The History of the Negro Church

by Carter Godwin Woodson

REV. RICHARD DEBAPTISTE
A preacher of the Word in Chicago.

Some then thought that, because of love for the Negroes, the Methodist Church did not want to see them go. Others believed that a majority felt that the Negroes should have their own choice whether for separate organization or to unite with one of the African Methodist Churches but that, should such action be taken, the public would get the impression that the Methodists had organized another Negro church to break the other two down. It was thought wise, moreover, to defer action of such far-reaching effects until the Negro question then so intensely agitated should approach nearer a definite settlement. A Negro national church, furthermore, could not minister to the wants of all Negroes inasmuch as the one proposed, like the other two already in the field, could not have prior to emancipation operated among the Negro Methodists in the South. The Methodist Church was neutral, if anything, during the Civil War period. It did not try to get rid of its Negro membership and it made no particular effort to increase it. Wherever one of the two African Methodist Churches was in a position to minister to the spiritual needs of the Negroes, the Methodists made no effort to proselyte such Negroes, although Negroes desiring admission to the Methodist churches were not refused.

This question was further agitated and had to be given serious consideration in 1864. The conference after discussing the memorials from the Negro membership took the position that it must retain oversight of the Negroes to give them efficient supervision. The conference, however, encouraged colored pastorates for colored people wherever practicable. It authorized the organization of mission conferences. These separate conferences, however, were not to impair the existing rights of the colored members nor yet to forbid the transfer of white ministers to such conferences where it might be deemed practicable and necessary. The Negroes in the Methodist Church had at last received some right to share in the management of their own pastorates, which, however, were still subject to the supervision of the white bishops. The African Methodists still made inroads on the Negro membership, therefore, because they could point with pride to men in authority in their church and the Negro members of the white connection usually conceded their point as well taken in that they received the bishops of the African Methodists in their homes and churches and gave them every possible consideration.

Some less numerous Negro communicants of white denominations were at this time severing their connection with their former coworkers. In 1865 the Negro members of the white Primitive Baptist Churches of the South organized at Columbia, Tennessee, the Colored Primitive Baptists in America. In 1866 the African Union First Colored Methodist Protestant Church of America and elsewhere was established by merging the African Union Church with the First Colored Methodist Protestant Church. In 1869 the General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church organized its Negro membership as the Colored Cumberland Presbyterian Church.

The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, with a much larger number of Negro members than all of these denominations easily solved the problem of Negro membership, as the Cumberland Presbyterians had done. While the Methodists in the North reluctantly loosed their hold on the Negro membership by granting the people of color active participation in their affairs through an annual conference, the Methodist Church, South, almost voluntarily agreed to organize its Negro constituency as a separate organization known as the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. Whether the southern Methodists did this to eliminate the Negroes or because they thought that the Negroes in their new status as freemen could do their own work better than white men, is a much mooted question. It is clear that many of the slaveholding type of Christians would want to get rid of the Negro members since they could no longer determine their faith and how it should be exercised. The only reason there was for the Negro to belong to the same church as that of his master was to control the exercise of his religious belief. As this was no longer necessary, the Negroes, so far as one element was concerned, could then easily go.

Desiring to attach to this branch of the Methodist Church the stigma of their having been once connected with their oppressors, some Negroes themselves have referred to these Colored Methodists as "seceders" and "a Democratic Rebel concern" intended to lead the Negroes back into slavery. Such statements are most uncharitable and they not only do the Negroes concerned an injustice but question the good motives of a number of benevolent southern men who took this step, feeling that it was the best way for the Negroes to develop their religious life after emancipation. There were many masters who believed that, since the Negroes had finally become free, they should have every encouragement to learn how to take care of themselves.

It would be most uncharitable, moreover, to suffer any stigma to attach to the Colored Methodists on this account. The Negroes who constituted this church went with the southern wing of that denomination at the time of its secession because they were compelled so to do. The independent African Methodists were by law and public opinion prohibited from extensive proselyting in the South and prior to the Civil War they had with the exception of their establishments in the liberal border States hardly touched the large body of the black population south of the Mason and Dixon line. The free Negroes in the South were, as in the case of Morris Brown and his followers in 1822, cut off from their brethren in the North and the slaves were compelled to worship according to the rigid regulations set forth above and in the same churches to which their masters belonged.

The separation of the Negro membership from the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, came after the Civil War. In 1866 the conference meeting that year in New Orleans made provision for the organization of the Negro members in separate congregations and for district and annual conferences, if the Negroes so desired. It was further provided on this occasion that if it were acceptable to the Negroes and it met the approval of the bishops of the church, the freedmen might have a general conference like that of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, according to the regulations of which the Negro deacons, elders, and bishops, if necessary, should be ordained to conduct this work among their own people. It was further determined that should the time arrive when the Negro members should be so set apart, all the property intended for the use of such members, held by the trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, should be transferred to duly qualified trustees of the new organization.

At the next conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, meeting in Memphis in 1870, it was reported that the Negro membership had organized five annual conferences and unanimously desired to be organized as a distinct body. The Memphis Conference thereupon agreed to comply with this request. Delegates were then elected to the first general conference which assembled in Jackson, Tennessee, October 15, 1870. From the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, there were sent as representatives Bishops Robert Paine and H. N. McTyeire; and as ministers, A. L. P. Green, Samuel Watson, Thomas Taylor, Edmund W. Sehon, Thomas Whitehead, and B. J. Morgan. The prominent delegates from the five annual conferences of the Negro members were Richard Samuels, Solon Graham, Anderson Jackson, R. T. Thiergood, L. H. Holsey, I. H. Anderson, R. H. Vanderhorst, W. H. Miles, W. P. Churchill, Isaac Lane, John W. Lane, Job Grouch, F. Ambrose, and William Jones.