Frank Cherry

Frank S Cherry (died 1963) was the founder and leader of the first Black Hebrew Israelite churches in the United States.[1][2][3] Before moving to Philadelphia and establishing a congregation there, he established and led a congregation in Chattanooga, Tennessee in the late 19th century.[4] Tenets of his church included Black Nationalism and support for Marcus Garvey. Cherry also espoused anti-semitism, claimed that the earth is square, and professed that Jesus would return in the year 2000.[5]

Cherry was from the Deep South and worked on ships and railroads before taking over a religious congregation.[6] He taught that God, Jesus, Adam, and Eve were Black.[7]

He established the Church of the Living God, the Pillar Ground of Truth for All Nations in 1886.

After his death, he was succeeded as the church's leader by his son Prince Benjamin F. Cherry.[5]

See also

References
  1. Hutchinson, Dawn (2010). Antiquity and Social Reform: Religious Experience in the Unification Church, Feminist Wicca and Nation of Yahweh. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 139. ISBN 9781443823081. The first was the Church of the Living God, the Pillar Ground of Truth for All Nations founded by F.S. Cherry in 1886 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Cherry preached that Adam, Eve, and Jesus were black and that African Americans lost their Hebrew identity during slavery. Later, William S. Crowdy founded the Church of God and Saints of Christ in 1896 in Lawrence, Kansas. Crowdy taught that blacks were heirs of the lost tribes of Israel, while white Jews were descendants of inter-racial marriages between Israelites and white Christians.
  2. Fernheimer, Janice W. (2014). Stepping Into Zion: Hatzaad Harishon, Black Jews, and the Remaking of Jewish Identity. University of Alabama Press. p. 10. ISBN 9780817318246. One of these groups, Prophet Cherry's Church of the Living God, the Pillar and Ground of Truth for All Nations is the oldest known Black Judaic sect. It was originally established in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1886. Prophet Cherry argued they were part of the original Israelite tribes chased from Babylonia (and, they claim, into Central and Western Africa where they were later sold into slavery) by the Romans in 70 CE.
  3. Rubel, Nora L. (2009). "'Chased Out of Palestine': Prophet Cherry's Church of God and Early Black Judaisms in the United States". In Curtis IV, Edward E.; Sigler, Danielle Brune (eds.). The New Black Gods: Arthur Huff Fauset and the Study of African American Religions. Indiana University Press. p. 51-56. ISBN 9780253004086.
  4. "History of Hebrew Israelism". Southern Poverty Law Center.
  5. Gallagher, Eugene V. (22 January 2019). Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in America [Five Volumes]. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 9780313050787.
  6. Parfitt, Tudor (4 February 2013). Black Jews in Africa and the Americas. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674071506.
  7. Baer, Hans A.; Jones, Yvonne (April 10, 1992). African Americans in the South: Issues of Race, Class, and Gender. University of Georgia Press. p. 130 – via Internet Archive. prince benjamin f. cherry.

Further reading
  • Black Gods of the Metropolis; Negro Religious Cults of the Urban North by Arthur Fauset, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1944
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