There’s a historic marker by the road as U.S. Highway 64 turns toward Manteo when approaching from the Outer Banks.
“ANDREW CARTWRIGHT Agent of the American Colonization Society in Liberia, founded the A.M.E. Zion churches in Albemarle area. His first church, 1865, near here. NC 345 at US 64/264 southeast of Manteo,” the sign reads.
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The sign, though, only hints at the full story, saying very little about Cartwright the man, his efforts to bring the African Methodist Episcopal Church Zion Church to Africa, the American Colonization Society or the times in which he lived.
The consensus is Cartwright was born enslaved in Elizabeth City, probably in 1834, and at some point before the Civil War he escaped and fled north.
“By the beginning of the Civil War, Cartwright and his wife Anna, were living in New England and Andrew had become a minister in the African Methodist Episcopalian Zion Church,” according to the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources account of Cartwright’s life included on the highway marker description website.
Cartwright followed Union forces to North Carolina, and his presence on Roanoke Island is confirmed in an autobiography, “A brief history of the slave life of Rev. L.R. Ferebee.” Ferebee describes coming in contact with Cartwright at the Roanoke Island Freedman’s Colony, writing, “Some time in May, the same year (1864), Rev. Andrew Cartwright lectured the Sabbath School on the subject of Repentance.”
The Roanoke Island church was the first of the AME Zion houses of worship Cartwright founded in northeastern North Carolina. He would go on to organize and build 12 churches in 10 years throughout the region.
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He was, however, becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the relationship between races.
“By the end of Reconstruction Cartwright had become disillusioned about his future in America. He served as an agent for the American Colonization Society, and in 1876 accepted their aid to emigrate,” Walter Williams wrote in “Black Americans and the Evangelization of Africa.”
In March 1871, Cartwright was named president of the Freedmen’s Emigrant Society. Later that year, the organization’s constitution and its preamble were published in the May edition of the African Repository, the publication of the American Colonization Society.
“Whereas, We, persons of African descent, see no prospect of our race ever enjoying the right that naturally indue to freemen—while we remain in this country,” the preamble begins.
The bylaws lay out the purpose of the organization in stark language, stating, “The design of the members of this Society being to aid each other to obtain a home in Liberia, where, by the help of God, we shall be able to enjoy peace and happiness and all our social rights and privileges, which we despair of ever doing in this country.”
That Cartwright was working with the African Colonization Society was significant. Formed in 1816, the mission of the society was initially to return free people of color to what is now Liberia.
When created, its membership included some of the most prominent white men of the nation. Sens. Henry Clay of Kentucky and Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Francis Scott Key, who wrote the words to the “Star-Spangled Banner,” were among its founding members.
The society enjoyed widespread support initially. Presidents Monroe and Madison supported colonization, although they were not members.
In the South, slaveholders saw the organization as a way to rid themselves of free people of color who were an ever-present reminder to their enslaved people that freedom was possible. In the north, abolitionists saw the African colony as a viable way to give free people of color a new start in life and avoid the issue of equality between the races.
Although initially popular and well-funded, the society did not have the resources to support a colonization effort in Africa. Nor were the American immigrants welcomed in Liberia. Compounding the problems, by the 1840s the coalition of abolitionists and slaveholders was falling apart. Abolitionists increasingly saw the society as a way for slaveholders to retain their property and slaveholders were unwilling to free enslaved people and return them to Africa.
Nonetheless, the society remained a viable organization into the 20th century and didn’t dissolve until 1964.
If white America saw the society as a practical solution to racial tensions, most Americans of African descent had no desire to go to a continent they’d never seen. In 1849, Frederick Douglass, writing in the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator observed, “I have as much right in this country as any other man…Our connection with this country is contemporaneous with your own. From the beginning of the existence of this people, as a people, the colored man has had a place upon the American soil.”
Yet there was an undercurrent of support among some African Americans as reconstruction ended and Jim Crow laws began to take effect.
“Despite financial and ideological limitations, sentiment favoring the evangelization of Africa did begin to grow among the black denominations after the late 1870s,” Williams wrote in “The Evangelization of Africa.”
The emigration movement was, Williams noted, “a nonreligious movement that pulled the church leadership into involvement.”
The call to return to Africa for Cartwright was, evidently twofold. He had become convinced that equality between the races was not possible in the United States, and a belief that he would bring the AME Zion church to Africa.
The 1877 annual society report wrote that “twenty-one promising emigrants embarked at New York on the barque ‘Liberia,’ and that … Rev. Andrew Cartwright … expect(s) to join the Liberia Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church.”
Initially Cartwright’s missionary work was not done under the authority or supervision of the AME Zion church, nor did the church provide funding for his work.
“Even though he had no financial support or authority from denominational leaders, he organized A.M.E.Z. congregations among the Americo-Liberians,” Williams wrote.
Cartwright was a master at presenting the best picture of his work possible.
“I find the young people take great delight in a church ruled and governed by colored leaders or black bishops,” he told readers of The Star of Zion, the publication of the AME Zion church.
“Rev. Cartwright sent such positive reports back to the denomination moved the 1880 Annual Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion to take permanent action for the support of African missions,” Leroy Fitz wrote in “A history of the African American Church.”
That support was short-lived.
“The intensity of interest among A.M.E.Z. leaders in Africa did not last long, and within a few years Cartwright’s salary was reduced by half, to only four hundred dollars annually…The church’s lack of response toward missions was partly due to Cartwright’s lack of progress in Liberia. He was a poor administrator, and had not expanded the mission,” Williams wrote.
Cartwright’s relationship with the American church leaders was frayed. In 1896 the AME Zion church appointed John Bryan Small Bishop for Africa. His visit to Liberia did not go well.
“Small was not impressed with Andrew Cartwright, and he found the A.M.E.Z. Liberian mission in ‘poor condition,’” Williams wrote.
Reacting to the lack of support and what was apparently a damning report from his superior, Cartwright lashed out in the Nov. 12, 1896, edition of The Star of Zion, a publication of the AME Zion church.
“What has A. Cartwright done to be treated like this, after working so long in America; walking and wading, Winter and Summer, and building so many churches—twelve in ten years—then went to Africa, crossing the ocean eleven times in the interest of Zion. I know better than anyone what I went for,” he wrote.
Cartwright remained in Liberia until his death in 1903.
“Elder Andrew Cartwright fell quietly into the arms of death between twelve and one o’clock p.m., Wednesday January 14, 1903 at his residence in Africa. He was born on March 15, 1834 in Elizabeth City, N.C. and was raised in the same State. He was not an educated man, but had a little learning,” according to his obituary.
