Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Miles Mark Fisher was an African American pastor, historian, and educator. Fisher’s parents, Florida Neely and Elijah Fisher, were former slaves, and his father was a Baptist minister. The family moved to Chicago, Illinois, when Fisher was four years old so that his father could lead Olivet Baptist Church, founded in 1850 and then one of the largest African American congregations in the city. Fisher’s own career would focus on religion, both in practice as a minister and in history and theory as an author, educator, and historian.
Fisher returned to the South to study at Morehouse College in Atlanta, his father’s alma mater. He graduated in 1918, the same year that he became ordained as a Baptist minister. He returned to Chicago to begin his career as a minister in 1919 and began his study of theology at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary where he was the only African American student. He spent some time in 1920 traveling and lecturing on behalf of the Anti-Saloon League. In 1921, Fisher was elected president of the Baptist State Convention of Wisconsin. He earned his bachelor of divinity degree in 1922 and also completed his master’s thesis, “The History of the Olivet Baptist Church of Chicago,” earning a master of arts degree from the University of Chicago.
While pastoring Zion Baptist Church in Racine, Wisconsin, in 1922 Fisher published the biography of his father, The Master’s Slave: Elijah John Fisher, A Biography, and a biography of one of the first Baptist missionaries to West Africa, former slave Lott Carey. “Lott Carey: The Colonizing Missionary” was published in The Journal of Negro History, founded and edited by Carter G. Woodson, in October 1922. Fisher was awarded an honorary doctor of divinity degree from Shaw University in 1941 and would go on to earn his doctor of philosophy degree from Chicago Divinity School in 1948. His dissertation, “Negro Slave Songs in the United States,” won the American Historical Association’s prize for best historical study of the year. The text was published as a book by the American Historical Association in 1953 to positive reviews, citing “rigorous research” and taking note of Fisher’s connection to the spirituals and his discussion of the personal and universal power of the songs themselves (Hudson 1954).
Having grown up in a home that valued education and faith, Fisher focused his scholarship as a historian and educator largely on religion, and he was known for sermons that included philosophical interpretations. From 1922 until 1928, Fisher taught English and ecclesiastical history at Virginia Union and served as the J. B. Hoyt Professor of Church History and New Testament Greek at Richmond Theological Seminary. During this time, he held several pastorates, including brief terms at the Elam Baptist Church, Second Liberty Baptist Church, and Fourth Baptist Church, all in Virginia.
While in Virginia, Fisher renounced biblical fundamentalism and became engaged in disputes with the Baptist General Association. Although his ideas were often considered controversial, the work that he and other young academics produced at Virginia Union was noteworthy, earning the university and the scholars themselves a distinguished reputation. Fisher continued to write and published several essays and articles on the impact and role of the church in the African American community.
In 1928, Fisher accepted a position as pastor at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Huntington, West Virginia, and in 1930 he married Ada Virginia Foster. They would have six children. He began lecturing at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1933. That same year he became pastor of White Rock Baptist Church, where he remained until his retirement from the pulpit in 1964.
Fisher was recognized for his work in the pulpit and in the academic community throughout his career. In addition to the accolades for Negro Slave Songs, he was listed as one of the nation’s top ten black ministers by Ebony magazine in 1954 and was recognized as pastor emeritus in 1965.
His work was published in journals, magazines, newspapers, and books. He authored work on various aspects of religion and culture, including the Baptist missionary movement and the controversy between organized religion and the growing cult movement in the 1930s. He is best known for his assertion that African American “sorrow songs” made their own contributions to American music and for his research in and understanding of the impact of organized and nontraditional religion on African American lives. Fisher died in Richmond, Virginia, at the age of 71.
Joni L. Johnson Williams
See also Blues as Folklore; Herskovits, Melville Jean; Hughes, Langston; Hurston, Zora Neale; Lomax, Alan
Further Reading
Fisher, Miles Mark. 1922. The Master’s Slave: Elijah John Fisher, A Biography. Philadelphia: Judson Press.
Fisher, Miles Mark. 1953. Negro Slave Songs in the United States. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Hudson, Arthur Palmer. 1954. Review of Negro Slave Songs in the United States. American Literature 26 (3): 453–456.
Smith, Theophus H. 1994. Conjuring Culture: Biblical Formations of Black America. New York: Oxford University Press.