
16
Omaha Daily World-Herald, 2 July 1886.
17
“Colored People Prepared for Investigation,” Omaha World Herald, 16 August 1887.
18
“Have Too Many Great Men,” Omaha World Herald 10 January 1890; “Colored Men in Session,”
Omaha World Herald, 1 May 1890; “Shall They Break Away?” Omaha World Herald 1 May 1890; “Will
Right Their Wrongs,” Omaha World Herald, 2 May 1890; “Considering Its Affairs,” Omaha Daily Bee,
29 April 1892; “Afro-American League,” Omaha World Herald, 29 April 1892.
19
Emporia News, 7 December 1877; “The Temperance Meetings,” Atchison Champion, 14 June 1881.
20

“The National Conference,” New Republic (Lincoln), 21 February 1889.

8
Rev. Woodbey was among those who hoped to build a serious, national third-party
challenge to the two-party system. Like the People’s Party of the Populists, the Prohibition Party
appealed to a working class constituency in rural and urban area, North and South, with a
“broad” reform platform demanding women’s suffrage, public ownership of land, banks, and
railroads, free and universal public education, democratic reforms like the initiative and
referendum, the abolition of the convict leasing, and yes, the abolition of the “liquor trade” and
the sale and manufacture of alcoholic spirits. In the 1880s and early 1890s, the Prohibitionists
distinguished themselves not only on the question of prohibition, but as only national party
demanding women’s suffrage. Nebraska Prohibitionists unanimously nominated George
Woodbey to run for lieutenant governor in 1890 and for Congress in Nebraska’s second district
in 1892. Annie Woodbey was a Prohibitionist force in her own right, yet doing most of the work
of raising there three children prevented her from receiving the same attention as her husband.
Some accounts, however, suggests she was the more effective orator of the two, and in 1895 she
was nominated to run for University Regent of the State University of Nebraska on the
Prohibition Party ticket, making her “the first Negro woman ever honored with a nomination of a
state ticket by any political party in the United States.”21
A letter to the editor of The New Republic, a Lincoln based Prohibition newspaper,
published March 9, 1895, provides some idea of George Woodbey’s political views at the time.
It is simply a question as to whether the sugar trust, the saloons, the banks, the railroads,
and other trusts and combines shall own and operate the government; or whether the
government, which is another name for the people, shall own and operate them; with the
exception of the liquor traffic which must die. To win, we must let the people see we
intend a definite settlement of all vexed questions.
When the Prohibition Party’s dropped women’s suffrage and adopted a “narrow gauge” platform
at its 1896 national convention, George Woodbey was furious. Coverage of the proceedings in
the New York Times reported he led a “rebellion” during the convention and “a squad of
policeman was ushered into the hall to keep order.”22 According to the Pittsburg Post, he claimed
the “party should have courage to aid the oppressed,” and working class suffering “was not due
to liquor.”
He cited scripture, which was loudly applauded, that the Lord hated robbery. It was
impossible for the impoverished westerners to listen to Prohibition arguments while they
21

“Our Candidates,” Our Nation’s Anchor, 20 July 1895; “A Great Convention,” The New Republic, 20
July, 1895; Patricia C. Gaster, “Woodbey for Regent! When the Negraska Prohibition Party nominated a
Black woman in 1895,” Nebraska History Blog, February 2011,
https://history.nebraska.gov/woodbey-for-regent; Charles Holm, “Remembering Reverend Annie Rebecca
Woodbey,” Black Perspectives, November 8, 2023,
https://www.aaihs.org/remembering-reverend-annie-rebecca-woodbey/.
22
“Prohibitionists in a Row,” New York Times, 28 May 1896.

9
are starving. It was cowardice to omit free silver from the platform. There are other moral
questions than the liquor traffic. He reminded…that during the slavery day ministers
temporized with the abolition question.23
He and 200 other delegates “bolted” from the convention to launch the National Liberty Party,
and immediately founded a new party around a “broad” platform including prohibition and
suffrage. The effort soon collapsed, and in 1896 the People’s Party was in a full-fledged crisis of
its own regarding its decision to run a “fusionist” presidential campaign with Democratic
candidate William Jennings Bryant. By 1900, the party was fractured and effectively dead as a
national force.
Reluctantly, George Woodbey supported Bryant’s campaign for president that year. By
January 1901, however, he was a self-proclaimed socialist, delivering socialist lectures and
sermons and soliciting subscriptions to the socialist Appeal to Reason. Mrs. Annie Woodbey may
have joined him and shared or at least supported his enthusiasm for the “socialist gospel.”
Unfortunately, however, a few weeks after attending the wedding of their daughter Mary L.
Woodbey to Richard Gillet on April 11, 1901, Annie Woodbey died from an an unknown
“stomach” illness.24
Almost immediately after its founding convention in July 1901 in Indianapolis, he joined
the Socialist Party of America and that August lectured at the Chautauqua Assembly in Auburn,
NE on “Christian Socialism” before an audience of 1,000 people. At the same time, Rev.
Woodbey continued to advocate women’s suffrage, and spoke at the Custer county Nebraska
Women’s Suffrage Convention in October. Before leaving for California in late April or early
May 1902, he held “socialist gospel” and “revival” meetings in Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, and
Missouri, including in towns where he and Annie preached and organized new congregations
during the 1870s and 1880s.25
California and the Socialist Party, 1902-1915

23

“Free Silver Beaten,” The Pittsburgh Post, 29 May 1896.
Appeal to Reason, 5 January 1901. Richard Gillet and Mary L. Woodbey Marriage Record, 11 April
1901, Douglass County, State of Nebraska; “Marriage Licenses,” Omaha Daily Bee, 13 April 1901;
“Pastor Woodbey’s Wife Died,” Omaha World Herald, 28 April 1901.
25
Nebraska Advertiser,13 September, 1901; “A Negro Socialist Will Talk,” Kansas City Times (Missouri),
7 December 1901; Chase County Leader (Kansas) 24 April 1902; “Chautauquans at Auburn,” Omaha
Daily Bee, 19 August 1901; “Auburn Chautauqua,” Omaha World Herald, 20 August 1901; “Twentieth
Century Assembly,” The Granger (Auburn, NE) 23 August 1901; “Institute in |Session,” Auburn Post
(Nebraska) 30 August 1901; The Nelson Daily Miner (British Columbia), 28 August 1901.
“Woman Suffrage County Convention,” Custer County Republican (Nebraska), 31 October 1901.
24

10
George Woodbey left the Midwest and arrived in California sometime around May 1902,
reuniting with his mother, Rachel Woodbey, for the first time in almost 15 years. His mother had
left Kansas with an “all colored” group of about 20 “people for Los Angeles in January 1888 and
was living in San Diego when her son arrived in 1902.26 Rachel Woodbey was a member of the
Second Baptist Church, which later became known as San Diego’s Calvary Baptist, and was
active in the community. A fire destroyed her home in early 1901, and she was living at 703 12th
St. when her son arrived “on a visit” in 1902. Rachel Woodbey’s rootedness in her community
would have helped her son establish his own connections in the San Diego and Los Angeles area.
In addition to early lectures on socialism, Frederick Douglass, and “The Negro in Ancient
History,” one of his first speaking engagements in California was before the Woman’s Home and
Foreign Mission Society of the Western Baptist Association at “the Maple-avenue Baptist
Church” in Los Angeles.27
​
Rev. Woodbey’s “visit” became permanent, and he began advocating socialism and
organizing for the Socialist Party across the state, speaking in churches, on street corners, in
labor halls, and in public parks. As one of the party’s most effective speakers in the West, he
became the first African American national organizer for the SP in 1904. His writings on
socialism and speaking tours garnered him a national and even international reputation. His first
booklet, What to Do and How to Do It: or Socialist vs. Capitalism (1903) sold tens of thousands
of copies—by 1917, the English edition had reportedly sold over 100,000 copies—and was
translated into German and Finnish.28 His second book length offering, The Bible and Socialism:
A Conversation Between Two Preachers (1904) received a favorable review from Eugene Debs,
who called it “a clever production, and not only worth reading, but worth circulating as widely as
possible.”29 In 1910 he published The Distribution of Wealth. Rev. Woodbey was the sole Black
delegate at the SP’s 1904 and 1908 national conventions. In 1914 he ran for California state
treasurer on the SP ticket. The first Black candidate nominated for statewide office in the state,
he received nearly 100,000 votes. The following year, he delivered public lectures condemning
26

Emporia Evening News, 16 January 1888.
“Successful Socials,” San Diego Sun, 27 April 1895; Calvary Baptist Church, “Our History,” Calvary
Baptist Church, San Diego, CA, https://www.calvarybcsd.org/history/; “Last Night’s Fire,” San Diego
Sun, 1 February 1901; “A Home Destroyed, San Diego Union and Daily Bee, 2 February 1901;
“Residence Burned,” Los Angeles Herald, 2 February 1901; “A Colored Socialist,” San Diego Sun, 9 May
1902; “Woodbey’s Lectures,” San Diego Sun, 26 May 1902; “Lecture to Colored People,” Los Angeles
Express, 22 August 1902; “Mission Convention,” Los Angeles times, 29 August 1902.
28
“What to Do, and How to Do It,” Appeal to Reason, 31 October 1903; “Negro Delegate at Convention,”
Chicago Daily Socialist, 11 May 1908. Dozens of advertisements, reviews, and reader submitted
comments on Woodbey’s book appeared in Appeal to Reason between 1903 and 1904, many referring to
the book’s reception or usefulness among Black workers. See examples in Appeal to Reason, 28
November 1903; 5 December 1903; 1903; 19 December 1903; 26 December 1903; 9 January 1904; 23
January 1904; 21 April 1904; 28 May 1904. For a report of the book’s sales by 1917, see “Distinguished
Lecturer,” Nashville Globe, 14 December 1917.
27

29

Appeal to Reason, 13 November 1905.

11
Thomas Dixon Jr.’s The Clansman as racist propaganda, and in 1916 spoke at anti-preparedness
meetings organized by the SP in the lead up to U.S. entry into World War I.30
​
In January 1903, the San Diego Sun reported “the well known colored Socialist orator,
who has been a familiar figure upon the streets of this city for some time past, has taken out a
license to wed Josephine B. Caval of this city.” A few years later, however, they were divorced.31
During his 1908 national speaking tour for the SP after the party’s national convention in
Chicago, he married a social worker from Washinton D.C. named Mary E. Hart. Mary Hart. An
intellectual and orator, she lectured on socialism as well during his 1908 speaking tour. In 1909,
the Chicago Daily Socialist described her effective work “in New York among negro women,”
and published her short article, “The World That Suffers.” Mrs. Mary Hart Woodbey was active
in San Diego’s Mount Zion Baptist Church, the W.C.T.U., and local women’s clubs. George and
Mary divorced in 1921, and in 1922 she “resumed her maiden name.” 32 Rev. Woodbey married
again, his fourth wife, Mary V. Jordan, in 1925, about whom little is known as she appears to
have died the same year.33
The “Forgotten” Years, 1915-1937
Philip S. Foner is most responsible for the widely repeated story of Rev. Woodbey being
dismissed by his congregation at Mount Zion Baptist in San Diego for promoting socialism from
the pulpit. This apparently coincided with or happened shortly after San Diego’s “free speech
fights” in 1912. Arrested and assaulted on multiple occasions by San Diego police officers for
street speaking without a permit, Woodbey was prominent among the SP members who joined
members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and other labor leaders during the affair.
Threats, violent attacks and disappearances were carried out against members of IWW members
and unemployed “outsiders.” Rev. Woodbey and his family were targeted by both police and
vigilantes. On two occasions, “vigilantes” are reported to have made an “attempt” to “capture”
him, but were prevented from doing so by his escort of armed guards. After the first incident,
two of eight of these men stayed stayed behind to guard his home. The second incident,
following a meeting of the SP, eight guards escorted he and his wife Mary to their home, where
30

Charles Holm, “Black Socialist George Woodbey’s Campaign for California State Treasurer in 1914,”
Woodbey Speaks, Holm Writes History, November 6, 2024,
https://charlesholm.substack.com/p/black-socialist-george-woodbeys-campaign. ,
31
“Town Talk,” San Diego Sun, 12 January 1903; San Fransico Call, 26 October 1906., “George
Woodbey,” New Jersey, U.S., Marriage Index, 1901-2016 [database on-line], Ancestry.com.
32
“George Woodbey” New Jersey, U.S., Marriage Index, 1901-2016 [database on-line] Ancestry.com;
“Speaks on Socialism,” The Repository (Ohio), 29 November 1908; “Woman Aids Socialist Work,”
Chicago Daily Socialist, 4 January 1909; Mary E. Woodbey, “The World That Suffers,” Chicago Daily
Socialist, 19 January 1909; “Negroes Divorced,” San Diego Union, 26 February 1921; California Eagle,
1 July 1922.
33
"Mary Victory Jordan,” California, County Marriages, 1849-1957, FamilySearch.com; “Marriage
Licenses,” Illustrated Daily News (Los Angeles), 27 February 1925.

12
four guards were already stationed.34 Given this backdrop, historian Winston James raises a
question: was Mount Zion’s “congregation so deeply committed against his socialism to the
extent that they would throw him out on that account only,” or were there “other considerations
at work in his ousting?”35
​
Was the reverend ousted at all? Foner cites one source in his account, a letter he
recievbed from San Diego resident Harland B. Adams, which he says “summarized a
conversation” between Adams and Dennis V. Allen, a postal worker who once delivered George
and Mary (Hart) Woodbey’s mail. According to the letter, Allen claimed he had helped
originally recruit Woodbey to Mount Zion and joined those who dismissed him, as “a direct
result of mixing too much Socialism with his Bible.”36 The City of San Diego website’s
biography of Allen, however, has him arriving in San Diego in 1912, so he could not have been
there in 1902 when George Woodbey first “visited his mother,” and accepted an “offer” from
Mount Zion to became its pastor, as Foner’s account has it. Foner also writes that after accepting,
Woodbey “made his home in California for the next two decades.”37 This itself is confusing,
given his conclusion that, “We know nothing of Reverend Woodbey after 1915.”38
​
Based on significantly more yet inconclusive evidence, it does not seem like George
Woodbey was head pastor at Mount Zion until 1915. Newspapers between 1902 and 1912
usually refer to him as an “orator” and less often as a “minister.” He signed the Christian
Socialist Fellowship’s 1908 “Manifesto to the Ministers,” but his name was listed among the
“Clergymen not in charge of congregations.” The 1910 federal census, “lecturer [of] socialist
propaganda” is identified as his occupation; a San Diego city directory in 1912 similarly listed
his occupation, “lecturer,” and not “minister.”39 Rev. P.E. Robinson conducted his son William S.
34

“Street Speakers to Defy Law Tonight,” San Diego Labor Leader, 13 April 1912, clipping, George
Woodbey Scrapbook, private collection. More coverage involving Rev. Woodbey and the events of 1912
see “After Police,” San Diego Sun, 10 January 1912; “Labor’s Champions Are Aided by Henry,” San
Franciso Bulletin, 17 April 1912; “Is Fined” and “Utley Refused to Aid Weinstock in Inquiry,” San Diego
Sun, 18 April 1912; “Vigilantes Hold City in Reign of Terror,” Los Angeles Morning Tribune, 18 May
1912; “Outrage on Socialist Woodby,” Appeal to Reason, 1 June 1912; The Citizen, repr. in St. Louis
Labor, 27 April 1912, qtd. in P. Foner, Black Socialist Preacher, 29-30; Jeff Smith, “The Big Noise: The
Free Speech Fight of 1912: Part One,” San Diego Reader, 23 May 2012,
https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2012/may/23/unforgettable/, accessed July 23, 2025.
35
W. James, “Being Red and Black in Jim Crow America,” in Time Longer Than Rope, 359.
36
P. Foner, Black Socialist Preacher, 28, 35 fn 57. Foner provides no date for the letter or further
information on Harland Adams and Dennis Allen, and it seems unclear if Adams even directly attributed the
“mixing to much” statement to Allen or if this is his summary of their conversation.
37
“Dennis V. Allen,” Community Resources, Digital Archive, City of San Diego,
https://www.sandiego.gov/digitalarchives/community/lesson-plans/bios/dennis.
38
Foner, Black Socialist Preacher, 7, 31. Referring to Foner’s account, Mount Zion’s website mentions Reverend
Woodbey as pastor in 1902 but does not mention his alleged dismissal or his socialism. See “Our History,”
https://mtzionsandiego.org/read-more/our-history, accessed July 23, 2025.
39
“Manifesto to the Ministers,” Christian Socialist, 15 June 1908; “Big Church Movement for Universal Socialism,”
Houston Chronicle (Texas)17 September 1908; 1910 Census; 1912 San Diego City Directory.

13
Woodbey’s marriage ceremony that year. Rev. Robinson is also named as the pastor of Mount
Zion in 1912 in several newspapers. In February 1915, the subheading of George Woodbey’s
article, “What Socialists Want,” in the Christian Socialis, does identify him as, “Pastor Negro
Church, San Diego Cal” and later in the year he attended the Western Baptist Association
convention in Pasadena as a member of Mount Zion’s delegation, and was noted as one “of the
convention’s parliamentarians—a forceful debater.”40
​
Rev. Woodbey certainly seems to have been serving as lead pastor of Mount Zion in early
1915, but in 1912 or 1902 the evidence currently does not confirm the account Foner provides
about when he is alleged to have accepted Mount Zion’s often or whether he was dismissed
because of his socialism. On the other hand, it can be confirmed that Rev. Woodbey did stop
being Mount Zion’s pastor because on February 5th 1916 the California Egale published his
open letter of resignation. According to the letter, he believed he had no other choice but to
resign after the congregation voted to allow “open communion” in violation of Baptist doctrine.
In March, the a response letter signed by several church deacons, was also published, providing
an alternative explanation of what had happened. Neither mentioned socialism, nor was Dennis
Allen one of the signatories.41
​
Rev. Woodbey continued speaking for the SP at anti-preparedness meetings in San Diego
and in opposition to US entry into World War I through August 1916. He then left California for
the Midwest, where he attended the National Baptist Convention (unincorporated), in Kansas
City from September 6-11, later known as the National Baptist Convention of America. He also
lectured for chapters of the Christian Socialist Fellowship in Missouri and Kansas and spent
time in Omaha. On November 4, 1916 the Omaha Monitor advertised: “A Great Educational
Lecture at Grove M.E. Church Monday Night, Nov. 6th ‘The Negro in Ancient History’ by The
Rev. Dr. George Woodby [sic]. The Great Negro Socialist Lecturer of San Diego, Cal.” He also
spoke at a memorial for Jack London organized by Omaha Socialists in late December.42

40

“Churches of All Creeds in City,” San Diego Union and Daily Bee, 1 January 1912; “Colored Churches Planning
Revival,” San Diego Union and Daily Bee, 18 July 1912; “Black Evangelist Addresses Baptists,” San Diego Union
and Daily Bee, 16 December 1912; George Washington Woodbey, “What Socialists Want,” The Christian Socialist,
February 1, 1915; “Colored Baptists Hold The Greatest Session in the History of Organization,” California Eagle,
22 August 1915. According to Mount Zion’s website, “The Western Baptist Conference sent Reverend Peter
Roberson, who pastored Mt. Zion for seven years and the membership grew to about 75 members.” See “Our
History,” https://mtzionsandiego.org/read-more/our-history, accessed July 23, 2025.
41

George Woodbey, letter to the editor, California Eagle, 5 February 1916; Bro. J.W. Grey et al, letter to
the editor, California Eagle, 25 March 1916.
42
“Anti-Preparedness Meeting Tonight,” San Diego Sun, 14 July, 1916; “Woodbey Speaks for
Socialists,” San Diego Sun, 19 August 1916; “Sermon at City Hall,” Kansas City Kansan, 16 September
1916; “Negro Writer Will Speak,” Kansas City Post, 17 September 1916; “Church Members Should Be
Christians,” Kansas City Globe, 18 September 1916; The Monitor (Omaha), 4 November 1916; 11
November 1916; “Memorial for Jack London,” Omaha Bee, 31 December 1916; Journal of the
Thirty-Sixth Annual Session of the National Baptist Convention (unincorporated) and the Sixteenth

14

​
Although still reported as a member of the California SP’s state executive committee,
Rev. Woodbey does not appear to have been in the state to attend its meeting in February 1917.43
In fact, he would not return to California for almost two more years. Between January 1917 and
July 1917, his activities remain largely a matter of speculation at this point, but no later than July
4th he was reported to have arrived in Nashville, Tennessee. He spent the rest of the year mostly
between Nashville and Louisville, Kentucky. Then, in early January 1918, Rev. Woodbey left to
fulfill a series of lecture engagements in upper northeast Tennessee. First visiting Johnson City,
where his family had lived after the Civil War, he arrived in Mountain City in late March. From
Mountain City, he and his cousin Westly Smith went to visit the “old plantation” in Jonhson
County where he was born half a mile from the Pleasant Grove Baptist Church, the “solve
holder” church where his mother was baptized by Rev. Valentine Bowers in 1855. During his
extended visit he also made stops in Abington, Virginia and preached for several months in
Kentucky, primarily in Louisville. He returned to California in November 1918.44
​
Back in San Diego, Rev. Woodbey remained politically active. He joined with Dennis V.
Allen and others in founding San Diego’s first chartered branch of the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).45 In 1919, some of his lecture topics included:
“Roosevelt as a Citizen,” “Autocracy, Plutocracy, Democracy, or Theocracy, Which?,” “Does the
Bible Teach the Co-operative Commonwealth?, ” “Is Bolshevism the True Democracy?” and
“Duty of the Negro to the Question of the Hour.”46 In the early 20s, he also edited the San Diego
New Idea. While any surviving copies of the paper appear to have been lost, articles from the
New Idea were reprinted in the California Eagle and Marcus Garvey’s Negro World, and in 1921
and 1922 the Negro World reported Woodbey serving as the chaplain for the San Deigo branch of
the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).47 Until his death in 1937, George
Woodbey remained active in the Baptist church and was a member of San Diego’s Calvary
Baptist Church, the church his mother belonged after coming to San Diego in the late 1880s. In

Annual Session of the Woman’s Auxiliary Convention held with the Baptist Church, Kansas City, MO
September 6-11, 1916 (Nashville: National Baptist Publishing Board, 1917).
43
“Socialists of State to Meet Here Tomorrow,” Fresno Herald, 16 February 1917.
44
California Eagle, 30 November 1918.
45
California Eagle, 28 December 1918; California Eagle, 11 January 1919; California Eagle, 16
February 1919; Application for Charter of San Diego, Cal. Branch of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People, San Diego, California, NAACP Branch Files, 1914-1920, Manuscript
Division, Library of Congress. See also “History,” NAACP San Diego Branch,
https://www.naacpsandiego.org/history., accessed 6 June 2025.
46
California Eagle, 16 Feb 1919; “Will Preach,” San Diego Sun, 5 April 1919; “Woodbey Sermons,” San
Diego Sun, 19 April 1919; California Eagle, 19 April 1919; California Eagle 28 June 1919.
47
“U.N.I.A. and A.C.L. of San Diego, Cal., Celebrate 2D Anniversary,” Negro World, 1 October 1921;
“The Dollar Dinner of the U.N.I.A. was the Greatest Event of the Season in San Diego,” Negro World, 22
April 1922; “Odd Fellows Capture San Diego—A Great Session,” California Eagle, 19 August 1922.

15
the 1930s, he would still occasionally deliver his most popular lectures: “Lessons from the life of
Fredrick Douglass” and “The Negro in Ancient History.”
​
“We know nothing of Reverend Woodbey after 1915,” Philip S. Foner had concluded.
“But we leave him at this point in his career still as confirmed a socialist as ever.”48 Indeed, the
reverend continued to advocate socialism in lectures and sermons, and maintained his socialist
faith despite the rise and fall of the Socialist Party before and after World War I, and was
inspired by the early years of the Russian Revolution. In September 1932, he attended a meeting
in San Diego for the Communist Party’s vice-presidential candidate, James W. Ford, who arrived
from Los Angeles after his release from jail on “a charge of criminal syndicalism,” according to
the San Diego Sun. At the meeting, Ford reportedly bashed the SP, saying the party was now
“lined up with capitalism,” Rev. George Woodbey, described as a “Socialist sympathizer,” was
among the speakers “at the gathering, attended by 500 whites and Negroes.”49
On January 29, 1937, the California Eagle published one of the last accounts of Rev.
Woodbey during his life. The article, written by M.L. Brown for the Associated Negro Press,
described him as an “Interesting San Diegan” who was born enslaved “on his master’s farm in
eastern Tennessee,” and learned to read from the New Testament. Brown’s article suggested
George Woodbey “was called to the ministry in 1864,” and notes that he “preached his first
sermon in his mother’s house as there was no church.” But the year was likely 1874, when he
became a Baptist minister in Emporia, and when he and his first wife Annie (Goodin) Woodbey
were also living with his mother Rachel. Brown does not mention Annie Woodbey by name, but
comments on a “Mrs. Woodbey, his wife who also pastored a church in Omaha.” Left out of the
article is any mention of Annie Woodbey’s death in 1901, or George Woodbey’s marriages to
Josephine B. Caval, Mary E. Hart (who was also a member of the Socialist Party), and Mary V.
Jordan. Significantly, however, Brown’s article is one of the only sources which confirms and
adds to George Woodbey’s account of his childhood found in the pages of his Tennessee
notebook: how the New Testament given to him by Rev. William Jobe “seemed so wonderful”
and he “read it over and over,” and how he attended a “pay school” for two terms, the
“subscription school” on Roan Hill his father was involved in organize50
​
On August 27, 1937, George Washington Woodbey passed away in Los Angeles,
California, at the home of his son, William S. Woodbey, in Los Angeles. He was mourned by the

48

P. Foner, Black Socialist Preacher, 31.
“Socialists Hit by Communist,” San Diego Sun, 22 September 1932.
50
M.L. Brown, “Interesting San Diegan is 83,” California Eagle, 29 January 1937. The article was republished in
several papers through the Associated Negro Press. See also “Ex-Slave, 83 Interesting Minister,” Omaha Guide 30
January 1937. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn93062828/1937-01-30/ed-1/seq-2/.
49

16
congregation at Calvary Baptist Church in San Diego and many friends.51 The obituary ML
Brown wrote for the Associated Negro Press, read:
Hundreds of Californians attended the last rites held recently for Rev. George W.
Woodbey, for more than 60 years a leader in Baptist church circles and the organizer of
churches in Omaha, Neb., and in St. Jospeh, Mo. He died in Los Angeles, and was the
father of five children. Twelve grand-children and two great grand-children also survive.
Rev. Woodbey was a one-time cnaidate for Treasurer of the State of California and during
his active years spoke on the same platform with William Jennings Bryan and Francis
Williard. He also authored several booklets, one of them on church government and was
an ardent student of Negro history.52
In October 7, 1937, the California Eagle published a final “tribute to the Rev. George Woodbey,
of San Diego, who passed to a higher life in Los Angeles.” Appearing as an editorial, the tribute
most likely was written by the paper’s owner and editor Charlotta Bass; a pioneering Black
journalist and radical in her own right, who went on to become the first African American
woman to run for Vice President of the United States as the Progressive Party’s candidate in
1952. Published under the headline, “Passing of the Old Guard,” the tribute read as follows:
Born a slave, Dr. Woodbey took advantage of every educational opportunity
offered his people, thereby developing himself into one of the nation’s brightest men.
Always a student, Dr. Woodbey was abreast of the times and as a platform orator
was in demand in every movement for reform.
Dr. Woodbey was an outstanding figure in the battle for women’s rights, fighting
side by side with Susan B. Anthony and others who paved the way that later gave women
the vote as well as pay taxes.
‘Old Man’ Woodbey, as he was affectionately dubbed by thousands who honored
and revered him, was prominently identified with every reform movements launched
during the past fifty or more years.
Politically, Dr. Woodbey identified himself with the Prohibitionists and Socialists,
and was nominated for State Treasurer of California by the latter named party.
No man in all America was better posted on Negro history than was our now
sainted friend, George W. Woodbey. He owned, no doubt, the finest library dealing with
the Negro in existence. More than 1,200 volumes (first run) books adorned his book
shelves and he was familiar with the contents of all. He was the author of several
booklets dealing with the reform idea of government, one of which was purchased by the
Finland Government and circulated among the people of that country.

51

California Eagle, 29 August 1937; California Eagle, 2 September 1937.

52

M.L. Brown, “Hold Last Rites for Noted West Coast Cleric,” California Eagle, 30 September 1937.

17
Peace be to the ashes of this grand old gentleman.53
George Washington Woodbey lived a long and multifaceted life as formerly enslaved,
largely self-educated, working-class Black radical intellectual. His organizational biography is
itself a unique history of nineteenth and early twentieth century United States history and
intergenerational and geographically diverse traditions of Black political thought. Always proud
of his Appalachian origins in upper northeast Tennessee, it was there that the seeds of his
socialist faith were first planted and nourished in the religious and communal values of people
like Charles and Rachel Woodbey; the organizers of independent Black churches and schools
who were part of a mass movement for freedom and the promise that was kept alive beyond what
W.E.B. Du Bois called the “counter-revolution of property” that defeated radical
Reconstruction.54 Born not just of slavery and oppression, but like the faith of those migrants
who founded Emporia’s St. James Baptist Church, he carried the promise with him across the
Midwest and California, and back across the United States and ultimately back again to the
Pleasant Grove Baptist Church in Johnson county in 1918. He kept the faith until the end,
working and praying “to be free from the slavery of capitalism.”55

53

“Passing of the Old Guard,” California Eagle, 7 October 1937.
See W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 (1935; New York: Atheneum, 1992).
55
“By one who was once a chattel slave freed by the proclamation of Lincoln and now wishes to be free from the
slavery of capitalism.” From George Woodbey’s dedication in What to Do and How to Do It, or Socialism vs.
Capitalism (1903).
54

Rev. Woodbey’s 1917-1918 Itinerary

18

19
REV. WOODBEY’S 1917-1918 ITINERARY
The well-known “Negro Socialist Orator” and Baptist preacher Reverend George Washington
returned to Tennessee in the summer of 1917 for the first time since leaving the state for Kansas
in 1870. Based on newspaper records, he first arrived in Nashville in early July 1917, where he
spoke at the 4th of July picnic of the Davidson county Socialist Party. He spent several months in
the Nashville area, where his lectures and sermons were regularly reported in local papers like
the Black owned Nashville Globe. During this time, he also wrote articles for the National
Baptist Union-Review, published by the National Baptist Publishing Board (NBPB) led by R.H.
Boyd. In 1916, the NBPB had published his book on church governance, Method of Procedure in
Baptist Church Trials. One of his scrapbooks contains some of his articles for the National
Baptist Union-Review, with titles such as: “The Life and Letters of Ignatius Sancho, A
Distinguished Negro Who Lived Contemporaneous with Phillis Wheatley and Benjamin
Banaker,” “A Spiritual [Scriptural] View of the Great Baptist Controversy,” and “Four Great
Leaders of the Race,” which provides short biographies of Toussaint Louverture, Frederick
Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and R.H. Boyd.56
After the 4th of July picnic with the Davidson county Socialists, Rev. Woodbey attended
the Missionary Baptist State Convention held in Smyrna, TN from July 11-14, 1917.57 Back in
Nashville, on August 24th the Globe reported a lecture he delivered on the topic, “The duty of the
preachers to apply the teachings of Christ and the Bible to the present war,” and that in “his next
sermon at the beautiful Lincoln Theater on Cedar Street” he would lecture on the “Feasts of
Belshazzars of the past and present.” On August 31st, the paper published a summary of the
sermon, noting that like his others, it was well received and “listened to with intense interest.”
He said that many countries were “travelling the same road” as the Biblical city of Babylon.
The Christian religion is designed to overthrow all of this and put the golden rule into
practice as the constitution of nations. All of the great nations of the past, the preacher
declared, carried on the same system; the nations of today are trying to maintain. And
they went to destructions, which we read about in our schools and colleges, without
taking heed to the lesson they teach. The speaker declared that his brother ministers are
failing to do their duty in not pointing these things out to their people. This is only a few
of the many things [the preacher] said.
Rev. Woodbey delivered several further lectures at the Lincoln Theater. His next one concerned
the question: “How Capitalism or the Pursuit of Wealth Enslaves the Church and the Ministry.”58
56

The Tennessean, 4 July 1917
“The Missionary Baptist State Convention Meets at Smyrna, Tenn., July 11-14, 1917,” National Baptist Union
Review, undated clipping, George Woodbey Scrap Book, private collection.
58
“The Meetings of Rev. G.W. Woodby,” Nashville Globe, 31 August 1917.
57

20

“Churches Without Pastors, Preachers Without Charges,” a clipping from the National
Baptist Union-Review in one of his scrapbooks, suggests that during this time he was also doing
work for the National Baptist Convention (unincorporated) under the auspices of the publication.
The article explains how “there are always a large number churches throughout the country, who
are without pastors, and also a large number of preachers who are without charges,” and solicited
letters from such churches and pastors explaining their needs or qualifications, so that these
could be published in the Union-Review. “Send all letters for this department to ‘Church and
Pastor,’ National Baptist Union-Review, 523 Second avenue, North Nashville, Tenn. Send a 2 c
stamp for reply.” George Woodbey added his signature in pencil to the clipping, indicating
authorship.
In September 1917, he attended the National Baptist Convention in Atlanta, and served
on its Committee on Resolutions. According to the convention minutes he was also on the NBC’s
Temperance and Publishing Board committees. Never not busy, prior to the convention Woodbey
had completed a two-week speaking tour “in Louisville in negro churches” on socialism.59 After
briefly returning to Nashville, he spent most of the rest of the year in Kentucky before returning
to Nashville again in early December where he participated in an Interdenominational Ministers’
Alliance meeting and delivered a lecture at Mount Olive Baptist Church.60 According to the
Nashville Banner on January 13, 1918, Rev. Woodbey was “preparing to fill a number of lecture
engagements in East Tennessee, at the same time revisiting his old home near Mountain City.”61
The first half of George Woodbey’s “Tennessee notebook” follows his movements
during the beginning of this “East Tennessee” tour, starting in Carter county and places in
Johnson City where he revisited friends, family, and places where his family lived after the Civil
War and emancipation, such as the farm his father had rented on the estate of C.C. Tayor. On
January 25, 1918, the Johnson City Staff announced his forthcoming lecture at the Langston High
School and published some of his reminiscences of his childhood in the area. In March 1918, he
also delivered a lecture at the Phillippi Baptist Church in Elizabethton on the “Negro in Ancient
History.”62

59

“Mighty National Baptist Convention in Session,” Nashville Globe, 7 September 1917; Nashville Globe, 14
September 1917; “Socialist Make Gains Throughout Kentucky, Report,” Milwaukee Leader 2 October 1917. For
Woodbey’s participation in the National Baptist Convention see the Journal of the National Baptist Convention
(Unincorporated) and the Seventeenth Annual Session Woman’s Auxiliary Convention held with the Baptist
Churches of Atlanta, Ga. September 5-11, 1917 (National Baptist Publishing Board: 1918), 11, 14, 67, 120-122.
60
“Rev. Woodbery Returns,” Nashville Banner, 2 Dec. 1917; “Ministers’ Alliance,” Nashville Banner, 9 December
1917; “Distinguished Lecturer,” Nashville Globe, 14 December 1917. This last article has the date of the Mt. Olive
lecture as Nov. 18th, but this is either a typo or mistake.
61
“To Visit East Tennessee,” Nashville Banner, 13 January 1918.
62

“Johnson City Fifty Seven Years Ago,” Johnson City Staff, 25 January 1918; Johnson City Staff, 23
March 1918.

21
On March 29th, 1918, Rev. Woodbey left for Mountain City where he met his cousin Rev.
Westley Smith for the first time. In one of the article clippings he kept in his scrap books, “Noted
Negro Visits Johnson County” Johnson County News, is dated in pencil March 31, 1918, and
provides a further evidence and information about his childhood and 1918 visit to Mountain
City(see appendix). According to his notebook, Woodbey visited two Black churches in
Mountain City; the “ME Church” and the “Baptist church about a mile and a half out in the
county.” He also delivered a lecture on “The Negro in Ancient History” at the Johnson county
court house to a mixed audience of “about 100 white and 100 black people,” including “several
descendants of the old time slave holders.” One audience member, Roby Brown, he remembers
as a “late captain of the Confederate homeguard…a Patroller” who would visit “our slave cabin”
asking “for my father’s pass when he had come down to visit us from the plantation of his
master, two miles away.” Charles Woodbey was probably enslaved by Alfred Widbey, from
whom the surname “Woodbey” originates (spelling variations include Widbey, Widby, Woodby,
Woodbey).
After delivering several lectures and sermons in Mountain City, Rev. Woodbey and his
cousin Rev. Smith next visited the “old plantation” of his “old master” Jacob Wagner, where he
was born in 1854, half a mile from the Pleasant Grove Baptist Church. Pleasant Grove Baptist
Church was founded by some of his enslaved relatives and their “slave holders,” and is where his
mother Rachel was baptized in 1855. In the notebook section titled, “The Lecture at Old
Pleasant Grove Baptist Church and Visit to the Old Home,” he writes:
A number of audience [members] was the grandsons and daughters of those old time
slave holders. I had occasion to tell them that [this] was the church my mother joined 63
years ago, and how that [it] was the first church I ever remembered being in, and use to
play up and down the aisles when too young to know what the preacher was up there for.
I was also able to give them the name of some of the officers of slavery days. William
Gambill, David Wagner, my young master; Nicholas Stout, or uncle Nick, as my little
sister and I use to call him because of the good things he use to bring us to eat. He was a
slave holder, and my master’s son-in-law.63 John S. Vaught another slave holding deacon
who owned my grandfather Jonas and his sister Esther, who[se] daughter Rose he sold in
my recollection. Of course, I only give the name of these gentlemen, and did not think it
at all necessary to mention what I have here said about [what] they did. The lecture was
63

Several individuals he mentions here appear in a history of the Pine Grove Baptist Church, from which
Pleasant Grove Baptist branched off in 1845. “Other known charter members were John S. Vaught and his
wife Rebecca Shoun Vaught and Wiley Baker from Roans Creek and Esther Dougherty from old Sinking
Creek Church in Carter County. Other probable members were William Gambill, Michael Schlemp
(Slemph), Nicholas Stout. If these were not actual charter members they joined soon after.” See “Pine
Grove Church History,” typewritten copy of Minnie McBride Shoun, written for the Centennial
Celebration of Pine Grove Church, June 12, 1938, submitted by: Mary McBride, Johnson County History
and Genealogy, https://www.jctcuzins.org/pine-grove-church, accessed July 15, 2025.

22
well received. And I must take occasion to say that I regard it as the most remarkable
incidents [sic] I have met during my life.
Here he also mentions a “Mrs. MacWeen.” This was Saraphina McQueen, granddaughter of
Jacob Wagner Sr., his “old master,” and the widow of Isaac McQueen. After his lecture and at
Mrs. McQueen’s suggestion, her daughter-in-law (Ruth McQueen) invited him and his cousin
Rev. Westly Smith (“a son of my father’s half brother,” Rufus Smith) to stay at their home,
which stood on the “old plantation” where he was born.
This, according to Woodbey, “was indeed a meeting of master and slave under peculiar
circumstances.” With some pride, he wrote, that “None of the masters’ desendance [sic] having
made themselves known beyond the confines of their own community except what I have had
occasion to say about them in various parts of the United States.” Among other things, he seems
to be referencing the fact that when he returned to Tennessee he had garnered a national
reputation as a socialist orator and Baptist preacher of some renown, and even an international
reputation thanks to his popular booklet, What to Do and How to Do It: or Socialist vs.
Capitalism (1903), which was published the same year as W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black
Folk. By 1917, What to Do and How to Do It had sold over 100,000 copies in the original
English and had also been translated and published in Finnish and German editions.
After staying overnight at the McQueen residence, Rev. Woodbey and Rev. Smith met up
with a Mrs. Stout and visited where his “father used to be a slave now in the possession of
Thomas Wagner, another old playmate in the days of yore.” Then they visited “the old Jospeh
Vaught place where cousin Westley’s mother use to be a slave and where my great grandfather
Peter Wilson who had been made free by his master Jospeh Will, use also to live.” Next, they
stopped by “John S. Vaught’s old farm, the gentlemen…mentioned as a deacon of Pleasant
Grove Church.” At this point in the notebook, after noting their return to Mountain City, Rev.
Woodbey’s remaining notebook entries largely shift in focus away from what is a largely memoir
style-autobiographical focus.
​
The remaining entries (7-10) are comprised of four short, article-length essays titled
“Southern Hospitality,” “What I Have Seen of the Negro Schools,” “The Young Negro of the
Past and Present,” and “The After Math of Slavery.” While less autobiographical in focus, each
essay draws from Rev. Woodbey’s life experiences and contemporary observations of life in the
Southern United States during his 1917-1918 sojourn in Tennessee and Kentucky. Entry #7,
“Southern Hospitality,” provides a unique account of the relationship between changes in
“manners” or the “proverbial hospitality” of the South and transformations wrought by
capitalism. Drawing also on his experiences and knowledge as an itinerant preacher in the South
during this time, Woodbey suggests if not for his preceding reputation, personal history with the
area, and the fact that his circumstances made him “not above needing their help,” his reception

23
in Tennessee would likely have been less welcoming among those he encountered while
travelling. He also describes his understanding of his “calling” as a preacher, and as a socialist
agitator who sought to help the “toilers,” even if he was often frustrated that “few of them”
understood his work
any more than their father could understand the man who was trying to get him out
slavery by destroying that system. This I have done knowing what the heroes of the
abolition movement underwent that [I] might enjoy the liberties such as I now do.
Entry #8, “What I Have Seen of the Negro Schools,” shares his views on vocational,
trade, and common schools for African Americans. He describes having visited many such
schools during his time in Tennessee and Kentucky. One of these would have been the Langston
High School in Johnson City. While praising the students and teachers of the schools, Woodbey
also notes the unequal resources they received under a segregated Jim Crow education system,
and his principled opposition to racially segregated schooling. Commenting on the limits of
education as a strategy of economic and “racial uplift”, he nevertheless emphasizes the success
of Black students and schools in challenging racial prejudice.
Entry #9, “The Young Negro of the Past and Present” touches on several topics including
youth, parenting, and sin, and further discusses education. “Education is not a panacea for
inherent sin,” writes Woodbey. “Nothing but regeneration will prove a sure cure for that disease.”
He also discusses at some length the National Baptist Publishing Board (NBPB). Rev. Woodbey
did not believe in Black capitalism, but like his views on the success of Black schools, he
discusses the NBPB as an example that disproved racist, white supremacist ideas about the
alleged “capacities” of Black people.
The capacity of the young Negro for doing whatsoever others can do, is perhaps best
illustrated at the National Baptist Publishing House, a plant, the greatest among Negroes
in the world, built up through the energy and genius of Dr. R.H. Boyd in the last twenty
years.
Rejecting the idea “that business will solve the race problem,” Rev. Woodbey praised the Black
young workers at the plant for “settling the question of the capability of the Negro” and noted he
understood the admiration and feelings of personal and racial pride the enterprise could evoke:
“When as an ex-slave I look at what R.H. Boyd, also an ex-slave, has been able [to] bring out of
these young people, I cannot blame him for having a just pride in his work.” This entry also
contains a summary of his educational philosophy’s critique of what he perceives as the
dominant understanding that education under capitalism should be aimed toward personal
financial success, or “the accumulation [of] individual fortune.” For Woodbey, education should
be seen as a collective endeavor meant to be liberatory; education should be used to “attack the

24
evil of private ownership of the means of life” and establish a democratic system of “collective
industry.” Under socialism or the “cooperative commonwealth,” education would then have a
purpose in preparing people to not only find work in the areas they were “best qualified by
nature for,” but more importantly they would find “that particular employment they love open for
them; and so with the children of all other races as well.”
In the tenth entry, “Southern Prejudice, The Aftermath of Slavery,” he shares his views on
the cause and persistence of racist ideologies and national chauvinism in the United States and
their globalization despite the abolition of chattel slavery.64 Rev. Woodbey considers slavery as a
system of both exploitation and domination that, with “few exceptions,” always led to the
development of a superiority complex among the enslaving class: “the master class who lived at
the expense of the slave considered him inferior, regardless of the color or nationality of the
slave.” Correlated with this, slavery indoctrination of the enslaved class. “Indeed, the slave has
been in this country taught to consider himself inferior.” Even though the “masters” recognized
their “slaves” to be “human,” they were “human” of an “inferior” type of human. Slavery
requires justification, and the “racial inferiority” of the enslaved served this purpose.
This argument was a justification of slavery in many works, and even sermons. But in
none with more attempt at scientific lore than in the elaborate work of Nott and Gliddon
entitled “Types of Mankind.”65 These works have long since ceased to be read, but still
their teachings live, having entered into our textbooks on ancient and modern history; our
geographies, and from these into our newspapers and magazine articles. And it is this
palpable falsehood that keeps race prejudice a[live] in this country. Having once got a
start, it has been… broadened out so as to include all of the dark races [of] mankind.
At the same time, he saw “signs however that race prejudice will disappear before the advance of
the Christian religion.” He expected many “will help do this work who do not know Christ as
their personal saviror, being actuated entirely by other motives, and yet indirectly and
unconsciously they [are] doing what God wants done.” His hope was based in part on his
experiences in the South and reception during his return visit to East Tennessee, the rise in
interracial worship (specifically white Christians joining worship held in Black churches), and
organizations like the Southern Sociological Congress and the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People.
64

In the original handwritten notebook the title is written as “Southern Prejudice, The After Math
Slavery.”
65
Reference to Josiah C Nott and George R Gliddon, Types of mankind: or, Ethnological researches based
upon the ancient monuments, paintings, sculptures, and crania of races, and upon their natural,
geographical, philological and Biblical history: illustrated by selections from the inedited papers of
Samuel George Morton and by additional contributions from L. Agassiz, W. Usher, and H.S. Patterson
(Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, Grambo & Co, 1854).

25

But the “signs” Woodbey writes about also points to an expression of his prophetic faith, and his
hope came with warning, in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets: “Unless the race prejudice
fostered in this nation is eradicated it will prove the overthrow of the nation…A nation of people
who hates and despises their brethren cannot escape the final vengeance of our common father.”
Our hurry to see all of these evils at once eradicated sometimes makes us fail to take a
broad view of the race question and not seeing how far we have come we think things are
[not] growing. But my own reception here, after having once been a slave here, makes me
sure that all will come right in time. Probably not before the nation receives another
punishment for its sins as it did about slave holding. But I am working and praying not.
This is where Woodbey’s Tennessee notebook ends. While it is impossible to determine when
this last section was written, it could not have been earlier than sometime in April 1918, some
weeks after he arrived in Mountain City on March 29th, 1918.
​
There is not as much evidence as to Rev. Woodbey’s whereabouts after this. He spent five
months in Louisville, preaching at the Odd Fellows Theater. In September, he attended the
National Baptist Convention (unincorporated), in Little Rock, Arkansas. According to the
Calfornia Eagle, November 30, 1918, Rev. Woodbey had returned to California after “being
absent from San Diego and his home for nearly three years.” It mentioned his preaching in
Louisville, and that he had visited “his old home,” and “preached at the Pleasant Grove Baptist
Church, which was only half a mile from the Old Slave Plantation” where he was born.66

66

“2,500 Attending Baptist Convention,” Arkansas Gazette, 5 Sept 1918; “2,500 Here for Negro Baptists’
Conference,” Arkansas Democrat, 5 September 1918; California Eagle, 30 November 1918.

1

George Washington Woodbey’s Tennessee Notebook

60
… grandfather’s third wife; now a man far above the middle age, but still able to toil. A man
who has perhaps produced more than most men of his age, and managed to retain a little more of
it than the average of his fellow toilers; who under a just economic system would have been on
the retired list67 years ago; living on the best of the land while [sic] those his labor was
supporting when he was producing done doing the work.68 My memory is such that I found it
easy to point out where all buildings and landmarks once stood. I recalled first visiting the place
53 years ago and the names of its leading citizens white and black.69
Mr. [Boocher]70 and his good wife did their best to make me welcome. The old grandparents of
which I had long since lost all
61
trace had passed away. But through this gentleman I soon got in touch with friends and
relative[s] such as have been already mentioned. It was three mile[s] out from this place that my
father rented [a farm], just after the close of the war, and was instrumental in organizing the first
67

George Woodbey’s “Tennessee Notebook”
George Woodbey’s popular 1903 work, What to Do and How to Do It, or Socialism vs. Capitalism,
contains a discussion of “The Retired List” as it relates to socialism, or what he calls the “cooperative
commonwealth.” See George Washington Woodbey, What to Do and How to Do It, or Socialism vs.
Capitalism, in Black Socialist Preacher: The Teachings of Reverend George Washington Woodbey and
His Disciple Reverend George W. Slater Jr., edited and introction by Philip S. Foner (San Francisco:
Synthesis Publications, 1983), 81-82.
68
“producing done” is struck through in the original and “doing” inserted (“doing the work”). He
considers the wealth produced from his grandfather’s labor more than enough for his grandparents to have
retired, but were compelled to keep working because of the injustice of the capitalist system.
69
This section concerns events in Carter county in or around Johnson City following the end of the U.S.
Civil War. In January 1918, he first arrived in Johnson City from Nashville and remained in the area until
late March.
70
The fourth letter in the name transcribed as “Boocher” is illegible to me, and other likely possibilities
include Booher or Boocher; the original suggests he wrote something, erased it, and replaced it, but it is
difficult to make out clearly and I have been unable to discover the identity of the individuals he is
referring to at this point.

2
subscription school, which assembled in an old log shanty under the tutelage of a Mr. George
Perkins,] a lame ex-union soldier 52 year[s] ago.71 It was fortunate for me that I could still
remember the names of each child which attended the school. Was there any of them yet living?
Who should I first meet in a few days but Jack Taylor, one of my old school fellows now living
in Johnson City. The next Saturday walking down the street with a second cousin, I was
overjoyed to hear him say there come Frank Hughes. “Well is this you, Frank old boy[!]” I
exclaimed. “Yes George this me[!].” And
62
rushing at each other we tried to shake each other to pieces. Well, I went home with Frank’s
brother-in-law, Mr. Thomas Crawford, who I had known, and his wife, and from there to Frank’s
of course, where we had to go over all of our old marble playing on the school grounds, of 52
years before. Mr. Crawford and Frank are farmer[s]. Both own little farms, and are making a
good living. I found my old friend Frank had a very agreeable lady for a wife with an interesting
son and daughter at home. We soon counted up six of us in all including myself of the old school
of 52 years ago. The names of the others are Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Taylor, and Mrs. Fitsimmons all
here in a radius of ten mile[s], all of which I have met. And there are two others yet living in
different states.
63
Frank and I concluded that was pretty good after 52 years.
My mother Mrs. Rachel Woodbey was one of the organic members of the Baptist church in
Johnson City which was made by Rev. William Jobe in 1866. The present Pastor is Rev. A. H.

71

In the notebook, the first teacher was George Perkins, but in an article published on January 25,1918 in
the Johnson City Staff, he says, “the first school opened for negro children above the town on Roan Hill”
was “taught by Mr. Thomas Harrison…who had somehow managed to get a knowledge of letters during
his life as a slave” and after him, “the late noted Dr. [Hezekiah] Hinkle [Hankal].” See “Johnson City
Fifty Seven Years Ago.” Black families used the “log shanty” as a school starting around 1867, and the
building also served as a meeting place for several denominations of Black Christians in the late 1860s
and 1870s. See Ophelia Daniels, “Formative Years of Johnson City, Tennessee, 1885-1890: A Social
History,” (master’s thesis, Tennessee Agricultural and Industrial State College, 1947); Harold G. Handy,
“The Langston School Experience: The Black Community,” (master’s thesis, East Tennessee State
University, 1980); Mary Henderson-Alexander, “Black Life in Johnson City, Tennessee 1856-1965: A
Historical Chronology,” (dissertation, East Tennessee State University, 2001), “Our History: Writings on
Johnson City,” Archives of Appalachia, East Tennessee State University,
https://archivesofappalachia.omeka.net/exhibits/show/jchistory, accessed 6 June 2025; Ned L. Irwin,
“Education,” History of Washington County Tennessee (Johnson City, Tennessee: The Overmountain
Press, 2001), 526

3
Wilson.72 I regard it as a great privilege to preach several sermons in this church. I have still a
New Testament presented to me by the Rev. Jobe who once placed his hands upon my head and
said: “My boy the Lord has a great work for you to do.” 73 I was made to wonder whether he had
any insight into some of the things through which it has been my fortune under God to pass since
that day about 51 years ago. Rev. Jobe went to heaven many years ago. There is a well
authenticated story that many years ago the Rev. Jobe
64
had an appointment to hold an evangelistic meeting in the town of Elizabethton and coming to
the banks of the Watauga River the canoe was on the other side, and a lady told me she thought
to take the canoe over to him as she lived on the bank but having a young baby she did not feel
able. When to her astonishment she saw the vessel leave the opposite shore and go over to the
Rev. Jobe, and he stepped in and came across. A great meeting broke out and many was saved.
Many of the older citizens know of the incident. There it is still a Baptist church here of which
my cousin G.W. Wagner, a highly respected gentleman, is an officer.74 You may believe I was
anxious to see the old farm where we first started life after the war. When I arrived near
65
the place my heart throbbed with old recollections, and observing two white men standing by a
barn not far from a place that I supposed to be near the old site, I went over to them to inquire,
72

“Rev. Job” Reverend William Jobe; founding member of Johnson City’s Thankful Baptist Church.
“Thankful Baptist Church,” Washington County TNGen,
https://tngenweb.org/washington/records-data/churches-of-washington-county/thankful-baptist-church/,
accessed July 25, 2025. Rachel Woodbey was an “organic member” of the Baptist church that later
formally organized the Thankful Baptist Church in 1872. These Baptists held church services in the Roan
Hill schoolhouse. “At Johnson City there was no Baptist church. In fact, there was no church among the
colored here at that time. There was an old log house on Roan Hill, so they gave the colored people the
old log house for a church. The AME Zion, the Christian Church. All worshiped together and I got one
Sunday to preach in it. With William Jobe, Jacob Hoskin, Lizzie Hoskin, Frederick Adams, George
Phillips, we organized the Johnson City [Thankful Baptist] Church.” “‘Horace Leftwich’ copied by Sarah
Hunter Jackson” (June 1941), Archives of Appalachia,
https://archivesofappalachia.omeka.net/items/show/13135.
73
This event occurred in Carter county before or around the time George Woodbey started going to school
the “log shanty” in 1867. Journalist ML Brown in January 1937 quotes Woodbey as saying, “The New
Testament was the only book I could get aside from my two school books. I read it over and over, and it
seemed so wonderful to me.” “Interesting San Diegan is 83,” California Eagle, 29 January, 1937;
“Ex-Slave, 83 Interesting Minister,” Omaha Guide 30 January 1937.

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn93062828/1937-01-30/ed-1/seq-2/.
74

Phillippi Baptist Church in Elizabethton, TN. He delivered a lecture on the “Negro in Ancient History”
here in March 1918. Johnson City Staff, 23 March 1918.

4
and as I did so heard one call the other Dixon. I said, “gentleman I was trying to locate the old
place where I used to live some 53 years ago,” when Dixon asked, “aren’t you George
Woodbey?” I answered, “yes and you are Henry Dixon.” He replied, “yes, what is left.” It had
been fifty years since we met. After much agreeable conversation with Mr. Dixon I made my
way up to the old house seat. It [was] not there but the old spring branch75 was still there where
my dear old mother use[d] to keep her milk and butter and I got one more drink out of the
bubbling spring, and thought of my many boyish pranks especially of
66
bringing a snake up to the house from that spring branch by the tail, and calling mother out to see
it, and getting a whipping for my smartness and many other things too numerous to mention
which are at this writing passing through my mind as they did then. I next called on the owner of
the farm whose father owned it at that time, he himself now being an old man. There is now a
little town near this place called Milligan with a college for white people.76 When I left here there
was only a log church there and a little brick school which had taken the place of a log one. I
mention this only because it was here I first heard young people make speeches and imbibed a
love for oratory [which] has never left me.77 Children, both boys and girls, should be taken to all
those places where things are going on that in the future they are
67
expected to take part in. Next I was very anxious to see at least the site where my great
grandfather Henry Taylor and his second wife Lillia existed in a little old slave cabin, and where
we [stayed] with them two months. In that shack they had been placed after toiling out a life
producing wealth for others, as do the workers today.
I am [sure] too, that
​
​
​
​
75

“Father is rich in houses and lands,
He holdeth the wealth of the world in His hands!
Of rubies and diamonds of silver and gold,
His coffers are full He has riches untold.”

“branch” branch or fork of a creek; a small stream or tiny watercourse. Thanks to Donald Shaffer for
clarifying this passage.
76
The Buffalo Male and Female Institute founded here in 1866 became Milligan College in 1881. In
2020, Milligan College was renamed Milligan University. See Katherine Banks, University Archivist,
Milligan Libraries, Holloway Archives at Milligan University, Milligan Exhibits, “‘No Distinction’:
Coeducation in Milligan’s Early Years, 1881-1917,”
https://mcstor.library.milligan.edu/handle/11558/5570.
77
“Imbibed” is somewhat an ironic word choice, given his life long commitment to temperance.

5

Which I hold is for all of His children and not [just] a few.78
Of course naturally I had to visit the other old farm which my father rented before we left the
state for Kansas.79 I found none of the old folk who used to own these farms now living. But
when
68
they found out who I was, [I] was kindly received. All that I have been thus far relating of my
visit [in] east Tennessee was in Carter county joining my native Johnson County where I was
borned.80 On March the 29th [1918] I left for Mountain City Tennessee, the county seat of
Johnson County. This is in the mountains at the extreme end of the state joined by Virginia on the
one side and North Carolina on the other. There was no railroad in this county when I left the
state. The road now runs through the farm where I was borned as also was my mother.
I was met at Mountain City by the Rev. Westly Smith, a son of my father’s half brother, and
taken to Mrs. Mollie Parks and another first cousin for the evening. The next day I went out to
my uncle Rufus Smith’s
69
who lives on a farm a mile out. This was my first time to meet him. He certainly understands his
business as a farmer. He has two sons both married and also a married daughter left out of a
somewhat numerous family. Of course he knew my father, and we had all sorts talk about the
family relation which was numerous. I found that [he] had married into my mother’s relation[s]
which even brought the relationship nearer.
78

From the hymn, “A Child of the King,” originally composed by Harriett Eugenia Peck Buell in 1834.
The hymn’s lyrics place emphasis on the “riches” to expect the afterlife, after one’s of earthly suffering.
See George Woodbey, The Bible and Socialism: A Conversation Between Two Preachers (San Diego:
1904).
79
Charles, Rachel, George, and Mary Woodbey (“Woodby”) and details about Charles Woodbey’s rented
farm are enumerated in the 1870 U.S. census. See 1870 United States Census, Schedule 1, Civil District
No. 5, Carter County, Tennessee, s.v. “Charles Woodby,” Ancestry.com; 1870 United States Census,
Schedule 3, Civil District No. 5, Carter County, Tennessee, “U.S., Selected Federal Census
Non-Population Schedules, 1850-1880,” digital image s.v. “Charles Woodby,” Ancestry.com.
80
“Rev. Woodbey was born in Johnson county, Tennessee, near where Maymead station is on the
Southern railway.” Johnson City Staff, 13 March 1918. The church and the “old plantation” on which his
mother, Rachel (Wagner), George himself, and his younger sister Mary were enslaved are located near the
junction of Crackers Neck Rd and Hwy 167 or Roan Creek Rd. about halfway between the
unincorporated community of Neva to the south and Mountain City to the north, in the
Maymead/Vaughtsville community

6

Mountain City has quite a number of Negro citizens. And [sic] M.E. Church and a Baptist
Church out about a mile and a half in the country. I lectured in the Court House here subject
“The Negro in Ancient History,”81 to about 100 white and 100 black people. I had in the audience
several of the descendants of the old time slave holders whom I use to see at my old
70
master’s Rail Jake Wagner, as he was called.82 The most notable character in the audience was
one Roby Brown, late captain of the Confederate home guard; whom I remembered not only in
that capacity but when he use to come to our slave cabin as a Patroller, and ask for my father’s
pass when he had come down to visit us from the plantation of his master, two miles away. I
remember one time my father pretended that he could not find his pass just to see them look
glad, thinking they would get to whip him. A few days afterwards I had a talk with the captain
who is reputed to be the richest man in the county.83
The white Baptist preacher presided at my meeting at the courthouse and give me a flattering
introduction. The next week at his invitation I preached in the white Baptist church. This
invitation he said
71

81

This building no longer exists and was replaced by the current courthouse in Mountain City.
“my old master’s Rail Jake Wagner” Jacob Wagner Sr. Based on genealogical research and additional
source analysis, I have identified this as the Jacob Wagner, age 60, listed in the 1850 Schedule I census
info for District 4 of Johnson County that appears the head of the 39th household enumerated on
September 13, 1850. Also enumerated here is his wife, Sarah Wagner, aged 60, George Woodbey’s “old
mistress,” and a daughter named Sarah, his “young mistress.” Jacob Wagner, age 23, would be his
“young master” or “Ransom Jake.” In the next household enumerated on this page is the household of
Jospeh Wagner, age 33, another son of Jacob “Rail Jake” Wagner Sr. and brother of Jacob “Ransom Jake”
Wagner Jr. In the 1860 census, household 59 enumerated on the Schedule I census of District 4 of
Johnson county, Jospeh Wagner’s household, lists a three-year-old daughter, “Sara F,” or Sarafina Wagner,
who later married Issac McQueen. In 1918, Mrs. McQueen was living in the home built on the former site
of “Rail Jake” Wagner’s “old plantation,” the “Mrs. MacKween” George Woodbey says invited him and
his cousin Westley Smith to stay with her after his lecture at Pleasant Grove Baptist Church..
83
Captain Barton Roby Brown (1841-1929). Charles Woodbey was owned by Alfred Widby (Woodby)
and enslaved in the Cracker’s Neck community, Samuel W. Scott’s and Samuel P. Angel’s book History of
the Thirteenth Regiment, Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry, U.S.A. (Philadelphia: P. W. Ziegler & Co., 1903),
354-355, 415-417, discusses the activities of the “home guard” in Johnson County, and names “Gray Jake
Wagner” and a “Hog Dave” Wagner as Confederates. Jacob “Grey Jake” Wagner (1810-1871) was a
cousin of Jacob “Rail Jake” Wagner Sr. According to Louise Stout, he received “all land on the north side
of Roan Creek” divided from the original Wagner farm, and Roby Brown acquired a significant part of
Wagner land on the south side of Roan Creek, which then was transferred to his great grandsons Wiley
and Barton Mount “Wagner Family,” History of Johnson County Vol I, 397.
82

7
was given at the request of a number of his members. It developed however that [there] were
others opposed to it, so that the preacher had business out in the country that evening. The
meeting went on just the same and the hearers expressed themselves as well pleased. There was
one man who was one of [the] county officials who took the lead in introducing me to the people
and I understood told the opponents what he thought of their conduct in no unmeasured terms.
I had visited the Sunday school in the same white church the Sunday before and been called to
teach the Bible class.
I also lectured and preached in the Colored Methodist several times. And also at the Baptist
Colored. My uncle George now deceased was once a deacon in this church but has been gone
some 26 years. I also visited Abingdon
72
V.A. only about 29 miles from Mountain City and lectured [and] preached at that place. My
impression of the Negroes here is that while they are industrious and thrifty, owning largely as I
was informed their own homes; yet they are rather more fearful of white people than [in] other
places. I gather this from the caution leading men give me about being very careful about [what]
I said in my lectures.84
6. The Lecture at Old Pleasant Grove Baptist Church and the Visit to the Old Home.
Of course one of the first places I wanted to visit was the old slave plantation, which I did. But
what I have to say [about it] will come in best after the lecture [so] I will speak of that first.
About one half mile
73
from the old farm is the Pleasant Grove Baptist Church organized in 1845.85 Most of the early
members of this church were slave holders. And quite a number of their slaves also belonged to
the same church with their masters. And this reminds me that the other day I met the son of one
of the old time white preachers of those days who said to me, “In those days the white and
84

“It is said that Rev. Woodbey is a socialist, and it is hoped he was not the same kind of socialist that has
wrecked Russia, and has sided with the Germans in America.” Johnson City Staff 13 March 1918.
85
Pleasant Grove Baptist Church branched off from Pine Grove Baptist Church and organized on January
20, 1845. Johnson County Historical Society, History of Johnson County Vol I Sesquicentennial ed.
(Johnson County Tenn: Johnson County Historical Society., 1986), 66; John Trotwood Moore and Austin
P. Foster, Tennessee, The Volunteer State, 1796-1923 Vol. II (S.J. Clarke Publishing Co.: Chicago &
Nashville,1923), 414..

8
colored people could worship together in the same church, but as soon as your people got free we
got into separate churches. I tell you there is something wrong.”
To this church my mother Rachel once belonged. Having been Baptized in 1855 by the Rev.
Valentine
74
Bowers. My great grandmother Hannah Wagner and my grandmother, her daughter Milly
Wagner, also belonged there, as did also grandfather Jonas Vaught, husband of Milly.86
This sort of relation may seem strange to this new generation. So much that many are inclined to
believe that these slaveholders were not Christians. But if we can be Christians today and favor a
system that permits a few men to own all that the great mass have to live upon, and thereby
starve and freeze the workers to death for the sake of profits, then there are no reason[s] which
these slave holders should not be called Christian. Let us hope that many both now
75
and then are and were regenerated people who have not grown in the knowledge of Christ to see
these wrongs.87 “If any man be overtaken in a fault, you that [are] spiritual restore such a one in
the spirit of meekness, considering thyself lest thou also be overtaken in fault.”88
It was through the Rev. Mr. Grimsley89 of Mountain City who also pastors [at] this place that an
appointment was made for me to lecture in this church on the subject, “Why I Believe What I
Believe.” A defense of the Bible on Christianity against the various forms of unbelief. There was
86

Rev. Valentine Bowers served as Pleasant Grove’s first Elder. Jonas Vaught and Milly Wagner were
among the four original “colored” charter members of the church, along with Luce Wagner and Jude
Widdy[sic]. History of Johnson County Vol I, 66.
87
Donald Shaffer provided the following interpretation of this sentence: “He hopes (he’d like to believe)
that many people who are regenerated Christians (read: born-again Christians, genuine Christians), as
well as ones who were genuine Christians back in the days of slavery, are/were nevertheless still too
immature in their Christian faith (and ethics) to realize that slavery and other un-Christian things are
wrong. In short: They’re Christians all right, but imperfect ones.” Donald Shaffer, personal email to
author, Nov 17, 2023.
88
“Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of
meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.” Galatians 6:1 KJV
89
Rev. Roy E. Grimsley pastored at Roan Creek Baptist Church south of Mountain City and about three
and a half miles from Pleasant Grove Baptist Church, between 1914-1918. Johnson County Historical
Society, History of Johnson County Vol I Sesquicentennial ed. (Johnson County Tenn: Johnson County
Historical Society., 1986), 68. “Rev. Roy E. Grimsley, age 65, of Knoxville…was well known in this
section and throughout the state, having served as pastor of Baptist churches in Mountain City, Knoxville,
Nashville, and Chattanooga.” Elizabethton Star, 7 February 1946.

9
about 250 white people present. There being none of our people living [in] the community there
was only three present.
76
A number of audience [members] was the grandsons and daughters of those old time slave
holders. I had occasion to tell them that [this] was the church my mother joined 63 years ago, and
how that [it] was the first church I ever remembered being in, and use to play up and down the
aisles when too young to know what the preacher was up there for. I was also able to give them
the name of some of the officers of slavery days. William Gambill, David Wagner, my young
master; Nicholas Stout, or uncle Nick, as my little sister and I use to call him because of the good
things he use to bring us to eat. He was a slave holder, and my master’s son-in-law.90 John S.
Vaught another slave holding deacon who owned my grandfather Jonas and his sister
77
Esther, who[se] daughter Rose he sold in my recollection. Of course, I only give the name of
these gentlemen, and did not think it at all necessary to mention what I have here said about
[what] they did. The lecture was well received. And I must take occasion to say that I regard it as
the most remarkable [of] incidents I have met during my life.
The old plantation, on which I was borned, is now the property of Mrs. MacWeen [Saraphina
McQueen], my old master’s granddaughter, with whom among other children I use to play in the
days of slavery. No sooner than the lecture closed, Mrs. McQueen’s daughter-in-law [Ruth
McQueen] came forward and said that lady said I must [not] think of any other place than her
house to stay overnight. So accordingly my cousin Westly Smith and I went
78

90

Nicholas Stout (1808-1889). Several other individuals he mentions here appear in a history of the Pine
Grove Baptist Church, from which Pleasant Grove Baptist branched off in 1845. “Other known charter
members were John S. Vaught and his wife Rebecca Shoun Vaught and Wiley Baker from Roans Creek
and Esther Dougherty from old Sinking Creek Church in Carter County. Other probable members were
William Gambill, Michael Schlemp (Slemph), Nicholas Stout. If these were not actual charter members
they joined soon after.” Johnson County History and Genealogy, “Pine Grove Church History,”
typewritten copy of Minnie McBride Shoun, written for the Centennial Celebration of Pine Grove
Church, June 12, 1938, submitted by: Mary McBride, https://www.jctcuzins.org/pine-grove-church,
accessed April 9, 2025.

10
home with them. She now has a fine country residence on the place which is greatly improved,
her husband having been dead for several years.91 She has several children, [and] one son who
lives with her. We were given a nice room, and with this son we talked until a very late hour. The
next morning after breakfast, Mrs. McQueen and I went out and she pointed out where her
grandfather’s old house use to stand, which I had all in my mind, and also where the old slave
cabin use to stand. I pointed out where the old shop and barn once stood and took a look once
more down into the old well. However, as I said, we had been there a few days before, and went
across the way to the old log house still standing where my young master Rasom [Ransom] Jake
Wagner use to live.92 This
79
was indeed a meeting of master and slave under peculiar circumstances. None of the masters’
descendants having made themselves known beyond the confines of their own community except
what I have had occasion to say about them in various parts of the United States.
It may seem strange, but I slept but little that night for thinking of the hundred and one little
incidents of my earliest recollections. The first thing that I can recollect was my sister Mary
falling in the fire when I was about two and a half years old. I thought of my aunt’s slave time
wedding, the long table out in the yard, heaped up with pies, cakes, sweet potatoes, chickens, a
roast pig and a boiled ham etc. etc. Many white men and women eat [sic] with us, and among
80
them was one lady which [I] met here at Elizabethton, after all of these fifty odd years. This was
at the beginning of the civil war and some confederate soldiers sent out to picket the roads come
in and helped themselves. I thought also of a time when my young mistress Sarah took me over
to the house to get some maple sugar for my mother, and the old mistress said, “just take
everything in the place and give it to the nasty good for nothing stinking niggers. They don’t earn
the salt that goes in their vittes [vittles].” Where upon the young woman turned upon her mother
91

Jacob Wagner Sr.’s son, Jospeh Wagner (1828-1896), wife Mary Vaught (1832-1913), there daughter
Sarafina/Saraphina (1858-1930), who in 1876 married Isaac McQueen (1805-1890). George Woodbey
stayed at Mrs. McQueen’s home in 1918. He refers to her in the notebook as “Mrs. MacWeen.” The 1920
census enumerates Sarah McQueen as the “head” of a household including her daughter-in-law, Ruth
McQueen. The McQueen house where Woodbey stayed in 1918 is located just south of Pleasant Grove
Baptist Church on Hwy 167/Roan Creek Rd.
92
“Rasom” is possible, but “Ransom Jake” seems to make more sense; Jacob Wagner JrThe 1860 US
Federal Census, Johnson County, Tennessee, Civil District 4, Schedule II enumerates information about
the number of enslaved people and their ages owned by David Wagner, Jacob Wagner (Jr.), N.S. Wagner,
Alfred Widby, S.G. Vaught, Jacob Wagner Sr., John S. Vaught, Isaac Reece, N.G. Stant, James Brown.
See “1860 U.S. Federal Census—Slave Schedules,” Ancestry.com.

11
and said, “Never mind this war is going to free the niggers, and then I will bet, you will see who
earns the salt that goes in your vittes. And then you will come
81
to your milk. I would like to know who produces everything on this place but the niggers?!”93
These are only a few of the things that would keep running through my head, until I felt as sure
that the private ownership of what the people have to live upon, will pass away as did slavery.
The lady who owns the old place now, while as you see in every way kindly disposed, is not an
educated woman along this line, does see that this must come; as near as did her grandfather did
that slavery was wrong and must pass away as he contended. If the nation owned and operated
everything for the benefit of the whole people, in place of for the benefit of a few rich people,
Mrs. McQueen and all other widows would be on the retired list with all of
82
the vast resources of the nation from which to draw from.94 From this place [we] went down and
took a splendid dinner with her sister, a Mrs. Stout who was borned about the time we left
Tennessee for the West, and from there around to where my father use to be a slave now in
possession of Thomas Wagner, another old playmate in the days of yore.95 Then to the old Joseph
Vaught place where cousin Westley’s mother use to be a slave and where my great grandfather
Peter Wilson who had been made free by his master Joseph Will, use also to live. And to John S.
Vaught’s old farm, the gentleman just mentioned as a deacon of Pleasant Grove Church.96 Having
seen enough for one day we returned [to] Mountain City.
83
7. Southern Hospitality
93

“young mistress Sarah”; Sarah Wagner, daughter of Jacob Wagner Sr; “old mistress” Sarah Wagner,
wife of Jacob Wagner Sr. The expression “come to your milk” here meaning “come to your senses.”
94
“retired list,” see note 2.
95
“her sister, a Mrs. Stout” Mary Ann Wagner Stout (1870-1943), daughter of Jospeh Wagner and Mary
(Vaught) Wagner, sister of Sara (Wagner) McQueen. George Woodbey left Tennessee for Kansas around
1870. Mary Ann Stout lived in Neva, TN and was a member of Pleasant Grove Baptist Church, according
to her obituary (Johnson County News, 24 June 1943). His “playmate in the days of yore” Thomas L.
Wagner (1853-1926), son of Nathaniel Taylor Wagner (1822-1900) and Elizabeth Baker Wagner
(1832-1856). “Jacob Wagner Family,” History of Johnson County Vol. II (Johnson City Historical Society:
2000), 400.
96
Peter Wilson, George Woodbey’s great grandfather. This is likely the Peter Wilson, aged 80, in
enumerated in dwelling 50, in the 1870 US Federal Census, Johnson County, Tennessee, Civil District 5,
Schedule I, Ancestry.com.

12

Southern hospitality is something that use to be proverbial, and it is not yet quite dead but [the]
patient is in its death throes. It was altogether a question of economics years ago when the
country was open and there [were] practically no markets for surplus products in these parts, and
apples, peaches, and other fruits simply rolled on the ground. Men did not expect fortune and
strove only for plenty to eat and they were willing to freely give to passing strangers without
worry and without price. But now the thing changed and men are after turning every thing into
money and feels the stranger a burden. Perhaps I fared as well as I did because of being a relative
returning with some little distinction.97 And even then I felt
84
the keen edge of being a burden at times. Of course, I could not expect my friends and relatives
to see the cause of all this change. They feel that they [are] between upper [and] nether millstone
and cannot afford to be too free with hard earned means.98 Although I have [spent] and are
spending the best part of [my] life trying [to] lift this burden off the backs of the toilers, few of
them even see or understand what [this] life’s work means for them; [any] more than their father
could understand the man who was trying to get him out of slavery by destroying that system.99
Many slaves betrayed their benefactors to the masters. And so, these people have been taught to
believe that [the] rich for whom they work are their best friends, and that any man who spends
his time trying
85
to change these conditions is an enemy rather than a benefactor. But things are not hopeless.
There [are] those whom the high prices are beginning [to] force to think and it [is] contagious.
In the country and the small places, preachers still receive some consideration. What is called
hospitality has long since disappeared in the West as it used to obtain on the Western plains. But
97

“some little distinction” Examples of his “distinction” noted in the local press: “a prominent Negro
preacher and orator” Nashville Banner, 10 August 1917; “one of America’s leading Orators, Ministers,
Author and Lecturer” Nashville Globe, 14 December 1917; “noted colored lecturer” Johnson City Staff,
25 January 1918; “prominent in the councils of his race,” Johnson City Staff, 13 March 1918.
98
“upper…nether millstone,” as in Deuteronomy 24: 6 KJV, “No man shall take the nether or the upper
millstone to pledge: for he taketh a man's life to pledge.”
99
From here the original handwritten pages required more editing. I do not mark minor changes to avoid
cluttering up the text and in the interest of readability, but when I have added a new word this is marked
with brackets. His “life’s work” or the work of the socialist agitator, he often compared to the work of
abolitionists John Brown, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendall Phillips, and Frederick Douglass. For
example, see George Woodbey, “The New Emancipation,” Chicago Daily Socialist, 18 January 1909,
available at https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/chicago-daily-socialist/1909/index.htm (accessed
29 July 2025) and also in Foner, Black Socialist Preacher, 247-250.

13
the time is fast approaching when the entire product of the world [will] be as free for the use of
the people as anything that the public now owns and then what is called hospitality will not be
necessary. I am not saying that hospitality is entirely dead. There are many exceptions here in the
South. The large cities I find more destitute of it than elsewhere. As in the West they will in most
places ask you to preach and when you have done so leave you at the church door without asking
home for a
86
meal. Had I been able to revisit my old home, under independent financial circumstances, I never
would have been able to come in such close contact [with] my people. But as it was my
circumstances made them feel I was one of them. Having made some little name [for myself] and
being able to impart some little information to them, and yet not above needing their help, I must
say that [they] made it [as] pleas[ing] for me as their means would allow. It [is] economic
pressure that is responsible for the gradual death [of] southern hospitality.
I have never tried to [be] a money maker [and] whatsoever message God has given to me I have
tried to [the] best of my ability to give freely to the poor and the despised like myself.
87
This I have done knowing what the heroes of the abolition movement underwent that [I] might
enjoy the liberties such as I now do.100
8. What I Have Seen of the Negro Schools
I have had occasion to refer to the Negro higher institutions especially at Nashville. I am making
no attempt [to] write them up because that has often been done by able and more efficient hands.
I will say how[ever] that I [am] decidedly in favor of the highest possible education for the race

100

In a letter to Eugene Debs while Debs was imprisoned in Atlanta for charges under the Sedition Act of
1918, Woodbey wrote, “I was once a slave; and John Brown was hung, and many abolitionist[s] died in
prison because they said I ought to be free.” George Washington Woodbey, letter to Eugene Debs, 31
March 1921, Eugene V. Debs Collection, Special Collections Department, Indiana State University
Library.

14
as well as industrial training.101 Laying special stress upon vocational education which is in its
infancy. I have of course visited a few of [the] common schools, and as a [rule]
88
found the teacher capable and the children apt. But the buildings [are] greatly inferior to the
same grade of whites. In some places [they are] positively unsanitary and in a few places
condemned. The terms [are] shorter than the whites and the teacher [is] underpaid. The schools I
speak of are located in the states of Tennessee and Kentucky. While I have not examined the
statutes my impression [is] that except [for] separate schools, the terms and advantages are to be
equal to [each] other of the same grades. If so the law should be insisted upon, by the parents
standing behind the teachers. I want it understood that I am not in favor of the separate school
system, but insist upon mixing the teachers. Giving the school to those who stand the best
examination
89
regardless of race. With my recollection of the time when there were no schools and a white man
could be sent to state prison for learning a Negro to read, and having attended the first schools in
these parts opened for Negroes, after the war, in old shanties almost ready to fall in, with
incompetent teachers; I can the better see how far we have come. The schoolhouse at Johnson
City is the best that I have visited for the size of the city in the south. The teachers are efficient
and the Langston High School under Professor Byers [admirably] well conducted.102 Likewise at
Jonesboro under Prof. Brice.103
101

In 1903, Rev. Woodbey expressed a similar position when he delivered a lecture in Los Angeles
criticizing Booker T. Washington.“There is no question, he said about Washington’s intellectuality. He has
all the ability necessary to make a good servant of Capitalism by educating other servants of Captialism.
Mr. Washington’s Southern industrial school is a good thing in itself, for education is always a good thing,
but it is not the solution to the race problem.” “A Reply to Booker T. Washington,” Los Angeles Socialist,
2 May 1903. See also Keidrick Roy, “The Other Souls of Black Folk: George Washington Woodbey and
the Spirit of Socialism,” American Political Thought vol 12 no 3 (Summer 2023): 319-356.
102
“Johnson City Fifty Seven Years Ago,” Johnson City Staff, 25 January 1918. Rev. J.H. Byers served as
principal of Langston between 1915-1926, followed by Professor George T. Dickson, according to Mary
Henderson-Alexander, “Black Life in Johnson City, Tennessee 1856-1956: A Historical Chronology,”
MA Thesis, Department of History, East Tennessee State University, August 2001, 74-75. “Rev. J.H.
Byers is the pastor of the Presbyterian church and is also supervising principal of the city schools. He is a
man of the first magnitude and is very highly respected by the people of Johnson City.” Star of Zion
(Charlotte, NC) 18 May 1922 Star of Zion (Charlotte, NC) DigitalNC,
https://newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sf88092969/1922-05-18/ed-1/seq-6/, accessed 29 July 2025
103
“Professor Brice” J.H. Brice, pictured in the Bulletin of Langston High School and Dunbar School,
1914-1915, Johnson City, Tennessee. “Bulletin of Langston High School and Dunbar School (annotated
copy),” Archives of Appalachia, https://archivesofappalachia.omeka.net/items/show/13130, accessed 29
July 2025.

15

The old chestnut that the Negro cannot be educated has long since disappeared. Instead, some of
our would-be white friends now argue
90
that education ruins him. Especially a classical education. They no longer say now with John G.
Calhoun that a Negro cannot learn Greek.104 Though it may seem hard; let the Negro north and
south patiently insist upon his full rights as a citizen, and in due time in God’s own way all will
come right.
“It may not be my time
And it may not [be] thy time
But yet in His own time
The Lord will provide.
It may not be thy way
And it may not be my way
And yet in His own way,
The Lord will provide.”105
91
9. The Young Negro Of The Past And Present.
The young Negro of my childhood was without any knowledge of letters, generally ragged dirty
and uncoof [sic]; and many white people of the time thought he was naturally incapable of high

104

From a 1897 address by the Black abolitionist and educator Alexander Crummel, in reference a
conversation he overheard working as an “errand boy in the antislavery office in New York City” in 1833
or 1834, between two lawyers and the society’s secretary, regarding comments made by John C. Calhoun
in Washington D.C. As Crummel recalled it, “One of the utterances of Mr. Calhoun was to this effect—
‘That if he could find a Negro who knew the Greek syntax, he would then believe that the Negro was a
human being and should be treated as a man.” See Alexander Crummel, “The Attitude of the American
Mind Toward the Negro Intellect,” American Negro Academy Annual Address, Washington D.C.,
December 28, 1897, Occasional Papers of the American Negro Academy, No. 3 (Washington, D.C.,
1898), BlackPast.org,
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/1898-alexander-crummell-attitude-american-mind-to
ward-negro-intellect/, accessed July 29 2025.
105
Lyrics from the hymn, “In Some Way or Other the Lord will Provide,” (1864) by Martha Walker Cook.

16
intellectual culture. This idea has since my young days changed almost entirely even here in the
south.
I find children of ten years, who know more about the world and its doings than I did at the age
of 18 years. We parents often make the mistake of trying to control the children out of the
schools, just as the children of slavery days were treated. Our young people here are proving
themselves just as capable of
92
education as are the whites, [and] with inferior advantages. As to behavior they are like the
whites good and bad. What we call good manners are simply the veneerings of what may be
termed modern civilized customs. Which is well enough providing we do not mistake it for real
goodness. Indeed it is sometimes mistaken for Christianity itself. We sometimes make the
mistake and teach our children that sin comes by association with bad people when in fact it is
inherent. It may of course be the sooner waked into action by association with those more poorly
developed in sin. But the sleeping lion is there. Like the basket of [vipers] brought to Cleopatra,
the deadly Cobra De Capelor [Capello] of sin sleeps therein.106
​
In any audience of our young
93
southern Negroes now it is not uncommon to find the graduate of the common school, the high
school, the normal school, and the college. Education however is not a panacea for inherent sin,
and for that reason we should not be so terribly shocked when one notwithstanding all of their
intellectual culture still goes wrong. Nothing but regeneration will prove a sure cure for that
disease.
The capacity of the young Negro for doing whatsoever others can do, is perhaps best illustrated
at the National Baptist Publishing House, a plant, the greatest among Negroes in the world, built
up through the energy and genius of Dr. R.H. Boyd in the last twenty years. This plant is now
estimated [as worth] $300,000. And in it you can find all the way from 100 to 150 young Negro
men and women
94
106

Cobra de Capello, the “asp” or extremely deadly venomous snake, which according to popular legend
was to blame for Queen Cleopatra’s death. In Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, Cleopatra commits
suicide by snake bite by placing them on her breast and arm.

17

doing anything that is done in any great publishing [house], from the getting out of a common
handbill to a first class bound book.107 These young people are stenographers, typewriters,
linotype operators, [and] practical printers, operating the great folding presses of the plant,
bookkeeping etc. I have known 1,400 letters to come into the house in one day. All this is
systematically handled by these people. But don’t think I am trying to give you anything like a
description of this great publishing house. If you want to get an idea, send and get “Boyd’s Story
of the Publishing House,” which every Negro Baptist should read.108 The object here is to show
what our young people are capable of. There is only one other thing I wish to call attention to in
connection [with] the Publishing house, and it’s your people, that in all of my travels I have not
seen at [or]
95
done at any other place of business, either secular or religious, white or black. At half past 9
o'clock the bell rings [and] all business stops and all the workers assemble in the chapel for a half
hour’s scripture reading, sing[ing] and prayer. This is done everyday.
When I first visited Nashville I thought to write up the publishing house, but I found it so far
beyond my expectation that [I] give it up. I am not writing of the young ladies and gentlemen of
the publishing house with a view to disparaging others, but only as the best example I have been
able to see on my visit. I say frankly that I do not believe that business will solve the race
problem, which must be done by bringing about economic equality through the collective
ownership of the industries. Yet these young people are settling the question of the capability of
the Negro to
96
do anything that other races can do. When as an ex-slave I look at what R.H. Boyd, also an
ex-slave, has been able [to] bring out of these young people, I cannot blame him for having a just
pride in his work.
The world is making [progress] toward collective industry, and the time is near at hand when not
only our young people will find themselves trained for what they are best qualified by nature for,
but with that particular employment they love open for them; and so with the children of all other
races as well. At present we are inclined to think that the education of our young folks has been a
107

Or his almost completely neglected book, Method of Procedure in Baptist Church Trials (Nashville:
National Baptist Publishing Board, 1916).
108
R.H. Boyd, A Story of the National Baptist Publishing Board: The Why, How, When, Where, and by
Whom It Was Established (Nashville: National Baptist Publishing Board, 1915).

18
failure, if they have not used it in the accumulation [of] individual fortune. To use their education
to attack the evil of private ownership of the means of life,
[97]
the curse and bane of humanity generally, is according to present standards of society to make a
failure in life.
All things considered, the progress of the young people of [in] the parts of my slavery days has
indeed been phenomenal.
10. Southern Prejudice, The After Math [Of] Slavery
History will [show] that [with] few exceptions, the master class who lived at the expense of the
slave considered him inferior, regardless of the color or nationality of the slave. Indeed, the slave
has been in this country taught to consider himself inferior.
On this continent however there [are] a few exceptions to this rule. In getting [at] the cause of the
race prejudice of these United States
[98]
we must go back to discussion of [the] abolition question. When accused by the abolitionist of
mistreating human beings, [slave holders] while not denying that the Negro is a human being yet
nevertheless [considered the Negro] an inferior specimen of humanity, and for that reason not
entitled to the same treatment as the white man. This argument was a justification of slavery in
many works, and even sermons. But in none with more attempt at scientific lore than in the
elaborate work of Nott and Gliddon entitled “Types of Mankind.”109 These works have long since
ceased to be read, but still their teachings live, having entered into our text books on ancient and
modern history; our geographies, and from these into our newspapers and magazine articles. And
it is this palpable falsehood that keeps race prejudice a[live]
[99]

109

Josiah C Nott and George R Gliddon, Types of mankind: or, Ethnological researches based upon the
ancient monuments, paintings, sculptures, and crania of races, and upon their natural, geographical,
philological and Biblical history: illustrated by selections from the inedited papers of Samuel George
Morton and by additional contributions from L. Agassiz, W. Usher, and H.S. Patterson (Philadelphia: J.B.
Lippincott, Grambo & Co, 1854). Nott and Glidden used scientific, theological, and historical “facts” and
“arguments” to defend racial slavery, white supremacy, European colonialism, and race war.

19
in this country. Having once got a start it has been it has been broadened out so as to include all
of the dark races [of] mankind. Strange that so manifest an absurdity, should ever have been
given credence by a professed Christian people with the Bible in their hands, which teaches the
common origin [of] all mankind. “Of one blood God made all nations. God is no respecter of
persons. One is your master, even Christ, and all you are brethren.”110
Unless the race prejudice fostered in this nation is eradicated it will prove the overthrow of the
nation. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”111 This prejudice reaches into the churches
white and black notwithstanding the fact [that] the Bible teaches the brotherhood of man. A
nation of people who hates and
[100]
despises their brethren cannot escape the final vengeance of our common father. “Pride goes
before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”112
There [are] signs however that race prejudice will disappear before the advance of the Christian
religion. To take away the sins is one of the purposes of the Christian religion. It was not to be
done in a day, in a year, or in a generation but, “First the blade and then the ear and then the full
corn in the ear.”113 These teachings of Christ gradually undermined the institution of chattel
slavery and will do the same with prejudice. Many will help do this work who do not know
Christ as their personal savior, being actuated entirely by other motives, and yet indirectly and
unconsciously they [are] doing what God wants done.
[101]
As I have had occasion to say we are being received at places of state and national gatherings
very different to the past. My own reception has been far better than expected.
There are many southern white people who would never think of drawing the race line were it
not for the conditions around them and this class are on the increase. I have myself been the
guest of a number of some of the white people of the south, after making their homes in the
West.
110

Acts 17:26 (“Of one blood”), Acts 10:34 (“God is no respecter”), and Mathew 23:8 (“One is your
Master”) KJV
111
Mark 3:25; quoted by Abraham Lincoln during the Republican State Convention of Illinois in 1858.
“Republican Principles, Speech of Hon. Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, At the Republican State
Convention, June 16, 1858,” New York Tribune, 24 June 1858.
112
Proverbs 16:18 KJV
113
Mark 4:28. KJV

20
One among the most hopeful signs [is] the organization of the Southern Sociological Congress,
which I understand grew out of the Atlanta riot some years ago.114 I have never had the privilege
of meeting this organization but have been informed that it
[102]
is composed of some of the best men and women of both races who meet once a year on on
equality to discuss the solution of the race problem. Of course most of us are aware of the great
work being accomplished by The Society for the Advancement of Colored People with
headquarters in New York but whose influence is fast becoming nation wide.115 Gradually Negro
preachers are beginning to preach occasionally for white people in the south. The [whites] visit
more and more Negro churches, and especially singings. Our hurry to see all of these evils at
once eradicated sometimes makes us fail to take a broad view of the race question and not seeing
how far we have come we think things are [not] growing. But my own reception here after
having once been a slave
[103]
here make[s] me sure that all will come right in time. Probably not before the nation receives
another punishment for its sins as it did about slave holding. But I am working and praying not.

114

L. L. Bernard: “The Southern Sociological Congress,” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 19 no. 1
(July 1913): 91-93, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2763279;
Democracy in Earnest, Southern Sociological Congress, 1916-1918, edited by James E. McCullock
(Washington: Southern Sociological Congress, 1918),
https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc2.ark:/13960/t0cv4n07k.
115
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). After returning to California
in November 1918, he was involved in founding the first chartered branch of the NAACP in San Diego.

APPENDIX

Source: Nashville Globe (Nashville, Tenn.), 10 Aug. 1917. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of
Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86064259/1917-08-10/ed-1/seq-8/

22

Clipping of “Noted Negro Visits Johnson County,“ Johnson County News, 31 March 1918.George
Woodbey Scrapbooks, private collection. Courtesy of Deb Hurt.

23

Clippings of “Noted Negro Visits Johnson County,“ Johnson County News, 31 March 1918 and “Johnson
City Fifty Seven Years Ago,” Johnson City Daily Staff, 25 January 1918. George Woodbey Scrapbooks,
private collection.

24

25
Clipping of “Johnson City Fifty Seven Years Ago,” Johnson City Daily Staff, 25 January 1918, George
Woodbey Scrapbooks, private collection.

George W. Woodbey (left) and Annie R. Woodbey (right). Undated photographs [circa 1890s], private collection.
Courtesy of Mark Carlock.

ily.

26
Photograph of Rev. Rufus Smith, seated front left and his wife Celia Vaught, seated front right, with Rev.
Elijah Westly Smith standing on the far left next to his brother, William Hayes Smith; digital image.
Courtesy of Samuel Smith

Undated photograph of Rachel Wagner Woodbey (c. 1836-1912), undated photograph, digital copy.
Courtesy of Mark Carlock.

27

28
Image Description: Advertisement for Rev. Woodbey’s sermon on “Are We Church Members
Christians?” Sunday afternoon at the Bijou Theater, August 12, 1917, in Nashville, TN. George Woodbey
Scrapbook, private collection.

Image Description: Advertisement for Rev. Woodbey sermons starting July 14, 1918, at the corner of
West and Walnut St. in Louisville, KY. George Woodbey Scrapbook, private collection.

29

Image Description: Advertisement for “Grand Opening at Odd Fellow’s Theater,” 13th and Walnut St.,
Louisville, KY, featuring “Big Religious Services Conducted by the Distinguished Preacher Rev. Geo. W.
Woodbey of California,” 1918. George Woodbey Scrapbook, private collection.

30