Peter Randolph was born into slavery in Virginia but rose to become one of New England’s most respected Black ministers. His 1893 autobiography, From Slave Cabin to the Pulpit, recounts his journey from slavery to freedom, his legal fight to secure freedom not only for himself but also for others, and his rise as a preacher who inspired hope, faith, and resilience in a world that had tried to keep him powerless.
Peter Randolph was born around 1825 on the Brandon Plantation in Prince George County, Virginia. He entered the world already owned, enslaved alongside his mother, several siblings, and a father who lived on another nearby plantation.
In his autobiography, Randolph paints vivid scenes of plantation life: waking before daybreak, returning home after sunset, sleeping on bare floors or rough boards, standing in fear of the overseer’s whip, and watching families torn apart through sale. He described hunger so severe that they hunted small animals or fished at night just to survive.
One of the most powerful sections of Randolph’s book details the secret prayer meetings enslaved Africans held in the woods and swamps. Because slaveholders feared the liberating power of Black spirituality, open worship was often restricted or monitored. Randolph writes about slipping into the forest after dark, muffling prayers with quilts, and risking whippings just to “talk to God without the overseer listening.”
These scenes, preserved in From Slave Cabin to the Pulpit, remain among the most authentic descriptions of enslaved religious resistance ever recorded.
Amid this life of fear and oppression, Randolph’s owner, Carter H. Edloe, left a will declaring that all his slaves were to be freed after his death. The will also ordered the plantation land sold and the proceeds used to help the newly freed settle wherever they chose.
After Edloe’s death in 1844, the executor of his estate ignored the instructions in the will and kept everyone in bondage. Randolph, the only enslaved person on the plantation who could read, examined the document himself in secret and realized that their promised freedom was being withheld.
His ability to read was not accidental, it was a skill he picked up quietly and at great personal risk. Many slaveholders, and even several Southern states, banned enslaved Africans from learning to read because they feared what knowledge might inspire.
They worried that literacy would allow enslaved Africans to uncover the truth, question authority, and, as Randolph ultimately proved, use the written law to challenge their oppression and claim the freedom they were legally owed.
With the will in hand, Randolph took on the responsibility of fighting for freedom not just for himself but for every enslaved African on the Brandon Plantation. For three long years, the legal battle dragged on. He described the tension of those years, the moments of hope, and the constant fear that the court might side with the white executor and keep them in chains.
In 1847, justice finally came. A judge ordered that Randolph and sixty-five other men, women, and children be freed. They received only a fraction of the money Edloe had promised them, but they gained something far more valuable, their freedom.
On September 5, 1847, the group sailed for Boston.
Randolph arrived in Boston at about 22 years old. With the help of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, he settled among the growing free Black community on Beacon Hill. There he joined the Belknap Street Church, becoming one of the original members of the Twelfth Baptist Church.
It was in Boston that Randolph found his calling. He began preaching, first as a lay minister and later as a pastor. His autobiography describes the humility of these early years, sweeping the church, assisting the senior pastor, studying Scripture late into the night, and the deep sense of mission that grew in him as he witnessed the struggles of free Black families trying to build a life in the North.
By the 1850s he had become a force in abolitionist circles. He donated money to fugitives, helped escaped slaves settle in freedom, and traveled on missionary work, including a journey to New Brunswick to minister to refugees from American slavery.
In 1855, motivated by a desire to expose the brutality of slavery and counter false narratives about its “benevolence,” Randolph published his first book: The Sketch of Slave Life; or, An Illustration of the Peculiar Institution. This would later be expanded into the 1893 autobiography From Slave Cabin to the Pulpit.
After the Civil War ended in 1865, Randolph felt compelled to return to the South, not to live as he once had, but to preach to the newly freed. He first settled in City Point, Virginia, and later moved to Richmond.
There he became the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, the first African-American pastor the church had ever had. Randolph wrote passionately about the spiritual hunger he found among freedmen and women, people who had grown up knowing only the distorted slaveholder version of Christianity. He instituted reforms in church governance, insisted on giving women a meaningful role in the church, and challenged the class divisions that persisted even among the freed.
His leadership helped shape Black religious life during Reconstruction, giving formerly enslaved Africans a spiritual home where they could worship freely and develop leaders of their own.
After four years in Richmond, Randolph returned to Boston yet again. In 1871, he founded Ebenezer Baptist Church (Boston), created specifically for African Americans migrating from the South in the postwar years.
He continued pastoring across the Northeast for decades, eventually earning a reputation as one of the most active and respected Black ministers in New England.
Randolph’s 1893 autobiography remains his strongest legacy. Though more than 200 pages long, it reads as both a life story and a historical record.
In the book, he described the violence of plantation punishments, the fear created by slave patrols, and the secret ways enslaved Christians gathered to worship. He also recounted the long legal struggle for freedom and the emotions it brought, along with his journey toward becoming a preacher and community leader. Throughout the book, he challenged the false and violent version of Christianity that slaveholders preached to justify their cruelty.
Randolph also used his autobiography to confront the racist lie that Black people could not govern themselves. He showed that he and his fellow freedpeople not only survived but succeeded after reaching Boston. Their lives offered clear proof that once free from bondage, they were capable, resourceful, and fully able to chart their own future.
Peter Randolph died on August 7, 1897, in Boston. A Boston Journal obituary noted that he had founded and preached at more Baptist churches than any other Black minister in New England.
Sources:
https://www.nps.gov/people/peter-randolph.htm
Rev. Peter Randolph: The “Gospel” of the Slave Master and the “Benevolence” of Slavery
https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/randolph/randolph.html
