The story of these years of re-establishment in North Carolina is one of beautiful sympathy between white and negro workers, each ready to build upon the foundation of the other. Since then, the same sympathetic co-operation has attended the extension of the missions. Bishop Delany has been the founder of more than half of the existing churches in what is now, under Bishop Cheshire, his Diocese. He was consecrated Bishop Suffragan of North Carolina on October 18th, 1918, and enjoys the complete confidence of his brethren of the South.
Arkansas had no report for the Commission in 1887. She had not yet risen from the ashes of destruction. The Bishop Suffragan, Dr. Demby, writes: “The history of the Church work among the Negroes of Arkansas is very meagre; in fact, there is nothing really reliable ... outside of certain families who were members before the Civil War, during which old relations were broken up, due to the horrors of the war and the new conditions.”
Bishop Pierce and his family had opened St. Philip’s, Little Rock, about 1890. Under successive archdeacons in Bishop Brown’s day, missions had been begun in Fort Smith, Pine Bluff, New Port, Hot Springs, and Conway. Most of them were without any substantial foundation, nor had they the equipment with which to establish churches. However, ground had been broken when Bishop Winchester came in 1911. He at once saw that the problem was unlike that in other Dioceses to the eastward, where, very generally, a remnant of the old, well-trained members of the white congregations were the foundation of the missionary renaissance. So soon as the Canon on Suffragans was passed by General Convention, he proposed its application in Arkansas; and, in 1918, the Rev. Dr. Demby was elected and consecrated. He at once entered upon his task as apostle to his race. He had at first to overcome the natural feeling of insecurity which intermittent ministry had engendered.
One of the chief obstacles to foundation work in this new era, has been the uncertain income for support, resulting in long vacancies. The natural consequence has been to create in Negroes, interested in Holy Orders, the sort of skepticism which asks, “If I join you, what next? Am I to be left shepherdless and isolated in a Church without companionship?” The old policy of begging an income year by year made this very generally inevitable. To overcome that handicap is no easy task. There were many others. General Convention had issued a challenge to the faith of the Church. Arkansas was first to accept it in the name of the whole Church; and, in her material weakness, sent forth the call of faith to Bishop Demby to lead his people in the trans-Mississippi Province.
Two years ago, Bishop Demby sent forth a review of the field, and a call to the Church to give him means to occupy it. Of Arkansas, he wrote: “There are seventy-five counties in the State; in six of them, there are more colored than white people; Crittendon, 71%; Phillips, 78%; Desha, 79%; Jefferson, 71%; St. Francis, 68%; Woodruff, 58%. In only three of them has work been begun, though there are missions in several of the counties of the interior. We have scarcely begun to enter the great “Black Belt” which is ready and ripe for the harvest. What we need is substantial help to do the work to which the Church has called and consecrated us.”
The Bishop is facing the whole task as it relates to American life, just as his brother Bishop, Delany, is facing it on the Atlantic coast. “The Episcopal Church is facing the American race-problem bravely and courageously ... and, in harmony with the program of the Sociological Congress, is doing it rationally and in the spirit of Christianity. There is no question as to its attitude against peonage, lynching, riots, mob violence, and court injustices. The Bishops and priests of the Church are one against all wrongs to the Negroes or any other race unit.” He sees the call of the Church to contribute, in the best and holiest way, to the harmony of American life. He finds in this the surest ground of that reassurance of his race without which efforts are futile.
Much more, there is, but this may suffice to exhibit the breadth of vision with which our negro Bishops are viewing their great task. They are both in the heart of the Negroes’ home, east and west. As few men can, they know the problems and difficulties, the achievements and hopes.
Turning now to the northern and western Dioceses, we find a corresponding growth in the number of congregations, with far greater proportionate increase in members, and in self-supporting parishes. The building of new churches fairly well marks the progress of the diffusion of population. Before 1880, the Negroes of the North and West were few in number, and only about ten congregations in the States of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Michigan, and California, had been formed. A gradual transfusion then began, most of which could, for a time, be cared for by the white and the existing negro parishes. From that date to 1890, ten more congregations were formed. This is from Dr. Bragg’s Manual of Afro-American Church Work, dated 1910. “Since 1900, the period of greatest influx of population from the South, 45 congregations have been formed in 29 Dioceses, North and West. The Church in the North and West has been quite as much alive to the duties and privileges of negro work as has the South, to which the many millions are native.”
The next development in the upper Diocese came in New Jersey, long after the first establishments. About 1860, St. Philip’s, Newark (the first in the Diocese and the last before the Civil War) was founded. So the two Dioceses in that State were ready to meet the new people who began to flow northward in the ’80s, when St. Augustine’s, Camden, was founded in 1888, and St. Augustine’s, Asbury Park, five years later. These became the vantage points from which the present ten parishes have been formed. Sometimes the initiative came from the white parish, as in the case of Epiphany, Orange, first opened by the Rev. Alexander Mann when rector of Grace Church.
In 1865, St. Philip’s, Buffalo, was opened, and the western Diocese had a home for its limited negro population. St. Thomas’, Chicago, was founded in 1880, and is one of the largest parishes of the North Central States. In 1883, St. Michael’s, Cairo, Illinois, was opened by the parish church, and the Rev. J. B. Williams, just ordered deacon, served as rector. The site was strategic, at the head of the vast population of the Mississippi Valley. In 1885, came St. Philip’s, Omaha, Nebraska; and St. Simon’s, Topeka, Kansas, which, with St. Augustine’s, Kansas City, opened the near west for the later migrations. The next year, St. Augustine’s, Boston, initiated the separate congregations in Massachusetts for the colored members of parishes which were becoming overcrowded. These were followed by missions in Southern Ohio, Delaware, Minnesota, Ohio, and Indianapolis, through the years to 1900. Thus the Negroes in their increasingly widespread movements found Church homes in nearly all of the centres to which they were being attracted.[14]