Rev. Lucian M Luke , minister and educator, was born a slave in Caddo Parish, La. July 12, 1857. He was one of five children. His mother was blind she never saw her son. His father was consider a great slave preacher who ministered for 35 years until his death in the year of emancipation. After slavery Lucian was hired out to his former master to support his mother and siblings. He was devoted to his mother and cared for her during her life. She died when he was eighteen years old. After the death of his former master, he and ten others undertook to buy his plantation, in which they failed after paying $5, 000 upon it.

. In 1880 he married Anna (Annie) Stephens, an orphan who had a limited education. After their marriage she spent three years in college.

 Under the influence of his mother and father he became a Christian at the age of ten. At the age of nineteen he was licensed to preach. That he became a preacher seem natural; it is said that when he was six years old he would gather the plantation around him and would go through the forms of preaching. He took advantage of a night school on the plantation to further his education. Lucian was an active Sunday school worker, making it a point to commit and recite every Sunday one hundred verses from the scriptures. He was regarded as an encyclopedia of biblical knowledge.

At twenty-one he was called to preach to the Galilee Baptist Church at Shreveport, La., his hometown. When he took over the church there was eight members and no church of worship; after two years he resigned leaving two hundred and twenty members and a fine house of worship

While at Shreveport he studied under Rev. J A Lockell, pastor of the white Baptist church of that city. In 1880 he was called to the Bethesda Baptist Church, at Marshall, Texas. He remained there for seven years and added three hundred and twenty members to the church. While at Marshall he attended a high school, now Bishop College, taught by Professor David Abner Jr, He also received instruction from Dr. S W Culver, the eminent president of Bishop College, who he claimed is due his success as a preacher and instructor of the bible.

In 1887 he resigned to become pastor of the St. Paul Church at Paris, Texas. A year later he resigned to accept an appointment from the American Baptist Home Mission Society as general educational agent of Texas. Rev. L. M. Luke, D. D., held various positions among Baptists in that state. The most effective work done there, however, was in the educational field as financial agent of Bishop College, Marshall, Texas. He was later called as Missionary Secretary of the National Foreign Mission Convention, and on its being merged with other bodies into the National Baptist Convention; he was elected to the same position in the consolidated body. He only served a few weeks from November 25, 1895 - December 31, 1895, before his untimely death.

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