A Higher Mission: The Careers of Alonzo and Althea Brown Edmiston in Central Africa

In this vital transnational study, Kimberly D. Hill critically analyzes the colonial history of central Africa through the perspective of two African American missionaries: Alonzo Edmiston and Althea Brown Edmiston. The pair met and fell in love while working as a part of the American Presbyterian Congo Mission—an operation which aimed to support the people of the Congo Free State suffering forced labor and brutal abuses under Belgian colonial governance. They discovered a unique kinship amid the country’s growing human rights movement and used their familiarity with industrial education, popularized by Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute, as a way to promote Christianity and offer valuable services to local people.