Walter Brooks

Harriet Beecher Stowe exposed the sale and separation of enslaved families as a critique against slavery in her groundbreaking novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The death of Harriet’s eighteen-month-old son Samuel of cholera gave her deep empathy for enslaved mothers whose children were sold away from them. Since enslaved people were considered property, they were not legal persons and couldn’t be lawfully married. Enslavers exercised absolute rights over couples and families to buy or sell them at will.
Walter Henderson Brooks (1851-1945) was born into slavery in Richmond. His parents belonged to different masters, so they lived apart from each other. Walter’s father earned enough money to buy his wife Lucy and their two younger children for eight hundred dollars. He couldn’t afford to buy their oldest daughter, who was sold to slave traders, transported to Tennessee, and died a short while later. Walter recalled the trauma of seeing his sister sold at a Richmond auction block, often referencing it in sermons later in life. He attended school for the first time after slavery was abolished in 1865. He completed secondary school, college, and seminary in eight years, aided by a generous scholarship. When he turned eighty-three, he repaid the scholarship and doubled the amount. He was challenged to complete his education in so few years but said of that time, “I had a hold on God and confidence in his help in all things.” He and Eva married in 1874, and on Christmas Eve a year later, Walter was ordained as a Baptist minister. He served several churches before he was called in 1882 to pastor 19th Street Baptist Church in Washington, DC, where he faithfully served until his death in 1945. That’s sixty-three years in one church! Walter wrote prayers as in prose style to share with his congregation. Included in a book of his poems is the prayer, “Holy Spirit, Come!”