[Archive of Correspondence and Periodicals Related to Dr. Josephus Coan's Work with the American Society of African Culture and Other African Organizations]

[Various locations, 1962. Very good.. Approximately twelve typed letters and sixty printed publications. General toning and minor wear. An interesting collection of letters and publications relating to Dr. Josephus Coan's work in Africa. Dr. Josephus Roosevelt Coan (1902-2004) was a noted minister, educator, missionary, and administrator born to sharecropper parents in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Dr. Coan earned a bachelor's degree from Howard University in 1930, followed by a B.D. and an M.A. from Yale, and eventually a Ph.D. from the Hartford Seminary Foundation in 1961. Dr. Coan taught for two stretches at Morris Brown College, first from 1934 to (truncated) 1938 and then from 1948 to 1959. Between his tenures at Morris Brown, from 1939 to 1948, Dr. Coan traveled to Evaton in the Transvaal Province of South Africa to help build the R.R. Wright School of Religion at the Wilberforce Institute, devoted to Christian missionary education. Soon thereafter, Dr. Coan began serving as the first African-American superintendent at Wilberforce. While in South Africa, Dr. Coan also worked as missionary bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church's 17th District, which encompassed the present-day nations of South Africa, Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. After his return from Africa in 1948, Dr. Coan and his first wife Sammye Fuller Coan settled in Atlanta for his second stint at Morris Brown, and remained there for the remainder of their lives, where Dr. Coan also served as pastor at St. Mark's AME Church. Dr. Coan was a prolific writer, penning dozens upon dozens of sermons, speeches, conference papers, reports, pamphlets, book-length treatments of Daniel Alexander Payne and African Methodism, and much more.

The present archive encompasses a handful of letters or retained copies of letters by Coan himself, a small group of six letters written to him by officials of the American Society of African Culture, two manuscript postcards sent to Dr. Coan from correspondents in Africa, two copies of the Summary Minutes for the 1959 and 1960 AMSAC annual meetings, nine circular letters, as well as about fifty newsletters, flyers, and pamphlets on Africa, including some on South Africa during the Apartheid period. These publications include about twenty issues of the AMSAC Newsletter, its supplement, or related publications, twenty issues of Africa Weekly, two issues of Northern Rhodesia (Africa) News Survey, and a handful of others. Among Dr. Coan's retained letters is his letter expressing interest in membership in AMSAC, and other AMSAC business. The letters to Dr. Coan include a welcome letter from AMSAC welcoming Dr. Coan into the organization and several letters dealing with Dr. Coan's travel with the organization. The publications necessarily provide a detailed record of the political, social, economic, and other issues in Africa during this period, particularly pertaining to American work in various countries such as South Africa, Nigeria, Rhodesia, and Kenya. One of the more impactful items is a printed broadside from the South Africa Emergency Campaign reproducing a New York Times advertisement from May 31, 1960; it is titled, "We Protest Against the Policy of White Supremacy Called Apartheid.... (Inventory #: 5016)