[1850] Tenth and Eleventh Reports of the Freedmen’s Aid Society.
[1851] These religious bodies were the African Methodist Episcopal and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion. The former was organized in Philadelphia in 1816, and the latter in New York in 1820. Both were secessions from the Methodist Episcopal Church. See Statistics of Churches, pp. 543, 559. At first there were bitter feuds between the blacks who wished to join the northern churches and those who wished to remain in the southern churches, but the latter were in the minority and they had to go. See Ala. Test., p. 180; Smith, “History of Methodism in Georgia and Florida”; “Life and Times of George F. Pierce,” p. 491.
The main difference between the A. M. E. and the A. M. E. Zion Church, according to a member of the latter, is that in one the dues are 25 cents a week and in the other 20 cents.
[1852] McTyeire, “History of Methodism,” pp. 670-673. A Southern Methodist negro preacher in north Alabama was trying to reorganize his church and was driven away by Lakin, who told his flock that there was a wolf in the fold. See Ala. Test, p. 430. The statements of several of the negro ministers would seem to indicate that Lakin took possession of a number of negro congregations and united them with the Cincinnati Conference without their knowledge. Few of the negroes knew of the divisions in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and most of them thought that Lakin’s course was merely some authorized reorganization after the destruction of war. One witness who knew Lakin in the North said that he was an original secessionist, since, in Peru, Indiana, he broke up a church and organized a secession congregation because he was opposed to men and women sitting together. The same person testified that once in north Alabama Lakin asked for lodging one night at a white man’s house. The host was treated to a lecture by Lakin on the equality of the races, and thereupon sent out and got a negro and put him in a bed to which Lakin was directed at bedtime. He hesitated, but slept with the negro. Ala. Test., pp. 791-794. Lakin was a strange character, and for several years was a powerful influence among the Radicals and negroes of north Alabama. See Ala. Test., p. 959. A Northern Methodist leader among the negroes of Coosa County was the Rev. —— Dorman, who had formerly belonged to the southern church, but had been expelled for immorality. He lived with the negroes and led a lewd life. He advised the negroes to arm themselves and assert their rights, and required them to go armed to church. See Ala. Test., pp. 164, 230. Rev. J. B. F. Hill of Eutaw was another ex-Southern Methodist who taught a negro school and preached to the negroes. He had been expelled from the Alabama Conference (Southern) for stealing money from the church, and it was charged that he tried to sell a coffin which had been sent him and in which he was to send to Ohio the body of a Federal soldier who had died in Eutaw. See Demopolis New Era, April 1, 1868. During the worst days of Reconstruction a number of negro churches which were used as Radical headquarters were burned by the Ku Klux Klan. The Northern Methodist Church is the weakest of the three negro churches; mountaineers and negroes do not mix well. The church is not favored by the whites, and there is opposition to the establishment of a negro university at Anniston by the Freedmen’s Aid Society of this church, on the ground that socially, commercially, and educationally the interests of the white race suffer where an institution is located by this society. See Brundidge (Ala.) News, Aug. 22, 1903.
[1853] McTyeire, “A History of Southern Methodism,” p. 670; Carroll, “Religious Forces,” p. 263; Alexander, “Methodist Episcopal Church South,” pp. 91-133.
[1854] Carroll, “Religious Forces,” p. 263; Bishop Halsey in the N. Y. Independent, March 5, 1891; Statistics of Churches, p. 604.
[1855] W. T. Harris, Richmond Meeting, Southern Educational Association (1900), p. 100.
[1856] See Washington, “Up from Slavery.” One church with two hundred members had eighteen preachers. Exhorters or “zorters” and “pot liquor” preachers were still more numerous.
[1857] “Race Problems,” pp. 114, 120, 123, 126, 130, 131, 135; Haygood, “Our Brother in Black,” passim; Statistics of Churches, p. 171.
[1858] The Nation, July 12, 1866, condensed.