Lemuel W. Boone: Architect of Black Baptist Life

Nearby rests Lemuel Washington Boone, born in eighteen twenty-seven and buried in eighteen seventy-eight, having accomplished more in fifty-one years than most accomplish in a lifetime. In eighteen sixty-six, just one year after the end of slavery, Boone is said to have organized the East Roanoke Association on Roanoke Island, among the first Black Baptist associations in North Carolina. The following year he presided over the founding of the General Association of the Colored Baptists of North Carolina, the first statewide Black Baptist association and the direct forerunner of the General Baptist Convention active in the state today.

He is also remembered as an early trustee of Shaw University in Raleigh. He was remembered as a powerful preacher and organizer.