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{{Short description|American Christian Scientist (1864-1951)}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Marietta Thomas Webb
| image =
| alt =
| caption =
| birth_name = Marietta Thomas Jones
| birth_date = {{Birth year|1864}}
| birth_place = [[Petersburg, Virginia]], United States of America
| death_date = {{death year and age|1951|1864}}
| death_place =
| other_names =
| occupation = [[Christian Science practitioner]]
| years_active = 1911-1951
| known_for = Early practitioner whose testimony appears in ''[[Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures]]'' by [[Mary Baker Eddy]]
| spouse = Hiram Webb
| children = H. Orlando Webb
}}
'''Marietta Thomas Webb''' (1864–1951) was one of the first [[African American]] [[Christian Science practitioner]]s, and her testimony was selected to appear in [[Mary Baker Eddy]]'s book ''[[Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures]]''.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Carper |first1=Jeremy |title=Black History Month|url=https://sentinel.christianscience.com/issues/2006/2/108-9/black-history-month |publisher=Christian Science Sentinel |date=27 February 2006}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Leech |first1=Katherine|title=Woman of History|url=https://lasentinel.net/woman-of-history-marietta-webb-christian-science-healer.html|publisher=Los Angeles Sentinel |date=17 March 2021}}</ref>

==Biography==

Webb was born in [[Petersburg, Virginia]] in 1864 to Randall and Georgiana Jones, a little over a year after [[Abraham Lincoln]] signed the [[Emancipation Proclamation]]. She was one of five children, made up of three sons and two daughters. In 1869 the family relocated to [[Boston, Massachusetts|Boston]], where Webb received a substantial secondary education. In 1892 she married an engineer named Hiram Webb. They had one child together, Hiram Orlando, who they called "Orlando."<ref name="MBE Library">{{cite news |title=Women of History: Marietta Webb|url=https://www.marybakereddylibrary.org/research/women-of-history-marietta-webb/|publisher=Mary Baker Eddy Library|date=3 February 2020}}</ref>

By age four, Orlando suffered from a host of physical maladies, the most serious of which was [[rickets]], a disease that softens and weakens bones in children. Constantly hovering between life and death, physicians pronounced him incurable, and said that if he survived he would be an invalid. In early 1897, Webb was invited by a friend to a Wednesday evening testimony meeting at a nearby church called [[The First Church of Christ, Scientist]], also known as "The Mother Church". As Webb wrote nine years later in the ''[[Christian Science Journal]]'', after attending the meeting she felt that she had found "the religion for which I had been searching for years."<ref name="Notable African Americans">{{cite news |last1=Voorhees |first1=Amy B. |title=Christian Science and Race in America|url=https://uncpressblog.com/2021/03/11/marietta-webb-christian-science-and-race-in-america/|publisher=UNC Press|date=11 March 2021}}</ref>

Webb sought healing help from a [[Christian Science practitioner]], and borrowed a copy of ''[[Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures|Science and Health]]'' from her friend. As she began reading, she noticed Orlando getting better, and within a week he was able to get up and play. As she read on, she said his limbs grew straighter and stronger until in less than a month he had fully recovered. Orlando would end up living a natural, healthy life until 1979, when he died at age 87. After her son's recovery Webb said she found [[Christian Science]] to be "the only salvation of my race." In 1907 [[Mary Baker Eddy]] put Webb's testimony of Orlando's healing in the final chapter of her book, where it remains today.<ref name="Christian Science Origins">{{cite book |last1=Voorhees |first1=Amy B. |title=A New Christian Identity:Christian Science Origins and Experience in American Culture |url=https://uncpress.org/book/9781469662350/a-new-christian-identity/|publisher=University of North Carolina Press |date=2021 |pages=1–3}}</ref>

Webb joined the [[Church of Christ, Scientist]] in 1899. That same year she wrote her first article in ''[[The Christian Science Sentinel]]'', called "The Protecting Power of Truth", about her allegiance to the "Science of Christianity", and about the "prejudice which exists throughout the United States." She later wrote that she found Christian Science the basis for "getting out of the old prejudiced self and into the spiritual sense of man’s union with God," and saying that according to [[Mary Baker Eddy]] and ''[[Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures|Science and Health]]'', she was a "child of God, not a colored child of God."<ref name="Webb Testimony">{{cite news |last1=Webb |first1=Marietta T. |title=The Protecting Power of Truth by Marietta Webb|url=https://sentinel.christianscience.com/issues/1899/11/2-12/the-protecting-power-of-truth |publisher=Christian Science Sentinel |date=23 November 1899}}</ref>

In 1900, Webb relocated her family to [[Los Angeles, California]]. In 1911, at the age of 47, she became one of the first African Americans to be a journal-listed [[Christian Science practitioner]].<ref name="Book Review">{{cite news |first1=Timothy C. |last1=Leech |title=New Christian Identity: A Book Review|url=https://www.marybakereddylibrary.org/research/book-review-a-new-christian-identity/|publisher=Mary Baker Eddy Library|date=5 July 2022}}</ref>

==Influence==

In 1934, Webb became a founding member of a Christian Science congregation in East Los Angeles made up of almost entirely Black Americans. The press called her a "world known church worker," and in 1950, a year before her death, she was the subject of an article in ''[[Ebony Magazine]]'' featuring Black American Christian Scientists whose numbers had "burgeoned." The photograph the magazine used for the feature shows Webb reading the Bible without glasses, confirming a healing of vision troubles she had written about in her 1906 [[The Christian Science Journal|Journal]] testimony.<ref name="Mother Church and Race">{{cite news |title=Ways Mother Church Responded to Racial Unrest|url=https://www.marybakereddylibrary.org/research/what-were-some-ways-the-mother-church-responded-to-racial-unrest-in-the-1960s/|publisher=Mary Baker Eddy Library|date=13 July 2020}}</ref>

Webb's ardent participation in the [[Christian Science]] movement influenced a host of Black American adherents in the Jazz music world in the early to mid-20th century, most notably actor and singer [[Pearl Bailey]], percussionist [[Lionel Hampton]], violinist and conductor [[Everett Lee]], musician [[Cornelius Bumpus]], and singer and composer [[Blanche Calloway]]. [[Academy Awards|Academy award-nominated]] actor [[Alfre Woodard]] has been public about her practice of the religion for years.<ref name="Notable African Americans">{{cite news |last1=Voorhees |first1=Amy B. |title=Christian Science and Race in America|url=https://uncpressblog.com/2021/03/11/marietta-webb-christian-science-and-race-in-america/|publisher=UNC Press|date=11 March 2021}}</ref><ref name="Hampton and Christian Science">{{cite news |first1=Brian |last1=Dakss|title=Jazz Great Lionel Hampton Christian Science|url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jazz-great-lionel-hampton-dead-at-94/|publisher=CBS News|date=31 August 2002}}</ref><ref name="Cornelius Bumpus">{{cite news |first1=William |last1=Holland |first2= Cornelius |last2=Bumpus|title=Jazz Musician Talks about what Changed His Life|url=https://sentinel.christianscience.com/issues/1985/4/87-15/a-jazz-musician-talks-about-what-changed-his-life?ICID=SEN%20Hamburger%20Menu|publisher=Christian Science Sentinel|date=15 April 1985}}</ref><ref name="Blanche Calloway">{{cite news |title=The Queen of Syncopation|url=https://theleemsmachine.com/bean/blog/2020/08/11/blanche-calloway-the-queen-of-syncopation/|publisher=The Leems Machine|date=11 August 2020}}</ref><ref name="Alfre Woodard">{{cite news |title=Alfre Woodard Christian Science|url=https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/alfre_woodard_303656|publisher=Brainy Quote|date=9 May 2017}}</ref><ref name="Woodard Faith">{{cite news |title=Celebrity Faith|url=https://www.beliefnet.com/celebrity-faith-database/w/alfre-woodard.aspx|publisher=Beliefnet|date=5 July 2022}}</ref>

==References==
<references />

==Further reading==
* {{cite web |title="Marietta Webb" |url=https://search.csbibliography.org/annotations/marietta-webb/ |website=Annotated Bibliography of Christian Science}}
* {{cite web |author=Seekers and Scholars |title=40. Research on geography and religion in Boston, and African American history |url=https://www.marybakereddylibrary.org/research/podcast/40-research-on-geography-and-religion-in-boston-and-african-american-history/ |website=Mary Baker Eddy Library |format=audio}}

{{authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Webb, Marietta T.}}
[[Category:1864 births]]
[[Category:1951 deaths]]
[[Category:People from Petersburg, Virginia]]
[[Category:American Christian Scientists]]
[[Category:African-American writers]]
[[Category:Writers from Virginia]]
[[Category:African-American Christians]]
[[Category:American freedmen]]
[[Category:African-American activists]]
[[Category:20th-century American women writers]]
[[Category:Activists from Virginia]]
[[Category:Christian Science writers]]
[[Category:The Christian Science Monitor people]]
[[Category:Women Christian theologians]]
[[Category:American women religious writers]]
[[Category:Converts to Christian Science]]

Marietta T. Webb - Revision history

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