The History of the Negro Church

by Carter Godwin Woodson

It was unfortunate, however, that in 1840 a very disturbing factor appeared so as to arrest the progress of this church. There arose in this connection an element desiring an assistant superintendent. It seemed that this desire came from the friends of Rev. William Miller, a man of changing tendencies. Although a preacher of unusual intellect and a man of general ability, he did not show much stability of character. When he was a deacon in the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1813, it appeared that he used his position to do the Zion Church an injury. At a later period he, with the Asbury Church, joined the Zionites. Yet with this same church about 1820 he united with Bishop Allen so as to form the nucleus of the Bethel Church in New York City in 1830; but returned later to the Zion Church with a fragment of the Asbury congregation. In spite of this changing record, however, his friends felt that he should be made superintendent and it was finally done; but although an assistant superintendent, he never held a conference nor performed an ordination. It seemed that it was a position of honor rather than one of usefulness, but he was known as bishop until he died in 1846.

Two years later when Rev. George Galbreth was elected to this office, some dispute arose as to whether he should be a full bishop or a mere assistant, but it was finally decided that he should be an assistant only. As this did not satisfy all concerned, the friends of Mr. Galbreth continued the fight and in the conference of 1852 they carried the point of placing all bishops on equality. Part of their program too was the retirement of Bishop Rush, who, being feeble and blind, could no longer serve efficiently. The conference thereupon proceeded to elect Galbreth, Bishop, and Spywood. Bishop Spywood was retired from this office in 1856 because there were too many bishops for the work to be accomplished in the field, and during the remainder of his life he was employed as an agent of the New England Mission Board in which he served successfully.

It happened that soon after the election of the three superintendents, that is, in 1853, Bishop Galbreth died, leaving two bishops in the field. How were these bishops then to stand? Was there such a thing as a senior bishop or were they on equality? Bishop Bishop insisted that he was the General Superintendent and above and beyond his coworker. As this did not satisfy both parties he was called to trial; but, insisting that he was right, he evaded the inquiry and caused a schism in the Zion Church. Those adhering to the suspended bishop held the territory north to Philadelphia, south to Charleston and west to Pittsburgh, and called themselves the Wesleyan Methodist Episcopal Church. The others held most of New York, New England, and Nova Scotia, and retained the original name of the body, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. These two factions tended to drift in different directions. In the west there was a tendency toward Episcopalianism, whereas the east drifted toward Congregationalism. The question of the church property was finally taken into the courts, which decided in favor of those who remained with the denomination. Steps were thereafter taken to heal the breach which had been produced by the stubbornness of one man and the haste of a few others in dealing with him. In 1860 the schism was finally ended by an agreement of the two factions to bury their differences and unite for the good of the common church.

During these years some smaller movements were in progress. A division of the Union Church of Africans incorporated at Wilmington, Delaware, in 1807, resulted in the organization of the African Union Church and the Union American Methodist Episcopal Church in 1850. From the Methodist Protestant Church a sufficient number of Negroes finally withdrew to form, in 1860, the First Colored Methodist Protestant Church. These denominations, however, have not been able to compete in numbers and influence with the Allenites and Zionites.

These activities of the African Methodist denominations mentioned above would seem to indicate that the large majority of the Negroes became members of these new sects, leaving merely a few for the Baptists. As a matter of fact, however, the contrary was true. The Negro Methodists had national organization and in most cases intelligent men making a systematic effort to extend their work. The Baptists, on the other hand, had both the disadvantages and the advantages of local self-government. In their undeveloped state this unusual liberty sometimes proved to be a handicap to the Baptists in that the standard of the ministry and the moral tone of the churches were not so high as in the case of the Methodist bodies, whose conferences had power to make local churches do the right when they were not so inclined. This local self-government of the Baptists, on the other hand, made possible a more rapid increase in the number of churches established and the large influx of members in quest of the liberty wherewith they believed Christ had made them free.

What then was this peculiar feature of Baptist policy which explains the unusual growth? In the first place, the local Baptist Church is thoroughly independent of any other organization or church. It may become associated with other churches in bodies meeting periodically to devise plans for the common good of the denomination; but it is in no sense bound by the rules and regulations of such bodies. And should an association, moreover, exclude a church from its group, that church is still legally constituted a Baptist church and may join another association or form one of its own in coöperation with other churches similarly disposed. Any group of baptized believers of not less than four, moreover, may exercise the liberty of organizing a church under the direction of a regularly ordained minister of the denomination and ordination in the Baptist Church is not a difficulty. With the tendency of so many members to find fault, to disagree, to follow the advice of ill-designing persons seeking personal ends, it was a decidedly easy matter for Negro Baptist churches under these circumstances to split and thus multiply. While the Methodists might hesitate to establish an additional church so close to another as to hinder its growth, the Baptists in the heat of controversial excitement often established two or three churches where there were not at first enough people to sustain one; but in the course of time these churches, because of their unusual liberty in the evangelical effort, would attract so many more than the other liberal churches that they would all be filled. The Baptists finally aggregated about as many as all other Negro members of the various independent Negro churches. It soon happened in the South, moreover, that where the blacks were freely permitted to embrace religion the Negro Baptists outnumbered the whites in mixed churches two to one and sometimes three to one or four to one.

Detailed records of these achievements from a national point of view are lacking for the reason that the Negro Baptists prior to the organization of the National Baptist Convention had no national body of their own. During the antebellum period they belonged largely to the white churches in the South, occupying certain seats, the Negro pew, or meeting in the basement of the same edifice for worship at a special hour on the Sabbath day. In most cities in the North the independent movement among Negroes brought about the establishment of their own local churches; but, when associated, they generally belonged to the white bodies, used their literature, and followed their doctrines. As many of the white churches and organizations took little account of what these Negro communicants were doing but rather considered them as an undesirable but inevitable adjunct, no complete records of their achievements are extant. Here and there a writer of the history of the Baptists gave them honorable mention and now and then a Negro Baptist preacher in a locality had sufficient appreciation of the value of records to leave an account.

The location and the status of some of these Baptist churches will be interesting, especially in the South where their development was retarded by the restrictions of a slaveholding section living in dread of servile insurrection. During the thirties and forties a number of Negro Baptist churches were established in the District of Columbia, the first one being organized by Sampson White in 1839 and reaching its position of permanence some years later under William Williams, whose flock was the largest of this sect in the city. As it could not be associated with Negro churches in the South, then dominated by white men in the interest of slaveholders, it connected itself with the Philadelphia Baptist Association. The first Negro Baptist Church in Baltimore was organized in 1836 and was making unusual progress under the direction of M. C. Clayton, with a membership of 150 in 1846. A number of other Baptist churches in the city were soon organized thereafter, furnishing opportunity for development to its several useful Negro ministers, among whom was Rev. Noah Davis of the Saratoga Street Baptist Church.

These places in Maryland, however, were not strictly of the slaveholding attitude and so were parts of Virginia. An extensive account of the African Baptist Church of Richmond, established from the white church of that faith and placed in charge of Rev. Robert Ryland, a white man, serving at the same time as President of Richmond College, appears elsewhere. There had been for some years a Negro Baptist congregation in Portsmouth, mentioned above. There were elsewhere in the State other Baptist and Methodist churches and some of them almost entirely under the direction of Negroes. The first African Baptist Church in Petersburg had 664 communicants, the largest membership in the Middle District Baptist Association. The largest Baptist Church in Manchester (now South Richmond) in 1846 was the African Baptist Church with a membership of 487.

In South Carolina the Negroes were not permitted to separate from the whites, but they so decidedly outnumbered the latter that the churches had the aspect of Negro congregations. Of the 1,643 members belonging to the First Baptist Church in Charleston in 1846 all but 261 were persons of color. In the Second Baptist Church there were 200 white people and 312 Negroes; in the Georgetown Baptist Church 33 white persons and 298 Negroes. The Welsh Neck Church had 477 Negroes and only 83 whites. In the Association to which these churches belonged the blacks outnumbered the whites two to one. No distinction was made between the members of the two races in the minutes of the Association. The Bethel Association of this State, however, had for a number of years prior to 1838 reported the Negro members. It then had 1,502 whites and 637 blacks; but in 1843 the whites were 1,804 and the blacks 1,000.