<P> In the late nineteenth century, he witnessed state legislatures in Georgia and across the South passing measures to disfranchise blacks . He became a proponent of black nationalism and supported emigration of American blacks to Africa . He thought it was the only way they could make free and independent lives for themselves . When he traveled to Africa, he was struck by the differences in the attitude of Africans who ruled themselves and had never known the degradation of slavery . </P> <P> He founded the International Migration Society, supported by his own newspapers: The Voice of Missions (he served as editor, 1893 - 1900) and later The Voice of the People (editor, 1901 - 4). He organized two ships with a total of 500 or more emigrants, who traveled to Liberia in 1895 and 1896 . This was established as an American colony by the American Colonization Society before the Civil War, and settled by free American blacks, who tended to push aside the native African peoples . Disliking the lack of economic opportunity, cultural shock and disease, some of the migrants returned to the United States . After that, Turner did not organize another expedition . </P> <P> As a correspondent for The Christian Reporter, the weekly newspaper of the AME Church, he wrote extensively about the Civil War . Later he wrote about the condition of his parishioners in Georgia . </P> <P> When Turner joined the AME Church in 1858, its members lived mostly in the Northern and border states; total members numbered 20,000 . His biographer Stephen W. Angell described Turner as "one of the most skillful denominational builders in American history ." After the Civil War, he founded many AME congregations in Georgia as part of a missionary effort by the church in the South . It gained more than 250,000 new adherents throughout the South by 1877, and by 1896 had a total of more than 452,000 members nationally . </P>

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