The history of global missions often highlights pioneering male missionaries who crossed oceans and planted churches. However, another equally transformative story has remained largely untold: the contributions of Black women. These heroic saints not only supported missions but fundamentally shaped how the church approaches the mission field today.
As we explored in our previous article, the African American church has played a crucial role in spreading the Gospel worldwide despite facing significant barriers. Within that broader story, Black women created financial systems, pioneered new and compelling approaches to ministry, and demonstrated leadership that continues to influence missions today.
While women’s missionary societies provided the infrastructure, individual Black women answered the call to cross-cultural service, often overcoming barriers related to age, education, gender, and race.
Let’s meet just a few of those amazing women now…
Rebecca Protten: “The Mother of Modern Missions.”
Rebecca was born into slavery in Antigua in 1718. At the tender age of seven years old, She is said to have been kidnapped from her home and sold as a slave in what is currently known as the British Virgin Islands. It was there, after an encounter with Moravian believers, that Rebecca first met Jesus and began to dream of a future for herself in missions.
She was granted freedom from slavery when she was 12 due to the death of her slaveowner. After gaining freedom from slavery, Protten wasted no time in sharing the gospel with others.
St. Thomas, a Danish sugar colony that she called home as a girl, became Protten’s first focus as she began her missionary career. She poured her time and energy into ministering to the enslaved community there, and held a very special place in her heart for enslaved women.
Briefly imprisoned for sharing the gospel, the Moravian missionaries, with whom she worked, sent her to serve in Germany.
She spent two decades in Germany with her husband, during which time she became a deaconess in her church community. This made her one of the very first Black female church leaders of her time.
After the death of her husband, Protten relocated to the Gold Coast of Ghana, her ancestral home. She served there for 17 years with her second husband. Together they founded a school in Christianborg, which was a central location for the Transatlantic slave trade. She remained there until her death in 1780.
Sources:
https://nabconference.org/2022/02/rebecca-freundlich-protten/
https://faithfullymagazine.com/remember-rebecca-protten-impacted-christianity/
https://www.moravian.org/ccd/2020/11/27/coffee-with-moravian-ancestors-rebecca-protte
“Upon her graduation from medical school in 1895, Dr. Fleming was sent back to the Congo by the Women’s Missionary Foreign Mission Society. There, she served as the only Black doctor in the Bolengi Station of the Upper Congo.”
Dr. Louise Celestia “Lulu” Fleming: Pioneering Medical Missions in Congo
Born into slavery in Clay County, Florida, Dr. Louise Fleming briefly fled with her parents as an infant of just 6 weeks old, but her family was betrayed by a riverboat captain and returned to slavery. Her family found lasting freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1865.
Dr. Fleming attended university and earned her degree from Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Dr. Fleming became the first African American to be commissioned for mission work in Africa by the Woman’s American Baptist Foreign Missionary Society, and went to work in the Congo (now known as The Democratic Republic of the Congo).
She ministered there as a primary and English teacher, often sending students to the USA to attend Shaw University.
After five years of serving in the Congo, Dr. Fleming returned to the states due to severe illness. As she recovered, Dr. Fleming noted that access to medical care in the Congo was severely limited. This led her to pursue a medical degree through The Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia. Dr. Fleming was the first African American woman to attend this school.
Upon her graduation from medical school in 1895, Dr. Fleming was sent back to the Congo by the Women’s Missionary Foreign Mission Society. There, she served as the only Black doctor in the Bolengi Station of the Upper Congo.
After 4 years, Dr. Fleming, sadly, contracted African Sleeping Sickness which forced her to return to Philadelphia. She passed away on June 20, 1899 at the age of 37.
Sources:
https://crsj.org/dr-louise-celia-lulu-fleming/
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/fleming-louise-celia-lulu-1862-1899/
https://internationalministries.org/black-heritage-in-mission-louise-fleming/
Maria Fearing: Ministry Without Age Limits
Maria Fearing’s life trajectory challenges conventional missionary profiles. Born into slavery, she didn’t learn to read until after emancipation at age 25. She completed elementary education in her thirties and finished ninth grade as an adult. Maria financed her own education at Talladega College, and spent many of her adult years working as a domestic servant and educator until she received her calling into the mission field.
“Rejected by the church due to her advanced age, [Maria Fearing] financed her own mission expenses by selling her home and embarked on the two month journey to the Congo with Presbyterian missionaries, William and Lucy Sheppard.”
At the age of 56, Maria obeyed the Lord’s direction and applied to be sent out into the mission field. In 1894, rejected by the church due to her advanced age, she financed her own mission expenses by selling her home and embarked on the two month journey to the Congo with Presbyterian missionaries, William and Lucy Sheppard. For approximately 20 years, Fearing focused her ministry on orphaned, kidnapped, and abandoned girls. Maria also established the school, Pantops Home for Girls. After two years of service, the Presbyterian church offered Maria a salary to support her work.
Fearing’s work extended beyond direct ministry. She assisted in creating a dictionary and grammar for the local language and helped translate portions of Scripture into the Baluba-lulua language.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Fearing
https://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/maria-fearing/
https://www.awhf.org/fearing.html
Eliza Davis George: Vision and Indigenous Leadership Development
Eliza was born in 1879, as a free American woman, to formerly enslaved parents. Raised in the Baptist church, Eliza grew up with the knowledge of what Christ accomplished for her on the Cross. However, she did not make a decision to follow Christ until she was 16 years old and had experienced God in a new way at a revival meeting.
In February 1911, Eliza Davis George, a teacher at Central Texas College in Waco, reported experiencing a vision during morning devotions of Africans passing before the judgment seat of Christ bewildered by the fact that no one had ever come to tell them about Jesus. This experience led to her application for missionary service. Initially, her hopes were dismissed by her Texan Baptist leaders who told her, in unequivocal terms, that they had zero intention of ever sending a Black woman into the mission field.
Undeterred from what she knew to be the Lord’s calling, Eliza pursued support from other Black churches and began her preparations for the mission field. She arrived in Monrovia, Liberia in January 1914. She traveled to the rural interior of Sinoe County, where she and a partner opened the Bible Industrial Academy.
The results were measurable: within two years, 50 children attended the school regularly, and more than 1,000 people in the surrounding area professed Christian faith. George’s approach emphasized both biblical education and practical job skills—what today would be called vocational training.
When her mission board disbanded in 1919, George married British missionary doctor Charles George to secure financial support for continued ministry. Despite personal challenges in her marriage, from Charles’s drinking problems, she persevered for two decades, with a particular focus on training young Liberians to serve as missionaries and teachers—an approach to indigenous leadership development that was decades ahead of common mission practice.
During her years in Liberia, Eliza also planted multiple churches and opened multiple missions centers, such as The National Baptist Mission.
https://www.samford.edu/beeson-divinity/blog/2021/Eliza-Davis-George
https://www.taylorpress.net/article/7890,taylor-profiles-in-courage
https://www.renewyourthinking.net/african-american-women-in-america-eliza-davis-george/
Unique Contributions to Mission Methodology
The global church would, without a doubt, be a poorer one without the influence of Godly and faithful Black and African American women serving in missions.
First, having experienced oppression under slavery and segregation, many Black women missionaries demonstrated greater cultural sensitivity in their interactions with indigenous populations. They were less likely to adopt the paternalistic attitudes common among white missionaries of the period.
Second, Black women missionaries frequently focused on education and economic empowerment as integral components of evangelism. They established schools emphasizing both literacy and vocational skills, recognizing that sustainable spiritual transformation required addressing material needs.
Third, women missionaries often had unique access to local women and children—segments of the population that male missionaries, regardless of race, found difficult to reach due to cultural restrictions. This access allowed for the teaching of skills like needlework that provided economic independence for African women.
The Medical Mission Legacy
The contributions of Black women to global missions represent a significant chapter in Christian history that continues to shape missionary practices today.
From Rebecca Protten’s pioneering work in the 18th century to Eliza Davis George’s indigenous leadership development in the early 20th century, these women demonstrated that effective missions require cultural sensitivity, holistic ministry, and sustainable community development.
The integration of medical care with evangelism—now a cornerstone of organizations like Mission Partners For Christ—was pioneered in part by missionaries like Lulu Fleming. Her decision to pursue medical training and return to Congo as a physician-missionary represented an early model of holistic ministry.
Lulu’s approach of training local populations in medical skills also helped to facilitates today’s best practices in global health and medical missions. Rather than creating dependency on foreign medical personnel, she equipped local Congolese men and women to provide care within their own communities—a model of sustainability that remains relevant today.
Their innovations—integrating healthcare with evangelism, prioritizing education and vocational training, and developing indigenous leadership—remain foundational to modern mission work. Organizations like Mission Partners For Christ stand on the shoulders of these pioneers, carrying forward their vision of mission that addresses both spiritual and physical needs while empowering local communities to continue the work long after missionaries depart.
As we observe Black History Month, we honor not only the sacrifice and faithfulness of these remarkable women, but also the enduring legacy they created. Their stories remind us that God’s call knows no boundaries of age, education, race, or gender—and that the most transformative mission work often comes from those who have themselves experienced hardship and overcome tremendous obstacles.
