Coolidge Akpan Okon Essien, Ikot Usen, Nigeria, 1950

"Essien registers consternation at the news that we must leave the next day." A portrait of Coolidge Akpan Okon Essien, the person who started a Christian movement in Nigeria similar in doctrine and practice to American Churches of Christ. Essien began the movement after completing a Bible correspondence course from the Lawrence Avenue Church of Christ, located in Nashville, Tennessee. This photograph comes from an album that recounts Eldred Echols and Boyd Reese's visit to Nigeria in 1950. The Lawrence Avenue Church of Christ in Nashville, Texas asked the two missionaries to visit Nigeria and report on an emerging indigenous Christian movement whose leader participated in a Bible correspondence course run by the Tennessee congregation. Upon their arrival, the missionaries found several thousand Christians led by Coolidge Akpan Okon Essien, from the Efik tribe in Eastern Nigeria, whose doctrine and practice were similar to that of American Churches of Christ.