The decade from 1880 to 1890 yielded the largest proportionate increase of clergy in the history of the Church, most of whom were prepared by those older schools. Many of these became the founders of parishes or schools or both.[12] With the access of the strong, earnest men of the ’80s, there came new life into the Church’s ministry to the Negroes.
The Church Commission for Work among Colored People was created by General Convention in 1886. The next year, a report was published of the work in all the Southern Dioceses, as well as in those of Springfield, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, where first beginnings had been made. In most of them, the Bishops were those who had seen the well-nigh complete collapse of the work of the former period. The tone of their reports is in marked contrast with those of ten or twelve years before; nearly all of them describe plans that only buoyant hope could contemplate. The display is pitiful in view of the great number of missions thirty years earlier.
Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and West Virginia report one mission each, a new beginning in each case on the ruined foundations of the past. Bishop Wilmer of Alabama wrote with new hope of the revived Good Shepherd, Mobile: “This is a work of good promise.... The school in connection with the Church, and taught by one of my deaconesses, is a success. We are beginning to connect with it an Industrial School; also an Orphanage and Sisterhood.” The latter were never realized, but the Church has persisted and two others added. The congregations in Texas had increased to four, and in Mississippi to five. Florida and North Carolina had been rather behind the South Atlantic Dioceses in the old days, with many members in white Churches, but with few separate chapels. Their reports showed a strong foundation for the new times.
Florida had established churches in the upper and older half of the State, and missions at strategic points all the way to Key West. There were more congregations in each of the two Florida Dioceses, in 1922, than there were in the whole State in 1887.
North Carolina had been divided in 1884. St. Augustine’s School had done great work. The old Diocese reported thirteen organized churches with “several admirable openings if we could feel secure of the means for inaugurating and carrying on the work in these new fields.” In East Carolina there were five colored congregations, which were sufficiently organized to have regular buildings of their own. In both Dioceses, a plan of work, including parochial schools, is clearly before the Bishops and their workers. In 1895, the District of Asheville was set off. In 1922, there were, in the whole State, 39 congregations—more than double the number in 1887.
Maryland had not yet been divided. There were eight churches reported. And now there are quite as many in each of the Dioceses, with great growth of numbers, especially in Baltimore and Washington City.
Kentucky, then undivided, had three churches, with schools at Louisville and at Henderson. Now Kentucky and Lexington have three each.
South Carolina is beginning to overcome the earlier overwhelming losses. There were eleven congregations, with parochial schools for three of them. These had grown, in 1922, to twenty-five, with thirteen schools.
Tennessee had five missions, with a school for the members of Emmanuel, Memphis. These have doubled.
Virginia, reporting also for Southern Virginia, numbers six congregations and fourteen schools. Since then, the churches of the Virginia Dioceses have grown to forty-three, and the members almost proportionately.