1. Atlanta Constitution, quoted in Cincinnati Western Christian Advocate, February 13, 1884; Methodist Episcopal Church, South, General Conference, 1890, Daily Christian Advocate, May 17, 22, 1890. Students of racism in the southern churches are directed to Smith's, H. Shelton scholarly In His Image, But … Racism in Southern Religion, 1780–1910 (Durham, 1972).Google Scholar

Though Atticus G. Haygood (Methodist), Jabez L. M. Curry (Baptist), and Edgar Gardner Murphy (Episcopalian) are frequently—and deservedly—identified as racial moderates in comparison to other well-known southern churchmen of their generation, it has not been shown that they and a few other “moderate” leaders significantly influenced the racial policies of their denominations. See Smith's treatment of these men (pp. 277–289) and his citations. Most of the research on which this article is based was accomplished during a fellowship appointment from the turstees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, to whom the author makes grateful acknowledgement.

2. Mississippi State Baptist Convention, Proceedings, 1903 (Hazlehurst, 1903), 50.Google Scholar Though public quasi-apologies for racial lynchings, such as that of the Mississippi State Baptist Convention, were not typical of sourthern religious bodies and leaders, the statement was by no means an oddity. An assessment by the editor of a Disciples of Christ journal similar to that of the Mississippi Baptists is discussed in Harrell, David E. Jr, A Social History of the Disciples of Christ, 2 vols. (Nashville and Atlanta, 1966–1973), 2:205.Google Scholar For general treatments of race relations during this period, see Woodward, C. Vann, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York, 1974),Google ScholarLogan, Rayford W., The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir, 1877–1901 (New York, 1954),Google Scholar and Gossett, Thomas F., Race: The History of an Idea in America (New York, 1963).Google Scholar

3. Woodward, , Strange Career, p. 22;Google Scholar Logan, Negro in American Life and Thought; Williamson, Joel, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction, 1861–1877 (New York, 1975);Google ScholarWynes, Charles E., Race Relations in Virginia, 1870–1902 (Charlottesville, 1961);Google ScholarTindall, George B., South Carolina Negroes, 1877–1900 (Columbia, 1952);Google ScholarLogan, Frenise A., The Negro in North Carolina, 1876–1894 (Chapel Hill, 1964);Google ScholarWharton, Vernon L., The Negro in Mississippi, 1865–1890 (Chapel Hill, 1947);Google ScholarFarish, Hunter Dickinson, The Circuit Rider Dismounts: A Social History of Southern Methodism, 1865–1900 (New York, 1969);Google ScholarSpain, Rufus B., At Ease in Zion: Social History of Southern Baptists, 1865–1900 (Nashville, 1967);Google ScholarStorey, John W., “The Negro in Southern Baptist Thought, 1865–1900” (Ph.D. diss., University of Kentucky, 1968);Google ScholarPorch, James Milton, Relations Between Black and White Baptists in Mississippi, 1860–1890” (Th.D. dis., New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 1974);Google ScholarDaniel, W. Harrison, “Virginia Baptists and the Negro, 1865–1902,” in Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 76 (1968): 340–363;Google ScholarRabinowitz, Howard N., “From Exclusion to Segregation: Southern Race Relations, 1865–1890,” in Journal of American History 63 (1976): 325–350;CrossRefGoogle ScholarThompson, Ernest T., Presbyterians in the South, 3 vols., (Richmond, 1963–1973);Google ScholarAnderson, Hugh G., Lutheranism in the Southeastern States, 1860–1886 (The Hague, 1969);Google Scholar Harrell, A Social History of the Disciples of Christ; Bragg, George F., History of the Afro-American Group of the Episcopal Church (New York, 1968);Google ScholarWoodson, Carter G., The History of the Negro Church (Washington, 1972).Google Scholar

4. Atlanta Christian Index, February 17, April 12, 1866; Southern Presbyterian Review 17 (1866): 101.

5. State, Alabama Baptist Convention, Minutes, 1865 (Atlanta, 1866), pp. 6, 10;Google Scholar Zion (Mississippi) Baptist Association, Minutes, 1867 (title page missing), pp. 3, 6; Hephzibah (Georgia) Baptist Association, Minutes, 1866 [held October 25, 1865] (Augusta, 1866), p. 6; Church, Rehoboth Baptist, County, Wilkes, Georgia, , Minutes, October 5, 1867 (microfilm, Southern Baptist Convention Historical Commission, Nashville, Tenn.).Google Scholar For similar Methodist reactions, see Farish, , Circuit Rider Dismounts, 170;Google Scholar for Presbyterian reactions, see Thompson, , Presbyterians in the South, 2:207–208;Google Scholar and for reactions by Disciples of Christ, see Harrell, , A Social History of the Disciples of Christ, II: 199.Google Scholar See also Blassingame, John W., Black New Orleans, 1860–1880 (Chicago, 1973), p. 148,Google Scholar and Perdue, Robert E., The Negro in Savannah, 1865–1900 (Jericho, N.Y., 1973), p. 29.Google Scholar

6. As early as February 24, 1866, the Atlanta Christian Index concluded that black separation from white-controlled congregations “is only a question of time.” Elsewhere the author has concluded that “though a majority of blacks who attended religious services in the [Old] South probably were not church members, approximately 400,000 did belong to various Protestant denominations on the eve of the Civil War—including more than 170,000 Methodists (members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South), more than 150,000 Baptists (members of churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention), perhaps as many as 30,000 Presbyterians, about 10,000 Disciples of Christ, about 6,000 Episcopalians (communicants rather than those baptized), and about 1,500 Lutherans.” Bailey, Kenneth K., “Protestantism and Afro-Americans in the Old South: Another Look,” in Journal of Southern History 41 (11 1975): 458.Google Scholar A historian's recent estimate that there were about 100,000 black Roman Catholics in the pre-war South seems inflated; Caravaglios, Maria G., The American Catholic Church and the Negro Problem in the XVIII-XIX Centuries (Rome, 1974), p. 81.Google Scholar

7. Methodist Episcopal Church, South, General Conference, Journal, 1866 (Nashville, 1866), pp. 58–59;Google ScholarAnderson, , Lutheranism in the Southeastern States, pp. 211–212;Google ScholarBragg, , History of the Afro-American Group of the Episcopal Church, pp. 245–246;Google ScholarHarrell, , A Social History of the Disciples of Christ, II: 200–201;Google Scholar Presbyterian Church in the United States, General Assembly, Minutes, 1866 (Columbia, S.C., 1866), p. 36;Google Scholar Presbyterian Church in the United States, General Assembly, Minutes, 1869 (Columbia, S.C., 1869), p. 389;Google ScholarAtlanta, Christian Index and South-Western Baptist, 08 2, 1866Google Scholar (fifth quotation), November 12, 1868, February 18, 1869 (first quotation), April 22, 1869 (sixth quotation), May 20, 1869 (fourth quotation); Hephzibah (Georgia) Baptist Association, Minutes 1892 (Augusta. n.d.), p. 40Google Scholar (second quotation); Nashville, Christian Advocate, 02 20, 1869Google Scholar (third quotation); Methodist Episcopal Church, South, General Conference Journal, 1886, (Nashville, 1886), p. 18;Google ScholarBaker, Ray Stannard, Following the Color Line: American Negro Citizenship in the Progressive Era (New York, 1964), p. 35.Google Scholar Though racial separations in northern churches were not nearly as complete, Baker found no “considerable number” of blacks worshiping with white Protestants anywhere in the nation, except in Boston; mixed worship was much more common in the Roman Catholic Church, both in the South and in the North. Ibid., pp. 121–122. In the early 1940s, the Mrdal study reported that in the South there was still “practically no contact at all between [Protestant] Negroes and whites for religious purposes …” whereas “many white churches in the North have a few Negro members, and … they rarely would turn away Negro visitors who came to a service.” Myrdal, Gunnar, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, 2 vols. (New York, 1969),Google Scholar II: 869–872. A Gallup Poll published in 1977 indicated that 54 percent of white churchgoers in the United States as a whole normally worshiped in congregations where no blacks attended—49 percent in the North and 66 percent in the South. The poll also indicated that, among those who worshiped in such congregations, 60 percent in the South and 28 percent outside the South preferred that blacks not worship with their congregation. Washington Post, April 15, 1977. H. Shelton Smith's assertion that “White racism was probably the greatest single factor in moving black people to establish churches of their own,” is surely creditable (Smith, , In His Image, But, p. 228).Google Scholar Yet it may also be true that, at that stage in the history of the region and the nation (namely, in 1865 and afterward), a preponderance of southern black Protestants would have shifted to unmixed congregations regardless of any adjustments that might have been offered. Manifestly, however, separation was not the first choice of all blacks.

8. Methodist Episcopal Church, South, General Conference, Journal, 1866, pp. 58–59; Methodist Episcopal Church, South, General Conference, Journal, 1870 (Nashville, 1870), p. 168;Google Scholar Presbyterian Church in the United States, General Assembly, Minutes 1869, pp. 388–389; Presbyterian Church in the United States, General Assembly, Minutes, 1892 (Richmond, 1892), p. 408;Google ScholarAnderson, , Lutheranism in the Southeastern Stales, 215–17;Google ScholarBragg, , History of the Afro-American Group of the Episcopal Church, pp. 150–151, 245–246;Google ScholarAtlanta, Christian Index and South-Wotern Baptist, 08 22, 1867.Google Scholar The Disciples of Christ did not maintain extracongregational machinery equivalent to that of the Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians, or even the Baptists. But black Disciple preachers were designated to serve on a Disciples of Christ Board of Negro Education and Evangelization, comprised mainly of white southerners; Harrell, , A Social History of the Disciples of Christ, 2:178, 202.Google Scholar

Though C. Vann Woodward has emphasized that white southerners pondered different alternatives in secular spheres during the post-war era before capitulating to extreme racial segregation and proscription, he leaves the impression that racial ecclesiastical separation was a quick and spontaneous response to emancipation. His treatments contain no acknowledgements of efforts to fashion biracial religious ties different from those which prevailed during slavery. See especially Woodward, , Strange Career, p. 22.Google Scholar Nor has this distortion been properly challenged by others. In a recent twenty-five page essay on southern racial adjustments during the post-Civil War generation, Howard N. Rabinowitz mentions the churches in only one sentence; Rabinowitz, , “From Exclusion to Segregation,” p. 345.Google Scholar

9. Missíssippi State Baptist Convention, Proceedings, 1868 (Jackson, 1868), p. 7,Google Scholar as quoted in Porch, “Relations Between Black and White Baptists,” p. 54. The potential for extracongregational affiliations between blacks and whites within the same denomination was well demonstrated by the northern Methodist Episcopal Church, which had almost 200.000 black members in the South (not including the border conferences) at the turn of the century; Farish, , Circuit Rider Dismounts, pp. 79–80.Google Scholar See also Morrow's, Ralph E.Northern Methodism and Recontruction (East Lansing, 1956).Google Scholar In comparing the possibilities for racially-mixed denominations in the South and in the North in the late nineteenth century, one should, of course, remember that virtually all black Protestants in the South belonged to mixed denominations at the time of the outbreak of the Civil War and that this was not the case in the North.

10. The statistics on black Methodist ordinations were compiled from annual conference reports as they appear in the Minutes of the Annual Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, for the Year, 1868 (Nashville, 1870).Google ScholarNashville, Christian Advocate, 12, 1869;Google Scholar Methodist Episcopal Church, South, General Conference, 1870, Daily Christian Advocate, May 7, 1870 (quotation); Bragg, , History of the Afro-American Group of the Episcopal Church, pp. 245–246, 267–271;Google ScholarAnderson, , Lutheranism in the Southeastern States, pp. 212–215;Google Scholar Presbyterian Church in the United States, General Assembly, Minutes, 1866 (Columbia, 1866), p. 38;Google Scholar Presbyterian Church in the United States, General Assembly, Minutes, 1877 (Wilmington, 1877), p. 460;Google ScholarDaniel, , “Virginia Baptists and the Negro, 1865–1902,” p. 354.Google Scholar

11. Anderson, , Lutheranism in the Southeastern States, p. 215;Google ScholarBragg, , History of the Afro-American Group of the Episcopal Church, pp. 245–246;Google ScholarTindall, , South Carolina Negroes, pp. 198–200;Google ScholarThompson, , Presbyterians in the South, 2:216;Google ScholarAtlanta, Christian Index and South-Western Baptist, 12 19, 1867.Google Scholar The statements regarding the ordination of black Methodist preachers and their exclusion from annual conferences are based on a survey of published annual conference minutes of that period; see also, Frish, , Circuit Rider Dismounts, p. 170.Google Scholar The roster of delegates to the 1870 General Conference and the Annual Conferences they represented appear in Methodist Episcopal Church, South, General Conference, 1870, Daily Christian Advocate, May 5, 1870 (the five black annual conferences were unrepresented at the General Conference: had any black been present as a delegate from another annual conference, it seems certain that his race would have been indicated in the official records). The official criteria for General Conference representation appear in The Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (Nashville, 1866), 46.Google Scholar For accounts of the organization of the first black Southern Methodist annual conference, see Nashville, Christian Advocate, 07 17, 10. 9, 1869.Google Scholar The first ordination of a black Roman Catholic priest in the South (and in the United States) took place in Baltimore, in 1891. Previously, at least four Negroes or mulattoes born in the American South were ordained as Roman Catholic priests in Europe; one of these, James Augustine Healy, was installed as Bishop of the Portland, Maine, Diocese in 1875. Not until 1977 was a second black appointed to head a Roman Catholic diocese in the United States—the Most Reverend Joseph L. Howze, Bishop of the Diocese of Biloxi. John T. Gillard reported in 1929 that, altogether, only nine black Roman Catholic priests were then holding, or had held, assignments in the United States; Gillard, , The Catholic Church and the American Negro (Baltimore, 1929), pp. 85–86;Google ScholarCaravaglios, , The American Catholic Church and the Negro Problem, pp. 96, 222.Google Scholar

12. Richmond, Religious Herald, 10 24, 1889;Google Scholar Ebenezer (Georgia) Baptist Association, Minutes, 1867 (Macon, 1867), p. 2;Google Scholar Union (Texas) Baptist Association, Minutes, 1866 (Houston, 1866), pp. 9, 15;Google Scholar Strong River (Mississippi) Baptist Association, Minutes, 1866 (Jackson, 1866), p. 6;Google Scholar Chowan (North Carolina) Baptist Association, Minutes, 1867 (Raleigh, 1867), pp. 4, 13.Google Scholar The Strong River Association rescinded the cited statement in 1867; Strong River (Mississippi) Baptist Association, Minutes, 1867 (Jackson, 1867), p. 7.Google Scholar The South Carolina State Baptist Convention amended its constitution in 1866 to require specifically that each delegate must be a “white member of some Baptist Church in this State or vicinity” Spain, , At Ease in Zion, p. 49.Google Scholar

13. Blassingame, , Black New Orleans, p. 14;Google ScholarEverett, Donald E., “Free Persons of Color in New Orleans, 1803–1865” (Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1953), p. 256;Google ScholarWikramanayake, Marina, A World in Shadow: The Free Black in Antebellum South Carolina (Columbia, S.C., 1973), pp. 123–128;Google Scholar Choctaw (Mississippi) Baptist Association, Minutes, 1869 (Lauderdale Springs, Miss., 1869), pp. 7, 14;Google ScholarRaleigh, Biblical Recorder, 07 5, 1876.Google Scholar Obviously, it was not so much segregation per se that distinguished the popular southern white churches, but rather the explicit commitment to full and complete white denominationalism at every ecclesiastical level. Frank Loescher found in the late 1940s that approximately 7,500,000 out of 8,000,000 black Protestants throughout the United States belonged to unmixed denominations, and he estimated that more than ninety-nine percent of the half-million blacks who were affiliated with white-controlled denominations belonged to black local congregations. He thought that not more than 8;000 American blacks held membership in local Protestant congregations that included white members. Loescher, Frank S., The Protestant Church and the Negro: A Pattern of Segregation (New York, 1948), pp. 76–77.Google Scholar It seems fair to State that a willingness to accede to tokenism—with all that this implied in the way of attitudes—was the essential difference between southern and northern white Protestants in the matter of race. According to a study published in 1929, approximately 120,000 out of 203,986 black Roman Catholics in the United States belonged at that time to all-black parishes and missions—served almost always, however, by white priests: Gillard, , The Catholic Church and the Amencan Negro, pp. 47, 58–59, 61.Google Scholar Estimates indicate that about 1,000,000 blacks in the United States are at the present time Roman Catholics and that approximately 1,200,000 out of 19,700,000 black Protestants in the United States are affiliated with predominantly white denominations. Most of these are clustered in predominantly black local congregations, however. Apparently more than half the local congregations of the predominantly white religious denominations in the United States currently have no black members. Washington Post, April 15, 1977.

14. Methodist Episcopal Church, South, General Conference, 1866, Daily Christian Advocate, April 21, 1866; Methodist Episcopal Church, South, General Conference, Journal, 1866, pp. 58–59; Methodist Episcopal Church, South, General Conference, 1870, Daily Chrtstian Advocate, May 7, 1870. The committee's draft of the controversial paragraph (Daily Christian Advocate April 21, 1866) was as follows: “When two or more annual conferences shall be formed, let our Bishops advise and assist them in organizing a separate general conference jurisdiction for themselves, in accordance with the doctrines and discipline of our Church, and in fraternal union with the same.” As revised and approved by the full conference, the text provided that “When two or more Annual Conferences shall be formed, let our Bishops advise and assist them in organizing a separate General Conference jursidiction for themselves, if they so desire, and the Bishops deem it expedient, in accordance with the doctrines and discipline of our Church, and bearing the same relation to the General Conference as the Annual Conferences bear to each other.” The Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (Nashville, 1866), pp. 107–108.Google Scholar The bishop's ruling on black testimony appears in a compilation carried in ibid. (Nashbille, 1898), p. 298. Virginia Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Minutes, 1868 (Norfolk 1868), pp. 15, 24.Google Scholar

15. Mobile Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Journal, 1869, quoted in Farish, , Circuit Rider Dismounts, p. 175;Google Scholar Methodist Episcopal Church, South, General Conference, Journal, 1870, pp. 168 (bishops' statement), 182–183: Methodist Episcopal Church, South, General Conference, 1870, Daily Christian Advocate, May 11, 12, 1870; Nashville, Christian Advocate, 06 25, 1870.Google Scholar The figures on black membership in the northern Methodist Episcopal Church are from Farish, Circuit Rider Dismounts, pp. 79–80.

16. Cincinnati, Western Christian Advocate, 06 15, 08 24, 1870, 04 6, 1892Google Scholar (quotation); Nashville, , Christian Advocate, 06 25, 10 10, 1870.Google Scholar The estimate of more than 70,000 transferees is that of the Southern Methodist bishops (Methodist Episcopal Church, South, General Conference, Journal, 1886, p. 18); other membership figures are from the Minutes of the Annual Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1872 (Nashville, 1876), p. 776,Google Scholar and Minutes of the Annual Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1897 (Nashville, n.d.), p. 228.Google Scholar For accounts of the movement to adopt the name “Methodist Episcopal Church in America,” see Methodist Episcopal Church, South, General Conference, Journal, 1882 (Nashville, 1882), p. 174;Google Scholar Methodist Episcopal Church, South, General Conference, 1882, Daily Chrzstian Advocate, May 26, 1882; Methodist Episcopal Church, South, General Conference, Journal, 1886, p. 29. Present-day writers commonly assert or leave the impression that the establishment of a new black church was approved by the Southern Methodist General Conference of 1866 (see, for example, Smith, In His Image, But, p. 231,Google ScholarAhlstrom, Sydney E., A Religious History of the American People [New Haven, 1972], p. 708.Google Scholar and Reimers, David M., White Protestantism and the Negro [New York, 1965], p. 31);Google Scholar and this is also the impression given by the 1870 pronouncements of the bishops and the General Conference. Though Carter G. Woodson and Hunter Farish knew that this was not the case (Woodson, , History of the Negro Church, pp. 173–174;Google ScholarFarish, , Circuit Rider Dismounts, 169–170, 175),Google Scholar both failed to mention that the 1866 General Conference turned down the committee recommendation calling for the creation of an independent black church, and both failed to make clear that the 1870 action was a significant reversal of the previous conference's design. Nor did either Woodson or Farish mention the petition from the twelve blacks in 1870 asking for a continuing tie with the mother church. (This was presented on the third day of the General Conference. Farish cites an appreciative communication submitted by a different group of eight blacks after the General Conference had approved plans for an independent black church. Methodist Episcopal Church, South, General Conference, 1870, Daily Christian Advocate, May 7, 27, 1870.) Not only did the 1866 General Conference deliberately map plans to accommodate blacks in the church, it also authorized the Southern Methodist bishops to negotiate with bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Church “as to the propriety of a union of that Church with the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, upon the bsis of the plan adopted by the General Conference …” Methodist Episcopal Church, South, General Conference, Journal, 1866, p. 73; see also Farish, Curcuit Ruler Dismounts, p. 169.

17. Presbyterian Church in the United States, General Assembly, Minutes, 1874 (Richmond, 1874), pp. 516–517;Google ScholarColumbia, Southern Presbyterian, 0810, 1882Google Scholar (first quotation); Thompson, , Presbyterians in the South, 2: 235; 3: 88Google Scholar (second quotation). The name “Afro-American Prsbyterian Church” was not adopted until 1899. Though the Alpha Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Freedmen in America was organized in North Carolina in 1889, white southern Lutherans did not commit themselves to white denominationalism in the manner of Southern Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians (Anderson, , Lutheranism in the Southeastern States, p. 217),Google Scholar nor did the Episcopalians. Despite persistent prodding from the Southern Presbyterian General Assembly, two all-black presbyteries, Central Alabama and Ethel, would not transfer to the new denomination, and a faltering remnant of the Afro-American Presbyterian Church was absorbed by the Southern Presbyterian Church in 1916; Thompson, , Presbyterians in the South, 3: 89.Google Scholar the long-delayed plans for a complete racial separation among Southern Presbyterians were thus never consummated; and the time never came when white Presbyterians could regard their denomination as a wholly unmixed racial entity—an obvious source of satisfaction to the more numerous Baptists and Methodists. That southern white Baptists and Methodists were more explicitly sectional and racist than their Presbyterian counterparts is suggested by the fact that the first two groups retained “Southern” and “South” as part of their respective official designations whereas the 1865 General Assembly of the then mislabeled Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America adopted the name “Presbyterian Church in the United States” rather than “Presbyterian Church, South” (by margin of forty-two to seven, with four commissioners voting for other names). Thompson, , Presbyterians in the South, 2: 93.Google Scholar Several General Assembly actions no doubt strengthened the resolve of white separatists to purge the Southern Presbyterian Church of its black membership in the late nineteenth century. The Assembly of 1882 ruled that a clergyman could not be denied voting rights in a presbytery because of race, and the Assembly of 1896 affirmed that a presbytery could not refuse to accept candidates for the ministry on the basis of race. A black was seated as a commissioner (delegate) to the General Assembly in 1892, and there was some black representation in most subsequent General Assemblies. Presbyterian Church in the United States, General Assembly, Minutes, 1882 (Wilmington 1882), pp. 530, 532;Google Scholar Presbyterian Church in the United States, General Assembly, Minutes, 1892 (Richmond, 1892), p. 408;Google Scholar Presbyterian Church in the United States, General Assembly, Minutes, 1896 (Richmond, 1896), pp. 606, 616–617.Google Scholar

18. Louisiana State Baptist Convention, Minutes, 1866 (Mount Lebanon, La., 1866), pp. 5–7, 11.Google Scholar

19. Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, Proceedings, 1867 (Raleigh 1867), pp. 24–27.Google Scholar

20. Southern Baptist Convention, Proceedings, 1869 (Baltimore, 1869), pp. 39–40;Google ScholarMemphis, Baptist, 06 5, 1869Google Scholar (second quotation); Raleigh, Biblical Recorder, 06 3, 1869Google Scholar (first and third quotations).

21. Southern Baptist Convention, Proceedings, 1869, p. 20Google Scholar (quotations fourth sentence); Raleigh, Biblical Recorder, 06 3, 1869Google Scholar (quotations second sentence, and second quotation first sentence); Memphis, Baptist, 06 5, 1869Google Scholar (first quotation); Atlanta, Christian Index and South-Western Baptist, 06 17, 1869Google Scholar (quotations from Georgian). Rufus B. Spain's generally excellent treatment provides no account of this extremely significant debate in the Southern Baptist Convention. Spain, , At Ease in Zion, p. 53;Google Scholar nor do Storey's “The Negro in Southern Baptist Thought” and Eighmy's, John L.Churches in Cultural Captivity: A History of the Social Attitudes of Southern Baptists (Knoxville, 1972).Google Scholar

22. Georgia State Baptist Convention, Minutes, 1873 (Atlanta, 1873),Google Scholar appendix; Georgia State Baptist Convention, Minutes, 1880 (Atlanta, 1880)Google Scholar appendix; Georgia State Baptist Convention, Minutes, 1895 (Atlanta, 1895), p. 68;Google Scholar Maryland Baptist Union Association, Minutes, 1902 (Baltimore. 1902), pp. 17, 33, 47–48;Google Scholar Maryland Baptist Union Association, Minutes, 1903 (Baltimore, 1903), pp. 5, 10, 36, 80–83.Google Scholar Explicit racial separatism was surely related to the fact that the Southern Methodist and Baptist denominations accounted for more than half the white church members in the South at the turn of the century (3,264,000 out of 6,200,000). Yet, despite an almost universal assumption to the contrary, it seems doubtful that the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (excluding its overseas missionary jurisdictions), and all congregations affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention were ever literally without any members who were descendents of sub-Saharan Africans. See Baker, , Following the Color Line, p. 35;Google ScholarHart, Albert Bushnell, The Southern South (New York, 1969), p. 167;Google ScholarWarnock, Henry Y., “Southern Methodists, the Negro, and Unification: The First Phase,” in The Journal of Negro History, 52 (1967): 300;CrossRefGoogle ScholarRosengarten, Theodore, All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw (New York, 1974), p. 298.Google Scholar Of course, the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church explicitly excluded whites from membership, a stipulation which Robert Moats Miller appropriately cites as evidence of black Protestant racism (“Southern White Protestantism and the Negro, 1865–1965,” in The Negro in the South since 1865: Selected Essays in American Negro History, ed. Charles E. Wynes [New York, 1968], p. 246).Google Scholar It is important to remember, however, that the 1870 founding conference which adopted this rule was convened and presided over by white bishops of the parent Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The exclusion almost certainly reflected their wishes.

23. Presbyterian Church in the United States, General Assembly, Minutes, 1888 (Richmond, 1888), p. 458;Google Scholar Mississippi State Baptist Convention, Proceedings, 1898 (Jackson, 1898), p. 14.Google Scholar Five years before Keener made his remarks at the General Conference of 1890, the South Carolina Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was similarly exhorted by its presiding bishop to “Think of our church in South Carolina as solidly white…” Williamson, , After Slavery, p. 197.Google Scholar

24. Methodist Episcopal church, South, General Conference, 1894, Daily Christian Advocate, May 5, 1894 (quotation), May 12, 1894; Presbyterian Church in the United States, General Assembly, Minutes, 1895 (Richmond, 1895), p. 397;Google Scholar Presbyterian Church in the United States, General Assembly, Minutes, 1896 (Richmond, 1896), p. 631;Google Scholar Louisiana State Baptist Convention, Proceedings, 1887 (Shreveport, n.d.), p. 22;Google Scholar Mississippi State Baptist Convention, Proceedings, 1892 (Jackson, 1892), p. 34;Google ScholarSpain, , At Ease in Zion, p. 66;Google ScholarBaker, , Following the Color Line (last quotation), p. 56;Google Scholar the statement cited by Baker was given by the Reverend Henry S. Bradley, Jr., pastor of Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in Atlanta from 1901 to 1904 and subsequently pastor of St. John's Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in Saint Louis. Educational and other efforts on the part of southern Disciples of Christ in behalf of blacks (ably recounted in Harrell, , A Social History of the Disciples of Christ, II: 159–207)Google Scholar generally conform to the pattern described above. For an excellent account of the involvements of Methodist and Baptist leaders in a notorious white supremacy campaign around the turn of the century, see Bode, Frederick A., Protestantism and the New South: North Carolina Baptists and Methodists in Political Crisis, 1894–1903 (Charlottesville, 1975), pp. 122–140.Google Scholar

25. The Reverend William Martin, quoted in Harrison, William p., The Gospel Among the Slaves (Nashville, 1893), p. 261;Google Scholar The Reverend W. L. Kilpatrick, quoted in Hephzibah (Georgia) Baptist Association, Minutes, 1892, p. 40; Lewis, George, Impressions of America and the American Churches: From Journal of the Reverend G. Lewrs (Edinburgh, 1845), p. 169.Google Scholar For a recent treatment of southern Protestantism and blacks during the slavery era, see Bailey, , “Protestantism and Afro-Americans in the Old South,” pp. 451–472.Google Scholar