The germ of this suggestion had been already discussed. The Methodist and Baptist Churches had been divided on racial lines, negro churches being provided; but the Episcopal Church had no such easy solution. The question was, rather, how to secure, without a division, what the Negroes manifestly desired. The General Convention of 1874, in its capacity as the Board of Missions, rejected the proposal of Bishop Howe. Its acceptance might have saved long years of controversy and vacillation—controversy over negro suffrage in its Councils—vacillation of opinions, Negroes first asking separation for greater freedom in self-government, then demanding equal representation in Council; Whites first fearful of separation, then demanding separation in Council.
Meanwhile, the separate organization of Methodist and Baptist Churches, with freer worship and complete self-government, attracted and held most of the Episcopalians who had wandered from the fold, while others conformed to the Reformed Episcopal Church about 1874 to 1875. To this day, the pride of the Negroes in the “Great Negro Churches” with their own Bishops in the case of the Methodists, and, in the case of both Methodists and Baptists, their own strong leaders utterly independent of a responsibility shared by the white race, is a powerful motive in holding them to these Churches. This very great achievement which they have accomplished for themselves through sacrifices that white people of the same age know only faintly, is a source of unending satisfaction to them, and an evidence of their ability to inaugurate and maintain great enterprises. They feel this profoundly, and are drawn, with the cords of loyalty, to that which is their very own, unshared by others.
The modern era of Church activity in the South follows the reconstruction era, beginning about 1880. It is, however, about this same date that the larger activities in the North also began.
In the North, where the Negroes were comparatively few, some became members of white parishes. Perhaps an equal number were gathered in the six churches built especially for them prior to the Civil War. Of these six, however, two became extinct very quickly—Christ Church, Providence, R. I., and St. Matthew’s, Detroit, Mich. And this was the condition up to 1880, save that the negro members of white and negro parishes increased somewhat in the larger cities.
In the South, before the war, from Maryland downward and westward, only three parishes were established for the Negroes—St. James’, Baltimore; Calvary, Charleston; St. Stephen’s, Savannah—all with unbroken history to this day. There were innumerable parishes in rural communities, about fifty in South Carolina alone. Nearly every parish also had negro members who numbered many thousands. After the war, the work was a wreck, and the members of the whole South were counted only in hundreds.
And here, in parentheses, we of the Episcopal Church should recall our lasting gratitude to the American Missionary Society of the Congregational Church. During the era of reconstruction, when our Church could do well-nigh nothing with and for the Negro, that Society, with holy purpose and with only the natural mistakes of a people feeling their way toward a new problem, and at indescribable personal sacrifice of the workers, established schools, preached the Gospel, and held high the lantern of the Good Shepherd before the bewildered eyes of a hopelessly confused race. Through their work chiefly, were the leaders of the era raised up. Hampton was founded mainly under their auspices, and, until now, has been administered under their able and devoted missionaries in complete Christian courtesy to other Churches. Schools were established by them from Hampton around to Fiske, and though the South was, from the first, suspicious of their influence, they have long since won the confidence and regard of every soul who knows them by their fruits.
If we should follow the unhappy controversies of the ten years beginning about 1873, there would be disclosed ample reason for the continued estrangement of the Negro from the Church. His membership in the Church was never questioned. This, with all of spiritual privilege, was always his right. But the vexed question of the franchise was an ecclesiastical as well as a political matter; and, as always, each side had its advocates and its opponents. To the Negro, the question of representation in Conventions became important, as affecting the standing of his membership in the Church. Until that question was settled, he stood aloof. Generally, save in South Carolina and Arkansas, his right to representation was accorded, though there was some little variety in practical adjustment. South Carolina established, in 1888, a separate Archdeaconry where voice and vote, and conference with the Bishop would be free.
There was also the question of the fitness of the Negro, so new from slavery, for the office of priest. Prior to 1865, only fourteen Negroes had been ordained to our ministry, and a large proportion of these had Liberia or Haiti as an objective. None had been ordained in any Diocese south of Maryland. It would have been a totally new thing, and the South looked upon it with skepticism. Here, again, however, there were two sides, with constant controversy, resulting in reluctance on the part of Negroes to apply for Holy Orders.
True, the conviction that only negro clergy could shepherd the thousands of stray sheep back to the fold, and the consequent necessity of providing such clergy, early overcame the hesitation of the Bishops; but, even so, Standing Committees felt neither pressure as did their Bishops. Nevertheless, of the 27 clergy ordained from 1866 to 1880, there were seventeen ordained in the South, eight in the North, and two in the West. This small number, while serving to reassure the Negroes of their welcome to the ordained ministry, did not bring back the wanderers to the fold in large numbers.
It was through the earnest devotion of men like Jos. S. Atwell of Virginia, William H. Wilson of Nebraska, Henry L. Phillips of Pennsylvania, J. H. M. Pollard of Virginia, Thomas W. Cain of Texas, Cassius M. Mason of Missouri, William Cheshire of Tennessee, that the seeds of a later harvest were sown in this widely scattered vineyard. With perhaps one exception, these early ordinants were the direct fruits of our postwar schools described in another chapter. Through these schools, White and Black together set themselves the common task of supplying the native pastors for whom our people yearned. Ever since, the ministry has been recruited almost exclusively from St. Augustine’s, Raleigh—sole survivor of the old training schools; and from St. Paul’s, Lawrenceville, and later ones.