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RUSSELL, JAMES SOLOMON 285being raised in poverty during the Reconstruction period in the South, Russellwas able to attain a meager education, and he eventually studied for two academicyears at Hampton Institute. As a boy, he attended Zion Union Apostolic Church,an African American denomination organized in southern Virginia after the CivilWar. At age 10 he dedicated himself to becoming a preacher of the gospel. Thanksto the efforts of a white benefactor, Russell not only converted to the EpiscopalChurch but also was introduced to Francis M. Whittle, the bishop of Virginia.Although the diocese of Virginia had never had a black candidate for the ordainedministry, Whittle helped organize a seminary for African Americans at St. Stephen’sChurch in Petersburg, Virginia. In 1878 Russell became the first studentat the school, which later became Bishop Payne Divinity School.After being ordained a deacon in March 1882, Russell was dispatched by hisbishop to serve as a missionary among African Americans in Brunswick County,Virginia. He was ordained a priest five years later. Religion and education wereclosely related in Russell’s mind, and with the aid of his wife, Virginia Morgan,he opened a school (now St. Paul’s College) in 1888. St. Paul’s offered blackyouth in Brunswick and surrounding counties virtually their only opportunity toachieve an education at that time. Known as “Pa Jim,” Russell served as theschool’s principal and chaplain for several decades. He required students to attendchapel twice a day and made religion a mandatory subject. Following the organizationof a new diocese (Southern Virginia) in 1892, Russell continued to serveas a missionary at Lawrenceville. Later named archdeacon for Colored Work inSouthern Virginia, he eventually supervised 11 clergymen, 28 churches, and over2,000 communicants. He was the most prominent African American priest in theSouth in the early twentieth century, and he was the first person elected to serveas suffragan bishop for Work among Colored People in the diocese of Arkansas.Russell decided to decline that election, however, and Edward T. Demby* waschosen instead as the first black Episcopal bishop in the United States.Influenced by the philosophy of the great African American educator BookerT. Washington, Russell always advised his students to own land, to keep out ofdebt, and—when whites allowed it—to vote. Under Russell’s dedicated leadership,Saint Paul’s became the largest business in Brunswick County, and he attractedboth the attention and financial support of a number of important whitephilanthropists in the North. In 1917 he also became the first African Americanto receive an honorary degree from the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria.Russell died in Lawrenceville in March 1935, and approximately threethousand people attended his funeral on the St. Paul’s campus.BibliographyA. Papers at Saint Paul’s College in Lawrenceville, Virginia, and at AEC; Adventure inFaith: An Autobiographic Story of St. Paul Normal and Industrial School, Lawrenceville,Virginia (New York, 1936).B. ANB 19, 103–4; DAB supp. 1, 645; WWWA 1, 1068; NYT, 29 March 1935; J. Carleton