The History of the Negro Church

by Carter Godwin Woodson

The schism, however, was impending; for the southern members of the churches boldly defended slavery as justified by the scriptures, while many northerners differed from them. Ministers and laymen wrote works setting forth these doctrines while pseudo-scientists and philosophers undertook to justify the enslavement of the Negroes on the ground of racial inferiority. Southerners who would not go to the extent of justifying the institution on these untenable grounds merely deprecated it as an evil for which they were not responsible and of which they could not rid themselves. Richard Fuller, a southern Baptist of unusual influence in shaping the policy of that sect in his section, expressed this thought in the words: "I am willing to appear in any controversy which can even by implication place me in a false light and odious attitude representing me as a eulogist and abettor of slavery, and not as simply the apologist of an institution transmitted to us by former generations—the existence of which I lament—for the commencement of which I am not at all responsible—for the extinction of which I am willing to make greater sacrifices than any abolitionist has made or would make, if the cause of true humanity would be thus advanced."

The outbreaks soon followed, however, in spite of efforts to heal the breach. There came from the Alabama State Baptist Convention a memorial with respect to the discrimination of the Foreign Mission Board against slaveholders in making its appointments. The reply of the Board was conciliatory but was to the effect that a slaveholder could not be consistently appointed as a missionary for the reason that such action would involve an approval of slavery. This and other Baptist conventions thereafter severed their connection with the national body, and in 1845 organized the Southern Baptist Convention. That same year occurred the secession of the Southern Methodists. That denomination had for years struggled with this question and had undertaken to maintain the position that slavery is an evil to be deplored and that ministers and bishops at least should abstain therefrom. When, in 1845, the Methodists undertook to discipline one of its bishops, James O. Andrew, charging him with holding slaves, the southern delegates stood by him and withdrew to organize the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. In 1857, the Presbyterians who had all but compromised sufficiently to hold their national body intact gave an expression of opinion on the Fugitive Slave Law which so offended its southern members that they withdrew and formed the nucleus around which the Southern Presbyterian Church was established in 1861.

In spite of the reactionary tendencies of the white churches, however, no such thing as the independence of the Negro had ever been possible in the South and could not be so after the radical aspect which this movement assumed in the North. In slave States, the majority of Negroes became a decidedly neglected mass during the reaction, although many of them were nominally members of churches. When because of the insurrectionary movement led by certain blacks like Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner, it became unpopular to teach Negroes to read and the educated white persons were not willing to supply this lack of religious workers among the blacks, there was no longer hope for ordinary religious instruction. This reaction was unusually disastrous to the Negro preacher when it was noised abroad that Nat Turner was a minister. The rumor attached to Negro ministers throughout the South the stigma of using preaching as a means to incite their race to servile insurrection.

Some of the legislation enacted by the States after this great upheaval will indicate the extent to which this fear controlled the minds of the southern people. In 1832 Virginia passed a law to silence Negro preachers, making it impossible for them thus to function except in compliance with very rigid regulations and in the presence of certain discreet white men. In 1833, Alabama made it unlawful for slaves or free Negroes to preach unless before five respectable slaveholders and when authorized by some neighboring religious society. Georgia enacted a law in 1834 providing that neither free Negroes nor slaves might preach or exhort an assembly of more than seven unless licensed by justices on the certificate of three ordained ministers. Other Southern States soon followed the example of these, passing more drastic laws prohibiting the assembly of Negroes after the early hours of the night, and providing for the expulsion of all free Negroes from such commonwealths, so as to reduce the danger of mischief from the spread of information by this more enlightened class.

Thus circumscribed, the Negroes in the South had to follow their masters in religious matters. They continued to join the Methodist and Baptist churches, but constituted a part of a mixed membership worshiping under the same roof. The masters had long since learned that coincidence of religious belief on the part of the slave and the owner was a necessity in the economy of the slaveholding States. No master would look with favor upon seeing his slave proselyted or influenced by a minister whom he would not tolerate as his own spiritual adviser. Later there was not much commingling of the two races in the same meetings. White ministers preached to the Negroes in their special meetings or provided some Negro exhorter of power to supply that need, but only when such Negro minister's character had been thoroughly investigated and approved in accordance with the law and public opinion. Where there were not so very many Negroes in the churches, they were segregated in the gallery or certain pews, which they entered by a side door, as provided in the Court of the Gentiles in the Temple of Jehovah; but if there were many Negroes and very few whites in these congregations, they usually provided separate buildings or used the same edifices at different hours. The argument in favor of this segregation was that God in making the races different intended that they should be kept separate and distinct.

Where there was allowed much liberty in seating, very often grave problems arose. Such was the case in Charleston, South Carolina, in the Bethel Church in 1833 on an occasion when Dr. Capers was to preach. As more whites came than could be seated and the Negroes refused to vacate their customary seats, a number of uncouth young white men forcibly ejected them therefrom. Because one of the preachers a few days thereafter sharply criticized this action of the uncouth element they became unusually indignant, registering a protest against such censure. An effort was made to settle the matter by reconciliation, but when that failed, nine of the young men were expelled only to be followed by 150 others to form a new organization, which established connection with the Methodist Protestant Church.

This sort of segregation was common to all of the denominations alike. The Presbytery of Charleston, finding the church in that city unusually crowded in 1850, built a structure for the worship of the Negro membership, costing $7,700. The edifice was of the shape of a T to provide seats for the whites in the transepts. It had connected with it all of the facilities for religious instruction in the other churches with the exception that teaching was oral. The Episcopalians in that city, however, found it more difficult to carry out such a policy in relieving the congestion of the Negro pews in St. Michael's and St. Phillip's. These communicants decided to build what was to be called the Calvary Church for the accommodation of the blacks who were then occupying temporary quarters in Temperance Hall. Because of certain radical action of the burial societies among the Negro communicants, however, the owner of Temperance Hall refused further to accommodate the Negroes and the Calvary Church was demolished while it was in the process of construction.

The Negroes seemed to have retained several separate places of worship in the State of Virginia, as in the case of Georgia. Among the churches established for Negroes at a very early period was that of Williamsburg, Virginia, organized exclusively for Negroes in 1776 and admitted as such to the Dover Baptist Association in 1791. Upon petitioning the state legislature in 1823, however, the Negroes were refused the permit to build a Baptist church in Richmond, although the one used by the whites was not sufficiently spacious to permit their attendance. In 1841, however, when the Baptist church was finally compelled to build a new structure to accommodate its increasing membership, they turned over to the Negroes for their special place of worship the old building in which they organized what is known as the first African Baptist Church under the pastorate of the Rev. Robert Ryland, a white man, who served during the same period as president of Richmond College. When this became unusually crowded the Ebenezer Baptist Church was organized by the overflow membership in 1855 and was controlled very much in the same way. There were flourishing Negro Methodist and Baptist churches in other parts during the forties, fifties, and sixties, conducted very much on the order of the First African Baptist Church in Richmond, or like the Anthony Street Church in Mobile, Alabama, in charge of the Rev. Keidor Hawthorne. In other centers in Virginia, however, the Negroes were proceeding almost independently. There was then a representative Baptist congregation in Portsmouth under the direction of the noted builder and organizer, E. G. Corpew. Rev. Mr. Morris, another pioneer in the work, was at this time leading forward the Court Street Baptist Church in Lynchburg. In 1837 and 1838 Sampson White was reported as a successful minister in charge of the Gillfield Baptist Church of Petersburg, which as early as 1803 undertook to erect its first structure. Sampson White then went to Norfolk for a short stay in this inviting field, and in 1839 came to Washington and organized the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church.

In the District of Columbia, where, as in Maryland, the restrictions on Negroes were not so rigid as in some other parts of the South, the Negroes had numerous churches of the Baptist and Methodist faith, and under the leadership of John F. Cooke established, in 1843, the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church.

Baltimore was no exception to this rule. As the slave and free membership freely mingled in that city they had, as early as 1835, ten congregations, and by 1847 thirteen, ten of which were Methodist. The work of the Baptists had been largely promoted by M. C. Clayton, the preacher of versatile genius, who founded the First African Church in that city in 1836, and by Noah Davis, a leader and organizer of much ability.