Born into slavery on a Virginia plantation in 1857, James Solomon Russell (1857-1935) rose to become one of the most prominent African American pastors in the post-Civil War South. As a minister, educator, and founder of St. Paul's College in Lawrenceville, Virginia, he played a major role in the development of educational access for former slaves in the South and within the Episcopal Church from the end of Radical Reconstruction to the early 20th century. Indeed, Russell stood as a linchpin binding not only the poles of ecclesiastical racial obstacles, but the social maturity of blacks and...