Now available in paperback! This biography is the compelling story of
Amanda Berry Smith, a former slave and washer-woman with less than a
year of formal education who rose to become one of the nineteenth
century's most important and successful Christian evangelists. Based on
letters published in Christian newspapers, copies of her own newspaper
The Helper, and numerous public records and documents, this biography
puts Amanda Berry Smith's eventful life in a proper historical
perspective, evaluating the significant impact of her deeds. It traces
her beginnings as the child of freed blacks in antebellum Pennsylvania,
her turbulent marriages, her search for communities and faith in New
York City, and her eventual prominence as a camp-fire missionary and as
a world traveler of spiritual faith. This thoughtful individual study
probes the complex relationship between herself and other contemporary
reformers, black and white, and answers many questions left unanswered
by Smith's own autobiography.