What is it about?
2 forgotten, forlorn individuals from the east coast's Black Hebrew Israelite movement at the beginning of the 20th century may have had a larger influence than we would expect. Malinda Morris was a pivotal female leader in Bishop William S Crowdy's Church of God and Saints of Christ, and her follower AW Cook helped to create some of the basic concepts of the second wave BHI, in Harlem; including use of Deut.28 as a proof text.
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Why is it important?
This article examines two figures from the early twentieth century beginnings of the Hebrew Israelite movement. Malinda Morris was a central, though forgotten, figure in William Crowdy’s Church of God and Saints of Christ but her creation of an independent Church upon Crowdy’s death has not so far been discussed. The strongest body of evidence regarding this Church is a booklet published by one of their Bishops, A.W. Cook, in Harlem, 1925. This booklet offers biographical, legal, constitutional, and theological information about Cook and his branch of Morris’ Church. Situated at a crucial juncture, at the beginning of the second wave of Hebrew Israelite preachers and congregations, Cook’s booklet offers some important insights into the development of foundational narratives of the movement, as well as allows us to reconstruct some of the life of this forlorn thinker and minister, and his leader Malinda Morris.
Perspectives
In 2020 I noticed I had a pdf of a Black Jewish/Hebrew Israelite text from NYC 1925, that no other scholar had mentioned. I spent several months tryign to find out everything I could about this mysterious man, Allan Wilson Cook, his family, life and beliefs; and about his spiritual mentor Queen Malinda Morris. I became very attached to him, following him through archival newspapers where he appeared every so often, and city directories in which his residence was listed. He moved from Virginia to New Jersey, to Yonkers and Harlem NYC at the height of the Harlem Renaissance; he was contemporary with the beginnings of Wentworth Matthew's Commandment Keepers; he was one of the first Black Jews to call himself Rabbi and was surprisingly ahead of his time in his thinking. He lived quite a tragic life; all of his children died before him, and his Church was unsuccessful. But this little booklet he published in 1925 survived in a few university library collections and can now be read by everyone around the world thanks to the internet, almost 100 years later. If there is any important contribution to scholarship I would like to claim, it is in rehabilitating and popularising Bishop A.W.Cook, aka Rabbi Haling Hank Lenht.
Dr Michael T Miller
Polish Academy of Sciences
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Bishop Allan Wilson Cook (Rabbi Haling Hank Lenht), Queen Malinda Morris, and the Independent Church of God: A Missing Piece in the History of Hebrew Israelite Black Judaism, Black Theology, September 2023, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/14769948.2023.2256597.
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