Preparing for Emancipation
Convention of the Colored People of Virginia
These Christian churches became sites of protest against racist Virginia policies including white reluctance to extend the franchise to blacks after the state rejoined the Union. For example, several Christian ministers organized the Convention of the Colored People of Virginia in Alexandria in August 1865, drawing delegates from twenty-two mostly urban districts throughout the state. In speech after speech, leaders demanded equal rights with white citizens, including the right of suffrage.
The Reverend John M. Brown, of Norfolk, expressed the delegates' conviction that justice required further and continued intervention by federal authority. Many white people in the state, Brown noted, "despise us simply because we are black, and, especially, because we have been made free by the power of the United States government, and … they will not be willing to accord to us, as freemen, that protection which all freemen must contend for, if they would be worthy of freedom." Brown added that "freedom was not of our making, yet we believe it was the intention, and is the will of God." In language taken directly from the Bible, another delegate noted how black Virginians had "prayed [for] … this day when we can breathe the free air of an American citizen and worship the God of our fathers under our own vine and fig tree." The final declaration of rights issued by the convention called for the "immediate repeal of all laws operating against us as a separate class of people."
Established Churches and Missionaries
African Methodist Episcopal (AME) and African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) missionaries competed for new black adherents with each other and with northern white missionaries from the American Baptist Home Mission Society and the Methodist Episcopal Church. They all enjoyed some measure of success in mission work. The AME and AMEZ missionaries marketed their denominations as independent and black. Methodist Episcopal and Baptist missionaries presented their churches as biracial and, conscious of their recent historical connections with abolitionists, committed to racial equality. Regardless of denomination, most missionaries also offered vast resources to impoverished black congregations, including money to acquire or improve church property, hymnals and Sunday school literature, and high-quality newspapers such as the AME Christian Recorder and the AMEZ Star of Zion.
Political Action, Education, and Acquisition
Union Leagues developed close relationships with local black churches and were concrete symbols of blacks' new freedom. As a result, Union Leagues became infused with traditional church ritual and liturgy, including declarations of faith in the Republican Party. League meetings often replicated the rhythmical form of a black church service, including the call-and-response form of communication, "ring-shouts," sermons, and hymn-singing.
Initially, the main source of basic education was the Radical Republican Congress, which created the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands in 1865 with $5 million in appropriations for schools and books. But churches provided the organizational support for the developing education system. Many Freedmen's Bureau teachers were northerners recruited by the American Missionary Association, while southern black churches, such as Third Baptist Church in Petersburg, offered the facilities for Sunday school classes where adults and children could learn to read.
At a most basic level, these churches were also financial investments if the congregations owned their buildings and land. Institutional property ownership provided a practical source of progress and power for the African American community. The Census of Religious Bodies, published in 1926, reports that by the turn of the twentieth century, black Virginia Baptists owned $10.5 million in buildings and land, with the AME, AME Zion, and CME churches owning $1.9 million. Although not-for-profit businesses, African American churches created opportunities for institutional power and economic progress after the abolition of slavery.
The New Negro and the End of Reconstruction
Confident, sometimes to the point of brashness, the New Negro pushed back. Many blacks saw little future for African Americans while dependent on whites and turned to Pan-Africanism. Virginia's black Baptists and African Methodists supported African mission work. Indeed, Virginia Baptists took pride in the fact that their state had been the home of Lott Carey who, early in the nineteenth century, had led enterprises of black immigration to Liberia. Some AME congregations endorsed AME Bishop Henry McNeal Turner's promotion of voluntary immigration to Africa. Assertive Baptists challenged the Home Mission Society for favoring white-led Virginia Union over Virginia Seminary in Lynchburg and its black president.
The issue of separation from whites versus cooperation remained a dilemma for African Americans in Virginia and throughout the South into the twentieth century. The first half-century of freedom left African Americans without the legal rights they had dreamed of but with mostly reconstructed families and many valuable community institutions, few more important than African American churches.
Time Line
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1774 - The New Lights community of free and enslaved African Americans establish the First African Baptist Church in Lunenburg County, later becoming the First Baptist Church in Petersburg. It is one of the oldest African American churches in North America.
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1776 - Free and enslaved African Americans meet as the First Baptist Church of Williamsburg at the Carriage House of Robert F. Coles, on Nassau Street.
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1841 - First African Baptist Church of Richmond is founded.
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1855 - Ebenezer Baptist Church is founded in Richmond.
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January 1, 1863 - Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring free all slaves in Confederate-controlled regions and authorizing the enlistment of black men in the Union army.
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March 3, 1865 - An act of Congress establishes the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (commonly known as the Freedmen's Bureau) within the War Department.
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August 2, 1865 - The State Convention of the Colored People of Virginia meets in Alexandria and issues a demand for equality as the proper basis for African American freedom.
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November 1865 - The American Baptist Home Mission Society establishes the Richmond Theological School for Freedmen. It later will be known as the Colver Institute, the Richmond Theological Institute, and Virginia Union University.
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December 1865–June 1866 - Six individuals establish the Ku Klux Klan in the law office of Thomas M. Jones in Pulaski, Tennessee.
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1867 - The Reverend James H. Holmes becomes the first black pastor of First African Baptist Church, in Richmond, serving for thirty-two years.
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March 1867 - Amid mounting pressure from Radical Republicans, the U.S. Congress places Virginia under the military command of General John M. Schofield.
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March 2, 1867 - The U.S. Congress passes the Reconstruction Act, ushering in the period of Radical Reconstruction in the South. This act, among other provisions, required former Confederate states to grant voting rights to black men—a measure later made inalienable by the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1870.
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March 26, 1868 - The Richmond Daily Enquirer & Examiner lauds the Ku Klux Klan as "an organization which is thoroughly loyal to the Federal constitution, but which will not permit the people of the South to become the victims of negro rule."
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April 1868 - The Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, a coeducational school for African Americans, is founded in Hampton.
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July 9, 1868 - The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified. It grants citizenship to all African Americans and bars former Confederate officials from holding state or federal political office. A two-thirds vote by both houses will override that limitation in the cases of Robert E. Lee (1975) and Jefferson Davis (1978).
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July 6, 1869 - Voters ratify a new state constitution that establishes free public schools and includes full suffrage for all males twenty-one years or older, including African Americans. Voters reject disfranchising former Confederates.
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1870 - The Colored Methodist Episcopal Church (CME) is founded.
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January 26, 1870 - An act of Congress ends Reconstruction in Virginia, readmitting Virginia into the United States and restoring civilian rule.
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1876 - Democrats devoted to white supremacy amend the state constitution to make payment of the poll tax a prerequisite for voting, hoping to disfranchise some black voters.
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1880s-1890s - The Baptist Foreign Mission Convention sends missionaries to Africa.
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1895 - The Baptist Foreign Mission Convention and two other groups merge in Atlanta, Georgia, to form the first enduring national organization of black Baptists, the National Baptist Convention.
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1896 - The Virginia Baptist State Convention agrees to a financial compact with the American Baptist Home Mission Society and the Baptist General Association of Virginia (white) to fund a seminary in Richmond and liquidate the debt on the Lynchburg school.
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1897 - With the strong backing of many Virginia black Baptists, the Lott Carey Foreign Mission Convention forms in large part over the issue of cooperation between black and white Baptists.
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May 1897 - By this date, a merger between Virginia Union University and Wayland Seminary, a Baptist institution in the District of Columbia, has been accepted by both institutions and by the American Baptist Home Mission Society.
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May 1899 - Tensions flare at the annual meeting of the Virginia Baptist State Convention (VBSC) when some leaders of the VBSC reject the terms of a joint educational compact to fund a seminary for African Americans in Richmond, and agree to support fully the seminary in Lynchburg.
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June 20, 1899 - Baptist General Association of Virginia (Colored) meets as an independent black Baptist organization, agreeing to abide by the terms of the financial compact with organizations such as the American Baptist Home Mission Society to support Virginia Union University.
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July 10, 1902 - Virginia's Constitution of 1902 becomes law, disfranchising thousands of poor whites and nearly eliminating the state's African American electorate. It replaces Virginia's 1869 Reconstruction-era constitution, which had a universal male suffrage clause. The new constitution also creates the State Corporation Commission to regulate the railroads.
References
Further Reading
Cite This Entry
- APA Citation:
Montgomery, W. E. African American Churches in Virginia (1865–1900). (2016, August 29). In Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved from http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/African_American_Churches_in_Virginia_1865-1900.
- MLA Citation:
Montgomery, William E. "African American Churches in Virginia (1865–1900)." Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, 29 Aug. 2016. Web. READ_DATE.
First published: February 10, 2015 | Last modified: August 29, 2016