Race Distinctions in American Law

by Gilbert Thomas Stephenson

CHURCHES

Colorado is the only State that has undertaken by legislation to guarantee to Negroes full and equal accommodations in churches. The rest have left it to the churches themselves to decide the matter.

It is generally known that during slavery the Negroes, for the most part, attended the white churches, where galleries were set apart for them, were members thereof, and were served by white ministers. After Emancipation, the Negroes withdrew from the white churches and built places of worship of their own. To-day, in all parts of the country, where Negroes live in considerable numbers, they have their own churches. In such cities as Boston, where the doors of all churches are in theory open to every race, Negro churches are found in the Negro districts.

Although there is practically race separation in the churches of the whole country, all the difficulties have not been solved. In 1903, the Freedman’s Aid and Southern Educational Society, an organization of the bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church, general secretaries of the church department, and leading laymen, met in session in Lincoln, Nebraska. Inasmuch as the purpose of this body was to devise and discuss means of improving the educational opportunities of the Southern Negroes, the churchmen of that race were present in good numbers. Some of the hotels in the city gave notice that they could not allow the colored delegates to eat in the main dining rooms, but that they could furnish them sleeping accommodations and serve them meals in their apartments.[^[300]] It is along this line that the difficulty usually comes.

The Baptist denomination recently organized the General Baptist Convention of America, which held its first meeting in St. Louis in 1905. The next meeting was to have been in Louisville, Kentucky, May 5 and 16, 1906. The executive committee of the convention postponed the meeting for a year, assigning as their reason, or one of their reasons, the fact that they experienced difficulty in securing a church in which to hold the convention, the white Baptists being averse to having the colored members of the denomination assemble with them. It was arranged later that the whites and Negroes should meet in the same edifice, but that the Negroes should be restricted to the use of the balconies. This, however, was resented by the Negroes.[^[301]]

The Presbyterian Church also has had to face the race problem. In its general assembly at Des Moines, Iowa, in 1906, the committee on church policies recommended the erection of a synod in Alabama to include the presbyteries of Birmingham, Levere, and Rogersville, which are composed of colored churches. They had hitherto been included in the synod of Tennessee. The report provoked such a discussion that it was carried over to the next meeting, and no subsequent account has appeared.[^[302]] At the general assembly of 1908, held in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, the question arose again out of a report of the Board of Freedmen’s Missions, some of the members from the North resenting such a separation in the missionary efforts.[^[303]]

The Episcopal Church has probably had the most difficulty with the race problem. This Church has had no separate organization for Negroes. Both races meet together in the annual diocese conventions, without distinction, and participate in the business of the Church. At one of these conventions, held at Tarboro, North Carolina, in 1907, the following resolution was passed: “That the time has come when the welfare of both races in the Southern States requires that each race should have its own ecclesiastical legislative assemblies, and that we urge the General Convention to take immediate action.” The colored clergy and congregations had already expressed their willingness to submit the whole matter to the general convention. In speaking for separation, Bishop Cheshire, of North Carolina, said: “I have come to this conclusion in spite of the sentiments and convictions of a lifetime, and though my mind and conscience compel my assent to this necessity, my heart still clings to the old ideal of a church and a diocese which in its annual gatherings should represent visibly the oneness of all races and colors in Christ.... We must confront the actual facts of the day. I believe that, in one way or another, both the white race and the colored race, consciously or unconsciously, demand a different arrangement of our ecclesiastical institutions. I believe that some separate organization for our colored work is coming in the near future.”[^[304]] At the general convention, which met in Richmond, Virginia, in October, 1907, the question of the separation of the races was much discussed, but the actual outcome has not been learned. It developed in the debate that the Southern bishops desired separation, wishing to be relieved of the burden of the Negroes in their dioceses, while the bishops from other sections preferred the present arrangement, not desiring to be burdened with a class of people not in their dioceses.[^[305]]

The Young Men’s Christian Associations of the Northern cities have to meet the problem of the Negro. The New Haven, Connecticut, people refused to permit Negroes to attend the Y. M. C. A., and a separate building had to be provided for them.[^[306]]

Within the colored church itself there is manifest a conflict between the Negroes proper and mulattoes. There is a town in North Carolina in which they have practical separation in the churches, the black Negroes going to one church and the bright mulattoes to another. A similar separation of the Negroes and mulattoes in churches exists, to some extent, in Charleston, South Carolina. At a Negro Christian Congress at Washington City, in 1906, the chairman of the meeting was charged with removing from the program dark-skinned men and substituting light-skinned men. It provoked such a discussion as to divide the meeting into two factions.[^[307]]