Black History Month 8: Joseph Jackson Fuller

Since 1987, October has been designated as “Black History Month” in the United Kingdom. This is an annual opportunity to reflect specifically on the men and women of the African diaspora, and to commemorate their courage and contributions. Over the course of the rest of the month, I will be publishing brief articles relevant to black history month - especially but not necessarily limited to short biographies of often neglected or largely forgotten black men in Britain that I hope might prompt further reading and research. 

Joseph Jackson Fuller was born a slave in 1825, in Spanish Town, St Catherine, Jamaica. His family were Christians and would join the congregation of James Phillippo, an English Baptist Missionary to Jamaica from 1823 to his death in 1879. Phillippo had been advised not to preach to slaves (who in Jamaica were forbidden from practicing any form of religion, especially Christianity) or to comment on the institution of slavery. He disregarded this, supporting the abolitionist cause and at some personal risk planted churches and started Sunday Schools and Bible studies with a view especially to reaching slaves with the liberating good news of Jesus Christ. 

The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 set slaves free throughout the Empire, with a few exceptions. One of the elements of the act was a provisional period wherein slaves over the age of six were temporarily redesignated as “apprentices” with a view in theory at least that they be better prepared for and assimilated into lives of freedom (note, these apprenticeships are to be understood very separately from the ‘apprenticeships’ of the Post-Emancipation American South’s “Black Codes”, whereby freed slaves were economically disabled, disenfranchised, and effectively re-enslaved). During this time, Fuller was educated at a reduced rate at the Baptist Mission House, where he learned quickly. 

The first wave of apprenticeships under the Slavery Abolition Act was scheduled to end in 1838, and the second, final wave in 1840, but protests led to the early granting of full emancipation on 01 August 1838. 800,000 slaves across the West Indies were made completely free. Later Fuller described the watch night service marking the occasion at the Baptist Church, where they buried a coffin with chains:

The scene on the night all over the island I believe will never be forgotten by all of us who witness it...to see the upturned eyes of the thousands as they waited around the grave which was to receive the coffin which contained the implements of slavery and as the last stroke of the clock tolled the hour of twelve, the coffin lowered and doxology was sung, the morning dawn on us a free people.

In 1839, the Jamaican Baptists began to explore the missional potential of their newfound freedom, partnering with their English Baptist friends to plan a mission to West Africa, with a view to evangelise and establish churches, improve education, and see slavery abolished from the West African chiefdoms. The Fuller family was set aside as pioneers for this task, with Joseph’s father and mother travelling first, to the Spanish island of Fernando Po off the coast of Cameroon. Joseph and his brother Samuel travelled to join them in 1844. There they were joined by another missionary from Jamaica, Joseph Merrick, and an Englishman Alfred Saker, with their families. 

The relatively short duration of his ministry there, Joseph Merrick accomplished a great deal: planting a church among the Isubu people of Cameroon in Bimbia, translating part of the New Testament into their language, establishing a printing press and setting up a brick-making machine, and publishing both a teaching text-book and his Bible translation into Isubu. He fell ill and died in 1849, however, and it fell to Fuller to take his place. Under his preaching the church grew as people left their pagan beliefs and practices to trust in Christ.

In 1850, Fuller married Elizabeth Johnson, a Jamaican school teacher. They would have three children together. In the 1850s, Fuller would lead another church in Douala, till he was finally ordained in 1859. Around this time, after nine years of marriage, Fuller’s wife Elizabeth died. Fuller continued to serve faithfully, weathering bereavement and other difficulties: not least the withdrawal of the Baptists at Fernando Po under persecution by the island’s Catholic governor and infighting between the black missionaries and white missionaries stemming especially from paternalism, financial mismanagement, cultural insensitivity, and oppressive behaviour by some white missionaries with respect to their black co-workers and the communities they were seeking to reach.

Fuller married his second wife, an English woman named Charlotte Diboll, in 1861. In 1869 they would travel to England, where they spent time in his wife’s native Norfolk. Fuller was well received by Baptists in England, and was given opportunities to preach, talk about his life, and promote the mission work in Africa. He then travelled to Jamaica, where he was able to visit his mother (his father died in 1847) and preach across the island, again raising support for the work in Africa. 

Fuller continued working in Cameroon until the late 1880s, preaching, teaching, translating books (for example, John Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress in Duala), and effecting social change. As was often the case, the work of gospel-centred missions inevitably clashed with the exploitative drive of materialistic colonialism and imperial aggression. European political machinations did not help but hindered the progress of the gospel, even as they stood in defiance to its spirit.  While indigenous evangelists under Fuller’s leadership were making progress, the Scramble for Africa would result in Fuller’s own removal from Cameroon, as he entered his seventh decade of a life mostly spent in missionary service. The Baptist Missionary Society had to move headquarters to Congo, and the churches under their care organisationally - including those under Fuller’s care pastorally - were entrusted to the Basel Missionary Society, a non-denominational but Lutheran and Continental Calvinist-leaning organisation. Sadly ignoring Fuller’s years of labour and basic principles of Baptist ecclesiology, this was negotiated over his head. In testimony to Fuller’s theological and personal investment in them, the indigenous church leaders and evangelists rebelled against this political manoeuvre, even more-so as it became apparent the German missionaries wanted to control instead of serve the churches. On the basis of Scriptural principles they declared themselves “Free Native Baptists”. 

Fuller moved to England, where he settled in Stoke Newington, London. He continued in his old age to be active in church life, speaking and preaching sometimes to crowds of thousands. It was said of him, “In England, pleading the cause of his African brother, nobody had a better reception from English audiences.” 

Fuller died on 11 December 1908. He was buried in Stoke Newington’s Abney Park Cemetery, surrounded by a host of other faithful men and women who devoted their lives to the glory of God and the good their neighbours, wherever those neighbours lived or were from. 

Further reading:

Katie Donington, Ryan Hanley, Jessica Moody, Britain's History and Memory of Transatlantic Slavery: Local Nuances of a 'National Sin' (Oxford University Press: 2016)

Peggy Brock; Norman Etherington; Gareth Griffiths and Jacqueline Van Gent, “The Rev. Joseph Jackson Fuller, Jamaican Transnational Missionary, and the Recalcitrant Baptist Pastors of Cameroon”, in Indigenous Evangelists and Questions of Authority in the British Empire 1750-1940 (Brill: 2015), 76-89

David Killingray & Joel Edwards, Black voices: The Shaping of Our Christian Experience (IVP: 2007)