Location: N. Main St. at Hwy 186, Seaboard
County: Northampton
Original Date Cast: 2023
A native of Seaboard, North Carolina, Dr. Nicholas Franklin Roberts was an important religious and educational leader during the late 1800s. He has been described as “one of the pioneers in the early history” of African American Baptists in North Carolina. He helped organize the Baptist Sunday School Convention. He served as President of the Colored Baptist Sunday School Convention many years. He was elected president of the General State Baptist Convention in 1885 and is said to have led the organization several years but definitive years of service were not found. (Many sources are contemporary to his service, so they do not have inclusive years.)
He also contributed to Baptist messaging and periodicals. For instance, he was co-editor of the African Expositor, a quarterly publication with a state-wide outreach. In the late 1890s, he also managed the Baptist Sentinel and grew the weekly’s readership from a couple hundred to nearly 3,500 subscribers. His ministry also included pastoring the Second Baptist Church in Raleigh and the Blount Baptist Church in Raleigh. Furthermore, he served as acting president of Shaw University. Although his tenure lasted only five months, he was the first African American president of that institution.
As a child, Roberts exhibited mathematical talent and a precocious scholastic aptitude. In 1868, he opened a school for African Americans in Seaboard in Northampton County. He later enrolled at Shaw University in 1871 and pursued further studies at the University of Chicago. He returned to North Carolina to be headmaster of the Peabody School in Warrenton.
His distinguished pedagogical career, however, occurred at Shaw University. He was the head of the Mathematics Department for almost forty years. He later served as the institution’s Vice President before his short term as President.
Not only was he respected in African American educational, social, and religious circles, he was admired throughout the city of Raleigh. He was an alderman and served on Raleigh’s Street Committee. He furthermore was a member of the Wake County School Board—the only African American member during the nineteenth century.
His peers described him as “indispensable” to the state Baptist associations. As minister, he was known as being an “impressive speaker” and a “deep thinker.” As a leader, he was not only “well-known” but also “trusted.” As stated in W.J. Simmons’s Men of Mark, Roberts “reflected honor upon the State that gave him birth.”
References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Franklin_Roberts
J. A. Whitted, A History of the Negro Baptists of North Carolina, 1860, electronic edition available at https://docsouth.unc.edu/church/whitted/whitted.html
W. J. Simmons, Men of Mark: Eminent, Progressive and Rising, 1887.
A. W. Pegues, Our Baptist Ministers, 1892.