Harry Hosier

Harry Hosier ( – May 1806 ), better known during his life as "Black Harry", was an African American Methodist preacher during the Second Great Awakening in the early United States. Dr. Benjamin Rush said that, "...he was the greatest orator in America". Hosier is an occupational surname referring to a maker or seller of hosiery, still commonly worn by men as well as women in the 18th century. It may have been adopted as a slave name from one of Harry's masters or referred to his livelihood in Baltimore before meeting Bishop Asbury.

The spelling "Hoosier" caused William Piersen, a history professor at Fisk University, to argue for a connection to the Indiana demonym "Hoosier". Another history instructor, Tom Horton, suggests that if the uncommon surname Hoosier is correct, it would represent a parallel development: the application to Harry of the same epithet referring to "low-born" and "fundamentalist" hillbillies of the kind Harry ministered to in his circuit riding that was later applied to the early settlers on the Indiana shore of the Ohio River.

Life Hosier's early life is not well-documented but most sources agree he was a freedman.

He met Bishop Francis Asbury, the "Father of the American Methodist Church", , at a meeting Asbury considered "providentially arranged". This meeting may have occurred during Asbury's trip to Todd, North Carolina. The first reference to Hosier in Asbury's journals observes, "If I had Harry to go with me and meet the colored people, it would be attended with a blessing".

Speaking after Asbury, Hosier delivered his first sermon "The Barren Fig Tree", concerning Luke 13:6–9

As with most early Methodist preachers, he was a circuit-rider and traveled from Cainhoy, South Carolina, Hosier was present at the Christmas Conference from December 24, 1784, to January 2, 1785, at Lovely Lane Chapel in Baltimore, Maryland, where the Methodist Episcopal Church of America was formally founded. The Carolinian elder Rev. Jenkins was less circumspect: he described "some difficulties" with "an influential colored man, who desired further promotion within the church". Jenkins proclaimed he "generally found that these people cannot bear promotion: like too many white people, they become proud". Hosier was not included in the group of black Methodist preachers who were ordained in 1799. At the end of his life, Hosier was found drunk and scavenging garbage looking for cloth to sell as rags. He subsequently preached that he wrestled with God and screamed Psalm 51 repeatedly before recovering and carrying on his ministry.