RICHARD BOYD

Richard Boyd was born a slave. After the Civil War, when all slaves were set free, he began organizing churches in Texas and then worked his way back to Tennessee. At the time African-American churches didn’t have their own hymnbooks and Bibles; they were using material made by white churches. Boyd started his own organization called the National Baptist Publishing Board. Today, over a hundred years later, it is still one of the most important religious publishing organizations in the country.