William Sheppard
1865 – 1927 American Presbyterian missionary, investigator
African-American missionary who gathered evidence of Congo rubber atrocities.
- Religion
- Presbyterian
- Affiliations
- Southern Presbyterian Church, American Presbyterian Congo Mission
William Sheppard was an African-American Presbyterian missionary who worked among the Kuba people in the Congo. He documented mutilations and killings tied to the rubber trade, gathering some of the most damning eyewitness evidence of the abuses. A Belgian rubber company sued him for libel in 1909, and his acquittal became a landmark moment for the reform cause.
In the timeline
- 1899 William Sheppard exposes the Kuba massacres central figure
- 1904 Missionaries expose atrocities in Leopold's Congo mentioned