The History of the Negro Church

by Carter Godwin Woodson

A church on this order takes the name of the institutional church. At the head of this body, of course, is the pastor of the church; but in charge of this work sometimes is a director well trained in the social sciences and with the modern method of attacking the problems of to-day. The work scheduled is more than the mere supervision of clubs voluntarily organized. The director has a program which that particular community needs, and he is there to show the people how to work out their social salvation. If he is wise in presenting the case, he usually secures the coöperation necessary to organize the community for the purpose of self-education. The community is given an introduction to itself. Every talent lying dormant is here given an opportunity to be helpful in some way. What the individual from afar may bring for the good of a few through this well-organized community service becomes the heritage of all. No club can be large enough to accommodate the large membership in a city, but what the clubs of one church acquire is communicated to similar groups in another through such friendly rivalry as athletic contests, debates, periodical reports, and conferences. Many of the persons participating in this work are not in the beginning spiritually inclined, but the experience of the church in working with such groups has shown that the church has a better chance for success in making its evangelical appeal to persons under its control than in the case of delivering its message to those who have not been to any great extent influenced by Christian contact.

Churches which have undertaken this work have had varied experiences. The Institutional Church in Chicago under Dr. R. C. Ransom helped to blaze the way in this new field of endeavor. Under Dr. J. Milton Waldron and later under Dr. J. E. Ford, the Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Florida, made itself, through its clubs and Bible Institute, an effective community center. Dr. H. H. Proctor, a Congregational minister of Atlanta, practically converted his church into an organization of such groups as the day nursery, kindergarten, gymnasium, school of music, employment bureau, and Bible school.

Dr. W. N. DeBerry, the pastor of a Congregational church in Springfield, Massachusetts, has probably solved the problem about as well as any of these workers. In the first place, the church has a well-equipped modern plant so beautifully located and managed as to attract large numbers. It has, moreover, a parish home for working girls and a branch church at Amherst, Massachusetts. In the main plant are maintained a free employment bureau, a women's welfare league, a night school of domestic training, a girls' and a boys' club emphasizing the handicrafts, music, and athletics. This church has solved the problem of supplying the needs of the people during the week as well as their spiritual needs on Sunday, by emphasizing some life activity for every day in the week.

Other ministers of the gospel, who have not seen fit to carry out in their parishes in such detail the establishment of social welfare work, have nevertheless done much along special lines to socialize their churches. One hears of that indefatigable worker, the Rev. Mr. Bradby, of Detroit; R. W. Bagnall, the rector of the Episcopal Church of the same city; the fearless George Frazier Miller, an Episcopal rector of Brooklyn; the talented leader, Dr. W. H. Brooks of New York City; the popular western worker, Dr. S. W. Bacote of Kansas City; Dr. J. M. Riddle of Pasadena, California; and Dr. W. H. Jernagin, of Washington, D. C. Others of this group are Dr. Richard Carroll of Greenville, South Carolina; Bishop Sampson Brooks, as pastor of the Bethel Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore; Dr. W. D. Johnson of Plains, Georgia, now a bishop of his denomination; the picturesque pulpit orator and beautiful word painter, Dr. Peter James Bryant, of Atlanta, Georgia; and that popular preacher of the social gospel, Dr. W. W. Browne, of the Metropolitan Baptist Church in New York City.

Dr. L. K. Williams, pastor of the Olivet Baptist Church in Chicago, has doubtless surpassed all in this group. Under his direction the church conducts forty-two departments and auxiliaries with 512 officers, among whom are twenty-four paid workers. The membership of both church and Sunday School enormously increased through these agencies, that of the former being 8,743 and of the latter 3,100. This church has two edifices and five assistant pastors. During 1919 it collected $56,209 and disbursed $54,959. In an eighty-day rally it raised $29,235 in cash. In fact, so effective has been the socializing influence of this church that the community, in consideration of its inestimable value, gladly responds to any call it makes.

The Negro ambitious to rule, moreover, finds in the church about the only institution in which he may freely exercise authority. Fortunately here the Church and State are no longer connected. In the extension of the boon of toleration, the Negroes in countries in which they have been found in large numbers, have been permitted to conduct their spiritual affairs as they like. There are in the South to-day, however, white men who regret that immediately after the Civil War they permitted the Negroes to establish their separate churches. As these bodies are to-day being used to promote truths and foster movements which are prejudicial to the interest of the Southern restriction program for the Negro, the heirs of the former master class now rue the day when their fathers permitted these Negro churchmen to get from under their control. They complain that, whereas formerly they could learn from their Negro servants exactly what was going on in their group, the development the Negro church has in our day produced a reticent Negro loathe to disclose the forces operating in their churches.

No one understands this better than the Negro himself. The law of the South otherwise interpreted to the detriment of the Negro vouchsafes to him a little protection in the exercise of religion and in most parts public opinion has not become so unhealthy as to warrant action to the contrary. The Negro preacher, therefore, is granted more freedom of speech and permitted to exercise more influence than any other Negro in his community. Some fearless Negro ministers, like Bishop Lampton, have been driven out of the South because of utterances which enraged the whites, who have considered the exercise of free speech among Negroes an attack on their social laws; but, as a rule, the Negro minister may in criticism of the white race and in the defense of his people say things which other Negroes of good standing in the South would not dare to utter. Although the State may chide an outspoken minister here and there, it will hardly be so unwise so to restrict the Negro church as to interfere materially with its development as the South has done in the case of the Negro school in making Negro education altogether industrial. The church serves as a moral force, a power acting as a restraint upon the bad and stimulating the good to further moral achievement. Among the Negroes its valuable service is readily apparent when one considers the fact that this race, oppressed as it has been by the government of the State and nation, is at heart rebellious, while the church, as outspoken as it may seem, is not radical. Coming under the influence of the church, the safety valve in the South, the race has been dissuaded from any rash action by the patient and long suffering ministry reiterating the admonition that "vengeance is mine, I will repay."

Yet some men, like the sanguine and prophetic Kelly Miller, see in the Negro church of to-day the opportunity to become the unbridled servant of the people. The support of the Negro preacher comes from the people and he can fearlessly speak for them within the limits of public opinion. The Negro teacher or politician must be careful as to what he says; for, inasmuch as his support comes through the white race, he must proceed cautiously lest he be deprived of his position. As a rule, their lips are forever sealed on the rights of the Negro. As social proscription has retarded the development of the Negro lawyer, the impetus toward the uplift of the race must come from its ministry, and with the entrance of a larger number of intelligent men upon this work the masses of the Negro race will be willing to have them lead the way.

The ministry too is more attractive among Negroes than among whites. The white minister has only one important function to perform in his group, that of spiritual leadership. To the Negro community the preacher is this and besides the walking encyclopedia, the counselor of the unwise, the friend of the unfortunate, the social welfare organizer, and the interpreter of the signs of the times. No man is properly introduced to the Negro community unless he comes through the minister, and no movement can expect success there unless it has his coöperation or endorsement. The rise of the Negro physician has during recent years comparatively diminished the influence of the Negro preacher, but the latter is still the greater force in the community and will remain so unless the Negro learns to imitate the white people in substituting in their faith the doing of the will of their race for that of doing the revealed will of God.

The importance of the position of the Negro minister is apparent when one considers the large following which some of these churches have. Here the minister controls not only hundreds but thousands, as in the cases of Rev. J. E. Willis of the Vermont Avenue Baptist Church in Washington, of the Rev. Mr. Adams of the Concord Baptist Church in Brooklyn, Dr. M. W. Reddick in the leadership of thousands of Baptists in Georgia, and the eloquent Dr. M. W. D. Norman, who after years of service as a minister in North Carolina and Virginia and as Dean of the Theological Department of Shaw University, succeeded the lamented Rev. Robert Johnson at the Metropolitan Baptist Church in Washington, where thousands wait upon Dr. Norman's words. Some of these ministers are drawing very large numbers, because, instead of merely building large edifices and buying fine clothes and gifts for themselves, they are putting efficiency in the management of the churches, as in the cases of R. H. Bowling in Norfolk, Mordecai W. Johnson in Charleston, and Dr. A. Clayton Powell in New York City. In the Negro churches, moreover, as with Dr. J. C. Austin in Pittsburgh, there are being organized banks, housing corporations, insurance companies, and even steamship projects in keeping with the ideas of Dr. L. G. Jordan. Yet despite this change in point of view, the Negro church has not become a corrupt machine. Its affairs are still in the hands of men who, as a majority, are interested in their race rather than in themselves. The opportunity here sought is not that of leadership but that of service.