V I S I O N !

 

 

Lewis, Meharry H., Mary Lena Lewis Tate: V I S I O N !, Nashville: The New and Living Way Publishing Company, 2005.   ISBN 0-910003-08-4

 

(Dust jacket)

 

 

Mary Lena (Street, Lewis) Tate (1871-1930) is the Founder and First Chief Overseer of the international religious organization, The Church of the Living God, the Pillar and Ground of the Truth, Inc (1903).   She is recognized as the first Afro-American matriarch to found an international religious organization, and perhaps the second female to head such an organization in the United States.   This volume (484 pages), published by The New and Living Way Publishing Company, Nashville, Tennessee, is catalogued under such sought-after titles as, Holiness preachers, Holiness Faith and Doctrine, Pentecostal preachers, women preachers, Afro-American leaders, church leaders, and a myriad of other cogent titles and subject headings.   It documents the post-slavery beginnings of the matriarch who "...courageously entered the guarded halls of organized religion and thrust open the doors for prepared women to ascend the ecclesiastical ladders of the clergy..." to become ordained reverends, elders, bishops and chief leaders in myriad church denominations.

    Mary Lena Street married David Lewis (son of Columbus "Lum" Lewis and Bettie Sisco) on January 5, 1888 in Dickson County, Tennessee.   They were parents of two sons, Walter Curtis and Felix Early.   One of Felix Early Lewis' sons is, yours truly, Meharry H. Lewis.   Mrs. Lisa Fanning-Kwol, a fellow alumna (Indiana University) and relative, did much of the research on the Lewis family included in the book.

Contact: THE NEW AND LIVING WAY PUBLISHING COMPANY, P.O. Box 830384, Tuskegee, AL 36083-0384, regarding distribution. E-mail: clgpgt@bellsouth.net