You can make the Bible say most anything you want. Here’s how it works. Extrapolate a passage from its immediate context, ignore its original intent, and exploit it to suit your own agenda. The practice is called proof-texting, and it’s lethal in its capacity to distort the true meaning of Scripture.
One of the most frequently used proof texts to justify slavery in nineteenth century America was Noah’s curse enumerated in Genesis 9.26-27. Noah, his wife, and their three sons and wives were the only survivors after the flood. It was commonly believed that these three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, produced the entire human race: Ham (dark-skinned), Shem (medium-skinned), and Japheth (light-skinned). It was thereby assumed, since Noah’s curse fell on Ham, that Ham’s dark-skinned descendants who settled in Africa were under the curse and thereby doomed to enslavement.
Benjamin Tucker Tanner (1835-1923) was well suited to challenge the prevailing view of Noah’s curse embraced by white establishment biblical scholars. Benjamin was an emancipated slave who had access to education, attending Avery College and Western Theological Seminary ((now Pittsburgh Theological Seminary). He founded an African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church in Washington, DC, and established a school for freedmen connected with the Navy. He served for twenty years as editor of the Christian Recorder, the largest black publication in the country. In 1869 he wrote a rebuttal to the commonly held views of Noah’s curse titled Origin of the Negro: and Is the Negro Cursed? He skillfully exposed the ulterior motives of enslavers and argued that Noah’s curse fell on Canaan, not Ham. His concluding sentence summarizes his argument well, “Canaan cursed, the negro is free, the recipient of the common blessing pronounced—not by Noah under doubtful circumstances, but by God Himself.”
Benjamin and his wife Sarah (who was born into slavery but later escaped as a child) had four children. I discovered Benjamin’s contributions to the abolitionist cause in researching his son Henry Ossawa Tanner, the first internationally recognized African American artist. Henry’s sister, Halle, was no slacker either–she became the first African American physician, male or female, in Alabama. Given their remarkable story, Benjamin’s prayer poem has added meaning: