The History of the Negro Church

by Carter Godwin Woodson

J. C. PRICE
An orator and educator in the church.

Less interested in Christian education but nevertheless effective in promoting generally the cause which made the situation of the Negro church so much better in the South was Dr. J. L. M. Curry, a lawyer and congressman, representative of the Southern Confederacy. His work as Director of the Peabody Fund, easily connected with the systematic efforts of Dr. Amory Dwight Mayo, a northern man, who investigated the Negro schools in the South, set forth methods for their improvement and kept the North and the South well informed as to the forces at work among Negroes for the good of all. The southern churches as a whole during this period, however, did not so quickly forget their prejudices as to do anything of consequence for the good of the Negroes. The Negro had been begrudgingly granted his freedom and the northern teacher and missionary seemed like interlopers to be tolerated but not worthy of coöperation. The South, moreover, could not have done very much for Negro missions for the reason that immediately after the war it was decidedly impoverished; for many of the aid societies which assisted the Negroes ministered also to the whites in the desolated areas.

These missionary teachers came with a determination to do something like that of Francis Xavier, Henry Martyn, and Adoniram Judson, who bore the religious message to the Orient. They came to change the character of the freedmen through an intelligent religion based upon actual knowledge of God as revealed in the Bible. Among these workers one should mention Rev. D. L. Johnson, a teacher of refugees in Washington; Solomon Peck, a volunteer teacher of the contrabands at Beaufort, South Carolina, in 1862; Horace Bumstead, afterward President of Atlanta University; and Gen. O. O. Howard, President of Howard University.

The sort of education promoted by these workers will further explain the significance of the movement. All of the church aid societies and many of those beyond the control of churchmen had for their purpose the industrial, social, intellectual, and religious improvement of the freedmen. The capstone of the structure they would build then had its foundation in moral and religious instruction. Most workers, therefore, were chosen with regard to their fitness to function in these positions as missionaries in the school room. Few persons volunteering to do such work at that time could be devoid of a sympathetic nature, but more than this was required to build in these new citizens that Christian character which would make them helpful to their fellows and useful in the work of the Master. While education was necessary for the Negroes as for all other persons, the chief need of the Negro, as most of these workers observed it, was religion.

Acting upon this idea, therefore, almost every Negro school provided in some way for religious instruction. If the course of study were not sufficiently broad to base thereupon a more advanced course, there was usually provided some instruction in the English Bible. In case the course of study became so pretentious as to style itself a college curriculum, there was usually added the regular course in theology, which, in spite of the fact that it was the only professional work in which such institutions engaged, was sufficient for them to take over the title of university. Although lacking adequate understanding sometimes, however, these institutions had so much of the right spirit that they accomplished all but wonders. While they did not always hold the students long enough to impart all that a college graduate or a professional man should know, they so inspired the youth with the love of study that the habit once formed led them into fields of research and endeavor which men much better trained often failed to reach.

The emphasis of the northern churches upon instruction rather than upon mere proselyting immediately after the war, therefore, was not misplaced. They no doubt wrought more wisely than they thought. The Negro already had his predilections toward the Methodists and the Baptists and the mere contest for the increase of church membership to be recruited among a people, the masses of whom could not then serve God intelligently would have been love's labor lost. Northern denominations wisely coöperated with one another regardless of sectarian lines to do whatever was needful whether or not the largest contributor to the success of the enterprise received credit for it. Negroes who went from these schools had, of course, the impress of the respective denominations to which they owed their education, but very often, as it was in the case of the Presbyterians, the denomination lost to the others of a more popular appeal most of the men which it trained. Lincoln and Biddle Universities have by their training of men who, on leaving school joined the Methodists or Baptists, contributed to the success of these denominations. When one thinks of Walter H. Brooks, the popular Baptist minister in Washington, and of Joseph C. Price, the idol of the Zion Church, as graduates of Lincoln University, this contention becomes convincing.

With all of these workers in the field promoting religious education without regard to creed, the Negro churches soon had a much larger number of men equipped to extend their work. The minister who could neither read nor write became an exception to the rule and when still ambitious in spite of such shortcomings he sometimes ceased to have a following. Preaching became more of an appeal to the intellect than an effort to stir one's emotions. Sermons were made as an effort to minister to a need observed by careful consideration of the circumstances of the persons served, hymns in keeping with the thought of the discourse harmonized therewith, and prayers became the occasion of thanksgiving for blessings which the intelligent pastor could lead his congregation to appreciate and of a petition for God's help to live more righteously. In fact, the tone of worship in the Negro church had been as a result of the post bellum efforts in education very much changed as early as 1875 and decidedly so by 1885.

Given such an impetus the work of the Christian church among Negroes was rapidly carried forward. Within a few years the neglected masses of the freedmen unto whom the gospel had never been successfully preached were generally evangelized and provided with some sort of facilities for religious instruction. Publication societies sold through colporters and missionaries religious literature adapted to the special needs of the freedmen and religious workers organized in churches circles devoted to the study of Christian doctrine and the Bible. As the church thus liberalized offered the Negroes a much better opportunity for development than the other institutions, many of which for years after emancipation were regarded as spheres which the Negro should not enter, the freedmen specialized in the study of this one concern thrown open to them, mastering in a few years the principles of the Christian religion and the story of the Bible to the extent that their friends and enemies were all but startled. As a result, therefore, Negroes of to-day have a much more thorough knowledge of these fundamentals than most white men.