Levi Coppin
*Levi Jenkins Coppin was born on this date in 1848. He was a Black minister and editor.
He was the son of John Coppin and Jane Lily of Fredericktown, Maryland. His mother, a free Black woman, taught him to read and write, which was illegal then. After the American Civil War, his mother became the first teacher at a school for Black children in Fredericktown; Levi Coppin taught there, too. At age 17, he began to study scriptures and became motivated to seek higher education.
He moved to Wilmington, DE, where he first voted at twenty, joined Bethel AME church, and married Martha Grinnage, a schoolteacher. Their only child died nine months after birth, and Grinnage died eighteen days later. After moving to Philadelphia, Coppin became a minister at Bethel AME church in 1877. By 1879, he was in charge of the city's Mission, a circuit of smaller missions operated by the AME church. In 1881, he was transferred to become pastor of the Baltimore Bethel AME Church.
By the turn of the century, Coppin served in Delaware and edited the AME Church Review for eight years. In 1900, he was elected an AME Bishop, and in 1902, he and his second wife, Fanny Jackson, went to Africa to do missionary work. Returning to America, he served as a South Carolina and Alabama bishop. Coppin was married three times; his third wife was physician Mellissa E. Thompson. Levi Coppin died on June 25, 1924, in Philadelphia, PA.
