FOOTNOTES:
Chapter VII
THE CHRISTIAN DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEGRO IN AMERICA
In approaching the evangelization of the Negro in America it is necessary to go back to the primitive days of the colonists in order to picture the scene at the beginning.
Whether in the villages or on the plantations, the large majority of slave-holders felt a genuine compassion and an honorable responsibility for the helpless human beings brought under their care. They felt also an equal helplessness in the higher realms of guidance of the people who must yet learn the language of common intercourse. The constantly increasing importations introduced a mass of unacclimated humanity which, as constantly, postponed the day of this common language and common intercourse. The America of today knows something of the difficulties attending a too rapid immigration. But this modern problem pales before that of the primitive era of the colonies, which, beset by the new problems of new surroundings, must yet meet those of their composite social life within. The slave-master looked out upon the negro race, after a few years, in its varying stages from the newly-arrived slave to the domesticated servant, and saw manifest racial inferiority in every capacity through which he habitually measured worth.
The white settlers of America were distinctly Christian, though their religion was of widely differing brands. What were they to do as they faced the new problem of composite life? They did exactly that which was natural and normal to their varied religious principles. Those who were enough of Christians to realize religion as a paramount duty, at once began to associate the heathen Negro with their own Christian faith. At first, this was through the family or neighborhood services, prayer meetings, Sunday schools and the like. By and by, as life became more organized, churches were built, and the slave worshipped in his master’s church, and was taught by his master’s pastor. In many cases, the mistress and her daughters were his Sunday school teachers. In time, plantation churches were erected primarily for the Negroes, though generally attended by the Whites.
In this natural way, the Whites sought to maintain and perpetuate their own Christian culture, and to impart it to their negro families in such measure as the latter could receive it. It was difficult enough at best, where preachers and teachers were few, and where the struggle for a firm foothold, in a new land, was apt to develop the selfish and the sordid in human nature. It was increasingly difficult as the age of the deists and agnostics grew older and more aggressive under foreign and American leadership. It had its baneful effect upon the Christianizing of the Negro in producing that inexcusable variety of agnosticism which declines to see God’s image in His black children.
Thus naturally, yet under great difficulties, did the Christianizing of the Negro proceed until the last years of the seventeenth century, when recorded efforts become more frequent.
Prior to 1700, the Bishop of London, in charge of the Church of England in the Colonies, had attempted to supply the people with pastors, sending one or more commissaries; but these efforts had been only very partially successful.
Miss Helm, in The Upward Path, writes: “The first organized effort to give Gospel instruction to the Negroes in the American Colonies, was made in 1701 by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, a Church of England society, incorporated under William III. The first missionary, the Rev. Samuel Thomas, began work in South Carolina, where he and his successors met with ‘the ready good will of the masters, though much discouragement was felt because of the difficulties of the task, not many of the Negroes understanding the English tongue.’ The zeal of the Society and its missionaries increased, and in less than forty years the report was made of a ‘great multitude of Indians and Negroes brought over to the Christian Faith’ in different parts of the country; and, later, of a flourishing school at Charleston sending out annually about twenty young Negroes well instructed in English and the Christian Faith.” Thus the work of the Church among the Negroes in America owes its organization to the S. P. G.
Before entering upon the missions of our own Church, a general view of the Christian efforts made will be helpful.
The reports made in 1724 to the English Bishops by the Virginia parish ministers, are evidence that a few free Negroes in the parishes were permitted to be baptized, and were received into the Church when they had been taught the Catechism. This statement is equally true of the slaves. And what is true of the Episcopal Church is equally true of the Presbyterian. In all cases, the earlier converts were members of the white Churches. Indeed, in the early days, separate churches for Negroes were never contemplated.
The Presbyterian mission was begun about 1747 at Hanover, Va., with immediate success. Other missions were established, and many godly men devoted their time to work among the slaves both in the towns and on the plantations. In the Carolina colonies the same zeal was manifested, though for the most part the members of this Church dwelt in the upper counties where slaves were not so numerous. This, however, presented the occasion of even closer religious relations. There are no accurate statistics of converts at hand.
A little later came the activities of the Baptists and the Methodists, which ultimately swept into their various folds the vast bulk of the race. The Baptists, under their policy in which each congregation is a Church in itself, established negro churches in Georgia and Virginia as early as 1775. In 1793, the denomination, in its several branches, numbered about 18,000, and grew rapidly during the succeeding years. In 1860, there were about 400,000 negro Baptists, not including children and adherents under instruction which would probably run the total to more than a million.
The Methodists began work with characteristic fervor about 1770, and some twenty years later counted more than 12,000 negro members, all connected with the white congregations. In 1860 this number was increased to 207,776 or, including adherents, about a half million souls. The anti-slavery movements, which more and more estranged the Methodists, North and South, during the years 1820 to 1844, retarded for a time their work among the Negroes, but with the division, in 1844, into Northern and Southern denominations, renewed activity was attended with great success.
Dr. Phillips in his American Slavery says: “The Churches which had the greatest influence upon the Negroes were those which relied least upon ritual and most upon exhilaration.” It is true that the straightness and suppression of form rigidly applied to a people whose chief mode of expressing both social and religious emotions had for centuries, been through dancing and folk songs, was a transition too radical and rapid to be widely accepted and absorbed; but certainly the forms of worship had their lessons. A wise use of both liturgical and extemporaneous services would probably have produced better results. The Methodists would probably have made better Christians, and the Episcopalians more, had each combined the methods of both.
When education in the South was prescribed, the free, unliturgical services undoubtedly influenced a far greater number than could be reached by any other means.
The moral training of the people was a matter of the most vital importance. Infractions there were unquestionably, many of them, and worse than no help from some of the Whites; but the Church’s steady voice and practice were powerful aids to the Negroes, and no less powerful restraints to the Whites. Admixtures were common enough, and would doubtless have increased had the old régime held; but the vaster commingling which took place during the four years of war in the slave territory, was one of the tragedies of the war.
On plantations belonging to earnest Christians, the sanctity of the marriage and of family relations was emphasized. It was not the exception but the rule, in such families, that all marriages were properly solemnized; and, in the case of domestic servants, the mistress or her daughters arrayed the bride, and the pastor or plantation preacher officiated at the wedding in the church or in the “Big House” parlor.
Every law of Church and State was conformed to, and repeated efforts were made by the Church to have everybody thus conform.[3]
Pastoral relations were attended with their difficulties in the city missions. The Rev. Paul Trapier writes in 1850: “The minister has still to lament that he can come so little in contact, pastorally, with his people, owing to the peculiar nature of their employment in the week and on Sunday. He fain would urge upon owners the obligation of so arranging their domestic affairs as to afford to their servants more opportunity for attendance in the Lord’s House and on the Lord’s Day. He can seldom see them during the week unless they are sick, nor then except in cases where he feels at liberty to go into the yards of their owners for that purpose. It gives him pleasure, however, to say that, wherever he has so presumed, his reception has been respectful and kind, encouraging him to ask the same liberty more generally.”
When one considers the conditions under which the missions among the Negroes had to grow, the results were far more due to the grace and mercy of God than to the wisdom of men. This is said, not in detraction of the devotion of the men and women of all denominations who, conforming to the conditions which perforce robbed them of their full half-share, wrought their best under them as co-partners with God.
There was the ever-recurring repression by suspicious politicians, who feared that religious freedom might break down the barriers which secured the abnormal social conditions of slavery, often resulting in suppression of the gathering of Negroes for any purpose. There was the bar of illiteracy, where knowledge without book-learning, in an era of books, was sought. There was the exaction of moral standards, with home conditions conducive to none but low ideals. There was the spiritual culture of the racial tree, with no expectation, for that era certainly, of its full fruit-bearing in racial pastors and leaders. There was the agnostic scientists and their satellites with the infallible dictum, “the Negro has no soul,” to be grasped at by the selfish materialist as excuse both for declining religious culture and for abusive treatment of defenseless slaves. These, and more besides, made the conditions under which evangelization in the South was prosecuted. And in the North, for reasons both like and unlike these, there were the same repressions and far more of prejudice, driving the Negroes into independent organizations so soon as law and popular approval would permit.
Under these conditions, it would have been surprising indeed if a host of notable examples of godly leaders had arisen. Nevertheless, God did raise up examples, in every degree of advancement possible to them, as illustrations of what the Negro would be capable of under less fettered conditions.[4]
It is not easy to follow the growth of the work of the Episcopal Church, for it is amazing to see how indifferent our forefathers were, and we are, to the accuracy of record of activities. In the beginning of the eighteenth century, there seem to have been no records at all in many of the communities, beyond such a general statement as this: “I have continued to instruct the Negroes of two plantations, and from the good evidently derived from such labors I am induced to wish that I may be enabled to extend my efforts to a much larger number of the same people.”
Mr. Bishop, late Secretary of the American Church Institute for Negroes, mentions seeing, in the register of the old Bruton Parish, thirty-three pages consecutively devoted to the entry of the baptisms of negro servants and children, extending from 1746 to 1797, and containing 1122 names. Numerous were the reports made to the Bishop of London by the missionaries from the mother Church, of the careful instruction of the servants, and of the care of the owners to bring them to baptism. There being no Bishops, of course confirmation was not in view. Both white and colored were admitted to the Holy Communion at the discretion of their rectors. What was true of Bruton Parish is more or less true of the parishes of the Colonies from Maryland to the Carolinas and Georgia.
Naturally the first separate congregations were formed in the northern Colonies. Dr. Bragg of Baltimore gives an interesting account of the organization, in 1791, of the first congregation of Negroes—St. Thomas’ Parish, Philadelphia—and of other parishes elsewhere. The white Methodists of that city, objecting to the intermingling of the races in their Church of St. George’s, set the Negroes apart. The latter withdrew in 1787, and formed a Benevolent Society of Negroes, which prospered. In 1791, the Society desiring to become a Church, bought a lot, erected a building which they called after St. Thomas, and, by an almost unanimous ballot, voted itself into the Episcopal Church upon three conditions named in their petition to Bishop White. These were: first, that they should be received as a body; secondly, that they should forever have local self-control; and thirdly, that one of their number should be chosen as lay-reader and, if found worthy, be regularly ordained as their minister. Bishop White accepted the conditions, and on July 17, 1794, St. Thomas’ Church was formally opened for Services. Absalom Jones was chosen for ordination, and ordained a deacon in 1795, and priest shortly after—the first Negro ordained in the Episcopal Church in America. Of Jones, Bishop White wrote upon the occasion of his death, “I do not record the event without a tender recollection of his eminent virtues, and of his pastoral fidelity.”
In 1819, the negro members of Trinity Parish, New York, under the leadership of Peter Williams and others, and with the consent of Bishop Hobart, united themselves in the new negro Church of St. Philip. The following year, Williams was ordained, and became the first negro rector in the Diocese. “There was a great educational need, and he was the man who led the successful movement for a Colored High School in those early days. When the parish was denied representation in the Diocesan Convention (the members) quietly elected as their representative to that body the Hon. John Jay of the white race who was their real and sympathetic representative until he had succeeded in reversing the policy.”
In June, 1824, St. James’ First African Church, Baltimore, was organized by the Rev. William Levington. On October 10, 1826, the corner-stone was laid, and on March 31, 1827, the congregation occupied their new church which was that day consecrated by Bishop Kemp. “It was a day of peculiar significance to the descendants of the African race for all times to come,” writes Dr. Bragg, “for it was the first occasion anywhere in the South, where a local branch of any of the existing white Churches had been initiated among the people of the African race, with all the powers of self-government, as well as with an educated pastor, of the same race as the congregation.” The young rector was ordained priest in Philadelphia in 1828 by Bishop White, and the parish was incorporated the following year.
That the association of free and slave Negroes did not move always in the paths of pleasantness, is illustrated by the opening of St. James’ to both classes, over the objection of the free. The earnest young rector seems to have been amply strong to compose the objectors, and to inspire them with a sense of duty to their less fortunate fellow-members. Among the fruits of his short ministry were the Rev. William Douglass, and the Rev. Eli Worthington Stokes, the former the first Negro to be ordained in Maryland (1836) and the latter the first to be ordained in St. James’ Church (1843).
In 1843 Christ Church for Negroes—the first colored church in New England—was organized in Providence, R. I., by the Rev. Mr. Crummell; and, in the following year, St. Luke’s, New Haven, Conn., by the Rev. Mr. Stokes. It will be recalled that both of these devoted negro priests later gave their lives as leaders of the Church in Liberia.
Chronologically, Calvary Church, Charleston, S. C., organized in 1849 by the Rev. Paul Trapier, was the next to be built especially for the Negroes, as also to relieve the congestion in the white churches of the city. Because of the law against the assemblage of Negroes alone, a few white members were enrolled and always in attendance. The building of the church was at once begun. An unsuccessful attempt was made to destroy the church under construction, Mr. Trapier calmly announcing to the mob, “You will tear it down only over my dead body.” After a public meeting at which the full purpose was explained, the building progressed peacefully, and the good work has continued to this time. Calvary Church bore the relation to the churches in Charleston that would now be defined by the term, a City Mission.
About 1850, St. Matthews, Detroit, Mich., was established under the leadership of the Rev. William C. Munro. The anti-Negro sentiment soon operated to the closing of its doors. The wave passing, it was again revived; but lived only a few years. Yet during its brief career, it served one purpose of supreme worth, for here the Rev. Theodore Holley, later Bishop of Haiti, received part of his training, and here he was ordained.
These parochial establishments—probably the only ones in America founded on so ambitious a scale—together with St. Stephen’s, Savannah, in 1856, represented the beginnings of the purely racial churches before the Civil War; the initiation, in most cases, of local self-government; and the models of those to come later.[5]
It would not be profitable to describe in detail the work of every Colony and Diocese in the period before Emancipation, where the sameness of method and result so inevitably blends with monotony. The work in South Carolina, completely illustrative of all, will serve as a sample, and others may be briefly summarized.
South Carolina illustrates, more completely than any other, the features of work employed by all the Southern States.[6] Happily, there is almost a continuous record from which to draw. The Chronicles of St. Mark’s Parish is especially valuable as a source-book. From it we learn that from the beginning, so soon as the Negroes were taught the language, Christian instruction and Baptism followed, wherever agreeable to the Negroes. This was provided for by Article 107 of The Code of Laws. No question was raised during the Proprietary Government. When the Royal Government was established, the question was raised as to the propriety of such instructions of the slaves, but the law stood as reaffirmed by the Legislature of 1712.[7]
In 1764, the Rev. Levi Durand of St. John’s Parish, baptized the first child recorded as born of negro Christian parents. This marks the beginning of a new era for the race; for until Christian faith, the instinct of prayer, and the habit of belief, come to be the heritage of a people, making the atmosphere of life, it is not possible to begin to build the generations into the great Temple as true and tried living stones. True, such habit, such atmosphere, may become in time but the empty shell of life that is dead; this is the danger against which Christians have had always to guard. Where Christian faith is surrounded by heathen superstition, it is thrown upon guard, if the faith be true. Its guard is apt to become increasingly relaxed as the atmosphere which surrounds it is of its own making. But this latter is, none the less, the very condition of progress, where faith is truly alive. Hence it was only when the Christian Negroes could make the Christian conditions in which to rear their children, that the conversion of the race could be said to have begun. From that year, 1764, the Christians of a second generation increased with their numbers, and vastly contributed to the better and more wholesome conditions to which their new brethren came.[8]
That the disposition to evangelize the Negroes gained complete ascendency with the success of efforts, is attested by the report of the “Committee of the Religious Instruction of Colored Persons,” published in The Gospel Messenger of May, 1838.[9]
“St. John’s, Colleton. The preaching upon the plantations has been continued, with increasing evidence of the benefit resulting, both to master and servant, from this branch of duty. The interest of the master in the religious instruction of his slaves, may be known from the fact that, on most, if not all, of the plantations visited, but half the usual task is given on the days on which Divine Service is appointed to be held. During the summer, a class of 44 colored children was regularly taught (orally) for an hour every day, by members of the Rector’s family.”
By the middle of the century such reports are the rule; there were fewer rectors of distinctly white parishes than of distinctly negro missions.
In 1849, Bishop Gadsden, after noting in his address to the Convention, thirteen visitations “having more especial reference to the class of servants,” adds this comment: “In my visitations, nothing was more gratifying to behold than the chapels which have been erected on plantations at central points for the more especial accommodation of the blacks. There are now at least ten such chapels. May they be greatly multiplied, and the day not distant when each large plantation, or two or more smaller ones, united, shall have a Chaplain and daily services!”
In that year, of the 430 communicants in St. Philip’s, Charleston, 138 were colored; in St. John’s, Colleton, of the 456, the colored numbered 401. These relative proportions of numbers represent fairly two types of mixed congregations. In 1850, the proportion of communicants in the Diocese was 2751 white and 3168 negro. In 1857, as though in answer to the fervent prayer of his predecessor, Bishop Davis reports to the Convention, “The whole number of persons confirmed since the last Convention is: white 245, colored 628. I have been endeavoring to collect statistics of our operations among the colored people, but they are yet imperfect. There are, in the Diocese, 45 Chapels and places of worship for the slaves. There are about 150 lay persons, male and female, engaged in giving to them catechetical instruction. There must be 150 congregations, and catechumens in proportion to these congregations and to the number of teachers. This is as near as I can now ascertain.” What an answer, in seven years, to Bishop Gadsden’s prayers!
But the increase in baptisms far surpassed other growth, and more and more Christian parents were bringing their children to the front. In 1858, here are some figures: In old St. Philip’s, Charleston, 1 colored adult baptized, 18 colored children, 27 white,—manifestly proportionate to the Christians of the two races. In St. Stephen’s, where the Church is not as long established and Services are less frequent, adults baptized, 119 colored; children, 11 white, 13 colored. In All Saints, Waccamaw, Mr. Glennie, the pastor of the Negroes for so many years, reports 52 colored adults baptized; children, white 10, colored 186. In his postscript, Mr. Glennie wrote, “Divine services for the Negroes on 19 plantations, 614 times; largest class of negro children 70, smallest 6.”
Among the postscripts to the report of St. Philip’s, Charleston, is this one: “In the amount of missionary contributions is included $150 from the colored members of St. Philip’s (and a few of St. Michael’s) for the support of an African teacher; also $75 from the Bible Class of the assistant Minister, for St. Philip’s Scholarship in the Cape Palmas Orphan Asylum.” This is not an isolated instance of the contributions of both slave and free for Missions.
The Rev. Dr. Taylor, missionary to the Negroes of Bluffton, about the same time, furnishes this testimony to the eagerness of the little Sunday School scholars, which is very characteristic: “In the discharge of my duties, I found much to interest me; the children were for the most part attentive and disposed to learn. I was recently quite gratified in meeting with a gentleman who owned one of the plantations under my care; he informed me that the children were very anxious, when he went among them, to repeat hymns, etc., which I had taught them, and for this purpose would often follow him.”
By 1860, Bishop Davis was practically blind, though he continued to discharge his duties almost until his death in 1871. His journal for 1860, read by his son, contains a succession of confirmations of White and Colored, more of the latter than the former. And then came frightful war and its aftermath, with results in church life much like those in the industrial life of the Negro.[10]
A typical picture of the religious work of this period is given in the words of Mrs. Essie Collins Mathews.
“High above the Waccamaw river, stands the Weston Chapel, beautifully located. Through the years, I see the picture. It is built of cypress, has fine stained-glass windows, and in every way is a house well suited to the worship of the Lord. Adjoining, are a thousand acres of rice, the rice-mill, and other buildings needed by the planter. Hundreds of slaves are at work in the fields. When the clock in the Chapel tower strikes the hour for Evening Prayer, the many slaves start for the Chapel, and it is soon well-filled. The master is a lay-reader, and appears in his snowy vestments, and begins the Service we all love so dearly—‘The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him.’ Then comes the General Confession, and the people drop on their knees. Do you not see them? Many are devoutly kneeling, the women with bright-colored kerchiefs on their heads and the men with their heads bared. The soft sunlight shines through the stained-glass windows and fills the Chapel with beautiful colors. The mocking-birds are singing softly in the live-oak trees just outside. The air is filled with the fragrance of the yellow jasmine, while the master joins with his black people in the prayer, ‘Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep.’ At the close of the Service they sing, as only Negroes can sing, and with that quality of tone none others have:
‘Through the day Thy love has spared us;
Hear us ere the hour of rest;
Through the silent watches guard us,
Let no foe our peace molest.
Jesus, Thou our guardian be.
Sweet it is to trust in Thee.’
They pass out of the Chapel silently, with a smile and a kind word for each from the master who is at the door to say ‘Good night.’”
“The picture passes from our sight, and the words of the hymn can no longer be heard. We turn to the Chapel as it is today. Most of those old slaves now lie in the graves near by; and the good master, in the parish church-yard not far away.”[11]
With this example in detail, it may suffice to say that, before the war, a like activity characterized every Diocese of the South Atlantic and Gulf States, including Tennessee and Arkansas, and to a less extent Kentucky and Texas where slavery was not prevalent. There were none without plantation churches, and few parishes without negro members, and Sunday Schools for the children.
Such were some of the results of the labors of the early white missionaries. It is needless to add that no such results could have accrued had not the Negro himself possessed qualities out of which character may be built.
At the close of the Civil War, with one consent, the Dioceses of the South set themselves the task of building upon the reduced foundations. No one dreamed of a laissez faire policy. The leader spoke, and the Church, with reduced resources, responded. Some of the Bishops thought the old machinery sufficient for the new day; but most people recognized that the birth of the new era meant the change of the old order. The Negroes themselves had spoken by their actions, in refusing any longer to attend the white man’s Services. Plainly this indicated a desire for churches of their own, with local self-government such as had already been found palatable in political life. More or less of separation for the races in church had to be made, and more and more as time passed.
Gradually, as means could be provided, separate parishes were organized in the larger cities, beginning with St. Mark’s Parish, Charleston, in 1866. At first, white rectors were the rule south of Baltimore. Occasionally, as was true of the pre-war period in South Carolina, negro lay-readers were licensed; but plainly, and quite naturally, the Negroes wanted their own pastors from their own people.
From the establishment of the first negro church in Philadelphia, in 1791, among the free Negroes, the consistently prevailing demand of the freedmen has been for churches and pastors of their own. They first demanded this, and themselves suggested it to their white Bishops. Practically all of the Bishops met this desire with sympathy, Bishops Atkinson and Howe being foremost in meeting this natural ambition of the Negroes.
In 1873, Bishop Howe thus addressed his Convention: “Let a Missionary jurisdiction be erected by the General Convention with express reference to these people, and let a Missionary Bishop be consecrated, who shall give his whole time and thought to this work; who, as the executive, not of a single Diocese but of the entire Church, shall organize congregations, provide them with Church schools and pastors, and in due time raise up from among the colored people themselves, and to minister to themselves, deacons and priests who shall be educated men, and competent to the work of the ministry, and I cannot but think good would result.”
The germ of this suggestion had been already discussed. The Methodist and Baptist Churches had been divided on racial lines, negro churches being provided; but the Episcopal Church had no such easy solution. The question was, rather, how to secure, without a division, what the Negroes manifestly desired. The General Convention of 1874, in its capacity as the Board of Missions, rejected the proposal of Bishop Howe. Its acceptance might have saved long years of controversy and vacillation—controversy over negro suffrage in its Councils—vacillation of opinions, Negroes first asking separation for greater freedom in self-government, then demanding equal representation in Council; Whites first fearful of separation, then demanding separation in Council.
Meanwhile, the separate organization of Methodist and Baptist Churches, with freer worship and complete self-government, attracted and held most of the Episcopalians who had wandered from the fold, while others conformed to the Reformed Episcopal Church about 1874 to 1875. To this day, the pride of the Negroes in the “Great Negro Churches” with their own Bishops in the case of the Methodists, and, in the case of both Methodists and Baptists, their own strong leaders utterly independent of a responsibility shared by the white race, is a powerful motive in holding them to these Churches. This very great achievement which they have accomplished for themselves through sacrifices that white people of the same age know only faintly, is a source of unending satisfaction to them, and an evidence of their ability to inaugurate and maintain great enterprises. They feel this profoundly, and are drawn, with the cords of loyalty, to that which is their very own, unshared by others.
The modern era of Church activity in the South follows the reconstruction era, beginning about 1880. It is, however, about this same date that the larger activities in the North also began.
In the North, where the Negroes were comparatively few, some became members of white parishes. Perhaps an equal number were gathered in the six churches built especially for them prior to the Civil War. Of these six, however, two became extinct very quickly—Christ Church, Providence, R. I., and St. Matthew’s, Detroit, Mich. And this was the condition up to 1880, save that the negro members of white and negro parishes increased somewhat in the larger cities.
In the South, before the war, from Maryland downward and westward, only three parishes were established for the Negroes—St. James’, Baltimore; Calvary, Charleston; St. Stephen’s, Savannah—all with unbroken history to this day. There were innumerable parishes in rural communities, about fifty in South Carolina alone. Nearly every parish also had negro members who numbered many thousands. After the war, the work was a wreck, and the members of the whole South were counted only in hundreds.
And here, in parentheses, we of the Episcopal Church should recall our lasting gratitude to the American Missionary Society of the Congregational Church. During the era of reconstruction, when our Church could do well-nigh nothing with and for the Negro, that Society, with holy purpose and with only the natural mistakes of a people feeling their way toward a new problem, and at indescribable personal sacrifice of the workers, established schools, preached the Gospel, and held high the lantern of the Good Shepherd before the bewildered eyes of a hopelessly confused race. Through their work chiefly, were the leaders of the era raised up. Hampton was founded mainly under their auspices, and, until now, has been administered under their able and devoted missionaries in complete Christian courtesy to other Churches. Schools were established by them from Hampton around to Fiske, and though the South was, from the first, suspicious of their influence, they have long since won the confidence and regard of every soul who knows them by their fruits.
If we should follow the unhappy controversies of the ten years beginning about 1873, there would be disclosed ample reason for the continued estrangement of the Negro from the Church. His membership in the Church was never questioned. This, with all of spiritual privilege, was always his right. But the vexed question of the franchise was an ecclesiastical as well as a political matter; and, as always, each side had its advocates and its opponents. To the Negro, the question of representation in Conventions became important, as affecting the standing of his membership in the Church. Until that question was settled, he stood aloof. Generally, save in South Carolina and Arkansas, his right to representation was accorded, though there was some little variety in practical adjustment. South Carolina established, in 1888, a separate Archdeaconry where voice and vote, and conference with the Bishop would be free.
There was also the question of the fitness of the Negro, so new from slavery, for the office of priest. Prior to 1865, only fourteen Negroes had been ordained to our ministry, and a large proportion of these had Liberia or Haiti as an objective. None had been ordained in any Diocese south of Maryland. It would have been a totally new thing, and the South looked upon it with skepticism. Here, again, however, there were two sides, with constant controversy, resulting in reluctance on the part of Negroes to apply for Holy Orders.
True, the conviction that only negro clergy could shepherd the thousands of stray sheep back to the fold, and the consequent necessity of providing such clergy, early overcame the hesitation of the Bishops; but, even so, Standing Committees felt neither pressure as did their Bishops. Nevertheless, of the 27 clergy ordained from 1866 to 1880, there were seventeen ordained in the South, eight in the North, and two in the West. This small number, while serving to reassure the Negroes of their welcome to the ordained ministry, did not bring back the wanderers to the fold in large numbers.
It was through the earnest devotion of men like Jos. S. Atwell of Virginia, William H. Wilson of Nebraska, Henry L. Phillips of Pennsylvania, J. H. M. Pollard of Virginia, Thomas W. Cain of Texas, Cassius M. Mason of Missouri, William Cheshire of Tennessee, that the seeds of a later harvest were sown in this widely scattered vineyard. With perhaps one exception, these early ordinants were the direct fruits of our postwar schools described in another chapter. Through these schools, White and Black together set themselves the common task of supplying the native pastors for whom our people yearned. Ever since, the ministry has been recruited almost exclusively from St. Augustine’s, Raleigh—sole survivor of the old training schools; and from St. Paul’s, Lawrenceville, and later ones.
The decade from 1880 to 1890 yielded the largest proportionate increase of clergy in the history of the Church, most of whom were prepared by those older schools. Many of these became the founders of parishes or schools or both.[12] With the access of the strong, earnest men of the ’80s, there came new life into the Church’s ministry to the Negroes.
The Church Commission for Work among Colored People was created by General Convention in 1886. The next year, a report was published of the work in all the Southern Dioceses, as well as in those of Springfield, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, where first beginnings had been made. In most of them, the Bishops were those who had seen the well-nigh complete collapse of the work of the former period. The tone of their reports is in marked contrast with those of ten or twelve years before; nearly all of them describe plans that only buoyant hope could contemplate. The display is pitiful in view of the great number of missions thirty years earlier.
Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and West Virginia report one mission each, a new beginning in each case on the ruined foundations of the past. Bishop Wilmer of Alabama wrote with new hope of the revived Good Shepherd, Mobile: “This is a work of good promise.... The school in connection with the Church, and taught by one of my deaconesses, is a success. We are beginning to connect with it an Industrial School; also an Orphanage and Sisterhood.” The latter were never realized, but the Church has persisted and two others added. The congregations in Texas had increased to four, and in Mississippi to five. Florida and North Carolina had been rather behind the South Atlantic Dioceses in the old days, with many members in white Churches, but with few separate chapels. Their reports showed a strong foundation for the new times.
Florida had established churches in the upper and older half of the State, and missions at strategic points all the way to Key West. There were more congregations in each of the two Florida Dioceses, in 1922, than there were in the whole State in 1887.
North Carolina had been divided in 1884. St. Augustine’s School had done great work. The old Diocese reported thirteen organized churches with “several admirable openings if we could feel secure of the means for inaugurating and carrying on the work in these new fields.” In East Carolina there were five colored congregations, which were sufficiently organized to have regular buildings of their own. In both Dioceses, a plan of work, including parochial schools, is clearly before the Bishops and their workers. In 1895, the District of Asheville was set off. In 1922, there were, in the whole State, 39 congregations—more than double the number in 1887.
Maryland had not yet been divided. There were eight churches reported. And now there are quite as many in each of the Dioceses, with great growth of numbers, especially in Baltimore and Washington City.
Kentucky, then undivided, had three churches, with schools at Louisville and at Henderson. Now Kentucky and Lexington have three each.
South Carolina is beginning to overcome the earlier overwhelming losses. There were eleven congregations, with parochial schools for three of them. These had grown, in 1922, to twenty-five, with thirteen schools.
Tennessee had five missions, with a school for the members of Emmanuel, Memphis. These have doubled.
Virginia, reporting also for Southern Virginia, numbers six congregations and fourteen schools. Since then, the churches of the Virginia Dioceses have grown to forty-three, and the members almost proportionately.
In Georgia, the mission work was receiving wonderful impetus from the Rev. A. J. P. Dodge, the benefactor of the negro work, recently come to the coast region.[13] In 1887, there were six congregations, the remnants of once flourishing missions. Mr. Dodge pushed his work out to county after county, ably seconded by the Rev. D. Watson Winn. Ruined churches were restored, and new ones built; existing schools were strengthened, and new ones founded. In many cases, they discovered old members of the Church upon whom to build the younger generation. Georgia has been divided since then, and the six churches of the old Diocese have expanded into seven in the Diocese of Atlanta, and fifteen in the Diocese of Georgia of today. Into all of them, the devoted spirit of Dodge is built.
Another region which is quite typical of the growth during this modern period, deserves our study in short detail, i. e., North Carolina, with its several Dioceses. Here, as everywhere, the new life grew out of the members of the old dormant fire which still smouldered. Nearly every church of today began with a few Negroes who clung faithfully, in spite of destruction all around them, to the white parishes, refusing to join the purely racial Churches as the vast majority of their fellows did.
“St. Cyprian’s, New Bern, and St. Mark’s, Wilmington, were the result of the consecrated vision of Bishop Atkinson who sought to preserve to the Church the fruit of her anti-bellum labors.” The former was established in 1866, and was ministered to, for many years, by the rectors of the parish Church, in which the first members of St. Cyprian’s were reared. I quote from a manuscript story of the Church among the Negroes kindly furnished by Bishop Darst and the Executive Secretary of East Carolina. “It is impossible to estimate the value of the influence this school has had upon the life of the colored people of New Bern. It would be hard to find a native New Bernian above 35 years of age who did not at some time attend this school.” The old landmark did its work, and its site is now the Parish Playground, still serving usefully. The character of the parish has grown in grace, all its present members having been trained in the Church and in the old “Red School.” Its contributions to the Nation-Wide Campaign were $1000 in 1921.
St. Mark’s, Wilmington, was founded by the Rev. C. O. Brady about 1872. The parish is distinguished as the mother of clergy. The Parish School, with domestic science, has been a perennial garden of Church growth.
The banner parish of the Eastern Diocese is St. Joseph’s, Fayetteville, founded by the Rev. Dr. Huske and the colored members of the old parish. It also led the negro churches of the South in the Nation-Wide Campaign to which it gave $1300 in 1920.
St. Luke’s, Tarboro, was organized in 1872 by Dr. Cheshire, rector of the old parish of Calvary and father of the present Bishop of North Carolina. In 1881, the Rev. John W. Perry became rector. The parish grew, and a school was opened which has trained many good Churchmen and some teachers.
St. Michael’s, Charlotte, owes its birth and early nurture to Bishop Cheshire who, when rector of St. Peter’s, opened the Mission for colored people. A school was opened, children were trained, parents followed them, the church was completed, and an excellent plant provided equipment for a working congregation. Four men were sent forth into the ministry.
Another parish—the combined work of white and colored priests—is St. John’s, Edenton. Founded by the Rev. Dr. Drane, about 1880, the Mission was able to build its church in 1886. The parish school has sent out many successful pupils who have taken high stand in their vocations. Direct fruits of Edenton, the mother of the district, are the negro parishes of St. Philip’s, Elizabeth City; St. Paul’s, Washington; and St. Mary’s, Belhaven.
The story of these years of re-establishment in North Carolina is one of beautiful sympathy between white and negro workers, each ready to build upon the foundation of the other. Since then, the same sympathetic co-operation has attended the extension of the missions. Bishop Delany has been the founder of more than half of the existing churches in what is now, under Bishop Cheshire, his Diocese. He was consecrated Bishop Suffragan of North Carolina on October 18th, 1918, and enjoys the complete confidence of his brethren of the South.
Arkansas had no report for the Commission in 1887. She had not yet risen from the ashes of destruction. The Bishop Suffragan, Dr. Demby, writes: “The history of the Church work among the Negroes of Arkansas is very meagre; in fact, there is nothing really reliable ... outside of certain families who were members before the Civil War, during which old relations were broken up, due to the horrors of the war and the new conditions.”
Bishop Pierce and his family had opened St. Philip’s, Little Rock, about 1890. Under successive archdeacons in Bishop Brown’s day, missions had been begun in Fort Smith, Pine Bluff, New Port, Hot Springs, and Conway. Most of them were without any substantial foundation, nor had they the equipment with which to establish churches. However, ground had been broken when Bishop Winchester came in 1911. He at once saw that the problem was unlike that in other Dioceses to the eastward, where, very generally, a remnant of the old, well-trained members of the white congregations were the foundation of the missionary renaissance. So soon as the Canon on Suffragans was passed by General Convention, he proposed its application in Arkansas; and, in 1918, the Rev. Dr. Demby was elected and consecrated. He at once entered upon his task as apostle to his race. He had at first to overcome the natural feeling of insecurity which intermittent ministry had engendered.
One of the chief obstacles to foundation work in this new era, has been the uncertain income for support, resulting in long vacancies. The natural consequence has been to create in Negroes, interested in Holy Orders, the sort of skepticism which asks, “If I join you, what next? Am I to be left shepherdless and isolated in a Church without companionship?” The old policy of begging an income year by year made this very generally inevitable. To overcome that handicap is no easy task. There were many others. General Convention had issued a challenge to the faith of the Church. Arkansas was first to accept it in the name of the whole Church; and, in her material weakness, sent forth the call of faith to Bishop Demby to lead his people in the trans-Mississippi Province.
Two years ago, Bishop Demby sent forth a review of the field, and a call to the Church to give him means to occupy it. Of Arkansas, he wrote: “There are seventy-five counties in the State; in six of them, there are more colored than white people; Crittendon, 71%; Phillips, 78%; Desha, 79%; Jefferson, 71%; St. Francis, 68%; Woodruff, 58%. In only three of them has work been begun, though there are missions in several of the counties of the interior. We have scarcely begun to enter the great “Black Belt” which is ready and ripe for the harvest. What we need is substantial help to do the work to which the Church has called and consecrated us.”
The Bishop is facing the whole task as it relates to American life, just as his brother Bishop, Delany, is facing it on the Atlantic coast. “The Episcopal Church is facing the American race-problem bravely and courageously ... and, in harmony with the program of the Sociological Congress, is doing it rationally and in the spirit of Christianity. There is no question as to its attitude against peonage, lynching, riots, mob violence, and court injustices. The Bishops and priests of the Church are one against all wrongs to the Negroes or any other race unit.” He sees the call of the Church to contribute, in the best and holiest way, to the harmony of American life. He finds in this the surest ground of that reassurance of his race without which efforts are futile.
Much more, there is, but this may suffice to exhibit the breadth of vision with which our negro Bishops are viewing their great task. They are both in the heart of the Negroes’ home, east and west. As few men can, they know the problems and difficulties, the achievements and hopes.
Turning now to the northern and western Dioceses, we find a corresponding growth in the number of congregations, with far greater proportionate increase in members, and in self-supporting parishes. The building of new churches fairly well marks the progress of the diffusion of population. Before 1880, the Negroes of the North and West were few in number, and only about ten congregations in the States of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Michigan, and California, had been formed. A gradual transfusion then began, most of which could, for a time, be cared for by the white and the existing negro parishes. From that date to 1890, ten more congregations were formed. This is from Dr. Bragg’s Manual of Afro-American Church Work, dated 1910. “Since 1900, the period of greatest influx of population from the South, 45 congregations have been formed in 29 Dioceses, North and West. The Church in the North and West has been quite as much alive to the duties and privileges of negro work as has the South, to which the many millions are native.”
The next development in the upper Diocese came in New Jersey, long after the first establishments. About 1860, St. Philip’s, Newark (the first in the Diocese and the last before the Civil War) was founded. So the two Dioceses in that State were ready to meet the new people who began to flow northward in the ’80s, when St. Augustine’s, Camden, was founded in 1888, and St. Augustine’s, Asbury Park, five years later. These became the vantage points from which the present ten parishes have been formed. Sometimes the initiative came from the white parish, as in the case of Epiphany, Orange, first opened by the Rev. Alexander Mann when rector of Grace Church.
In 1865, St. Philip’s, Buffalo, was opened, and the western Diocese had a home for its limited negro population. St. Thomas’, Chicago, was founded in 1880, and is one of the largest parishes of the North Central States. In 1883, St. Michael’s, Cairo, Illinois, was opened by the parish church, and the Rev. J. B. Williams, just ordered deacon, served as rector. The site was strategic, at the head of the vast population of the Mississippi Valley. In 1885, came St. Philip’s, Omaha, Nebraska; and St. Simon’s, Topeka, Kansas, which, with St. Augustine’s, Kansas City, opened the near west for the later migrations. The next year, St. Augustine’s, Boston, initiated the separate congregations in Massachusetts for the colored members of parishes which were becoming overcrowded. These were followed by missions in Southern Ohio, Delaware, Minnesota, Ohio, and Indianapolis, through the years to 1900. Thus the Negroes in their increasingly widespread movements found Church homes in nearly all of the centres to which they were being attracted.[14]
In the summer of 1921, The Church Advocate published a statement of comparative statistics of growth in the Provinces. The figures, probably of 1920, from the entire Church, were, Clergy 155, Congregations 283, Communicants 30,113. The congregations now number 289, and probably the increase of clergy and members corresponds. Then follow these paragraphs: “In the year 1907, in the Southern States included in the Province of Sewanee, there were reported 5,719 colored communicants. Fourteen years later, 1921, within the same territory, there are reported 6,393 colored communicants, or a total gain in fourteen years of 674. In 1907, the New England States, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, reported in the aggregate 4,413 colored communicants. In 1921, this same group of States report 11,601 communicants, an increase, in that period, of 7,188.”
These figures are probably very nearly accurate; and they suggest an inquiry to which no simple yet complete answer can be given. Two explanations stand out above others: first, that the reasons which have retarded the growth of the Episcopal Church in the South are the same for White and Black alike, i. e., its ultra-conservative character, involving an unconsciously aristocratic spirit which may often seem cold and forbidding. The second explanation may be found in the economic pull toward the busier North, drawing the most enterprising element of both races. From the ministry, through business circles, to the industrial trades, our northern centres have a large percentage of southern life. This is especially and increasingly true of our negro life during the years since 1900. The Episcopal Church is cultural to a marked degree; her Services not only encourage but impart culture. Her negro members quickly become a desirable class. Thus the experience of Mississippi during the past twelve years may be somewhat exceptional, but it is still typical of the whole South. Had we held our increase through confirmations and through births in the Church, the number today would be more than trebled. In the one war-year of greatest migration, the colored congregations lost quite 50% of their numbers; these migrants are now to be found very generally in the churches all the way from Chicago to Boston.
It is sometimes very discouraging to our colored clergy to see a fine, sturdy nucleus of a strong parish evaporate in a few weeks. The loneliness of it is intense. All honor and profound respect for the men who hold their posts on a progressive picket-line, standing alone, sometimes, until recruits answer the call! They are at the training-stations, sending on the trained to the larger centres, North and South.
In the Government Report on Negro Migration, 1916-1917, Dr. James H. Dillard gives a striking illustration furnished by the reports of the Durham School, Philadelphia. “I thought that the new enrollment would probably afford some information as to new arrivals. The Principal had enrolled the new pupils on sheets containing fifty names, and had been careful to enter opposite each name the place from which the pupil had come. I took six sheets at random and found ... among the new pupils between forty and fifty per cent from the South.”
The Church is one, and the one lesson of practical value from this recital is that the Church be ever watchful and ready in pastoral care of a flock wandering far from accustomed folds, and diligent to conserve the fruit of a common sacred task. With this as the over-mastering motive, the scouts on outpost duty will rejoice equally with the mobilized army in close array, that all stand steadfast to duty.