The History of the Negro Church

by Carter Godwin Woodson

[10] Three years later this convention sent six missionaries to Africa. These were J. H. Pressly, W. W. Cooley together with their wives, J. J. Coles and H. McKinney. The National Convention was organized in 1880, out of a protest against the attitude of certain whites toward the Negroes and they have since continued as a separate body having a publishing house of their own rather than patronize the American Baptist Publication Society.

This convention operated largely in the South and tended to decline. In 1873 the West revived its organization under the name of the Baptist Association of the Western States and Territories, while the northern churches adhered to another organization called the New England Missionary Convention, organized in 1875. In the course of time these two bodies so expanded as to embrace the whole country, yet in 1880 certain Baptists here and there formed a national body to do work in foreign lands, designating it the Baptist Foreign Mission Convention of the United States. The feeling, however, that there should be a concentration of the efforts of all Baptists directed through one national body to a particular point of attack led to a more significant national meeting of the Negro Baptists held in St. Louis in 1886. The work of the Baptist Foreign Mission Convention was later so modified that all of the national and international church work of the denomination was unified through the organization of the National Baptist Convention.

That these Baptists despite their excess of liberty succeeded as well as they did, was due in a measure to the fact that they exercised the good judgment in not immediately getting too far from their friends. The Negroes used the same polity, the same literature, and sometimes the same national agencies as the white Baptists. The southern Baptists were then less interested in these communicants whom, some say, they gladly got rid of when they could no longer dictate their spiritual development as the master did that of the slave; but the northern Baptists felt obligated to send their missionaries among the freedmen. These apostles to the lowly brought words of good cheer, expounded the gospel, established new churches, and distributed books for the enlightenment of the masses. Among some of these lowly people these men were received as apostles of old, welcomed to a new harvest which had long been waiting, for the laborers among the lowly were few.

WILBERFORCE UNIVERSITY DURING THE CIVIL WAR.

CHAPTER X RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AS A PREPARATION

THE separation of the Negro churchmen from the white organizations, however, was not necessarily a declaration of war. Most Negroes regarded this as the right step toward doing for themselves what others had hitherto done for them and some whites so considered it. As a matter of fact, the ties which have bound the Negro church organization to the whites were not such as could be severed by a mere change in the management of church affairs. The Negroes had already been divided from the whites by an unwritten law. The upheaval of the Civil War merely furnished the occasion for the separation. There still remained among the northern whites numerous philanthropists who desired to help them in the promotion of religion and morality. From this group, therefore, came numerous Christian workers supported by funds freely contributed to deliver the captive and proclaim the year of jubilee.

These Christian workers, however, cared not so much about proselyting as they did about education, the greatest need of the freedmen. The Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians, who had considerable communicants among the Negroes prior to the Civil War, took the lead in this movement, establishing at strategic points schools which they believed would become centers of culture for the whole race. The Baptists established Shaw University at Raleigh in 1865; Roger Williams at Nashville and Morehouse at Atlanta in 1867; Leland at New Orleans and Benedict at Columbia in 1871. The Free-will Baptists founded Storer College at Harpers Ferry in 1867. The Methodists, who were no less active, established Walden at Nashville in 1865, Rust at Holly Springs in 1866, Morgan at Baltimore in 1867, Haven Academy at Waynesboro in 1868, Claflin at Orangeburg in 1869, and Clark at Atlanta in 1870. The Presbyterians, who could not compete with the Baptists and Methodists in proselyting Negroes, largely restricted their efforts to the establishment of Biddle at Charlotte in 1867 and to the promotion of the work begun at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, established as Ashmun Institute in 1854. The Episcopal Church showing the tender mercy of the wicked, established St. Augustine at Raleigh in 1867. The American Missionary Association, an agency of the Congregational Church, established Avery Institute at Charleston, Ballard Normal School at Macon, and Washburn at Beaufort, North Carolina, in 1865; Trinity at Athens, Alabama, Gregory at Wilmington, North Carolina, and Fisk at Nashville in 1866; Talladega in Alabama, Emerson at Mobile, Storrs at Atlanta, and Beach at Savannah in 1867; Hampton Institute in Virginia, Knox at Athens, Burwell at Selma, now at Florence; Ely Normal in Louisville in 1868; Straight University at New Orleans, Tougaloo in Mississippi, Le Moyne at Memphis, and Lincoln at Marion, Alabama, in 1869; Dorchester Academy at McIntosh, and the Albany Normal in Georgia in 1870. The Congregationalists, moreover, figured in the establishment of Howard University, which was chartered by the United States Government in 1867 with provision for the education of all persons regardless of race.

Some other less effective forces were at work during this period accomplishing here and there results seemingly unimportant but in the end productive of much good. In 1862 Miss Towne and Miss Murray, members of the Society of Friends, established the Penn School on St. Helena Island. Cornelia Hancock, a Philadelphia woman of the same sect, founded the Laing School at Mount Pleasant, near Charleston, South Carolina. Martha Schofield, another Friend of Pennsylvania, opened at Aiken in 1865 the Schofield Industrial School. In 1864 Alida Clark, supported by Friends in Indiana, engaged in relief work among Negro orphans in Helena, Arkansas, and in 1869 established near that city what is now known as Southland College. The Reformed Presbyterians maintained a school at Natchez between 1864 and 1866, and in 1874 established Knox Academy at Selma, Alabama. The United Presbyterians opened a sort of clandestine school in Nashville in 1863, and in 1875 established Knoxville College as a center for a group of schools for Negroes in Eastern Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, and Northern Alabama. Franklinton Christian College, maintained by the American Christian Convention, was opened in 1878 and chartered in 1890. Stillman Institute was established by the southern Presbyterians at Tuscaloosa in 1876. Paine College was founded at Augusta in 1884.