Operating on this basis, local churches sprang up here and there as Baptist preachers, a law unto themselves, went abroad seeking a following. Out of some of these efforts came several good results. Many of the churches thus established have in our day developed into beacon lights. And so was it true of some of those churches which branched off from or drew out of the old Baptist Churches of long standing established years before the Civil War. There were not so many such African Baptist churches in the South during that period. Because of fear of servile insurrection the whites would not permit many Negro churches to have an independent existence. The pressure once removed, however, groups of Negroes long waiting for religious freedom found adequate opportunity for exercising it in the organization of numerous Baptist churches. This was not in all cases abruptly effected, for the Negroes had no church buildings of their own and could not easily purchase them; but in their poverty they made unusual sacrifices to meet this emergency and whites liberally inclined a.s.sisted them in the rapid promotion of this work. Yet this movement did not reach its climax until some years later; for the lure of politics presented another field of so much interest to the Negroes that even the preachers of long standing too often abandoned their posts altogether. After the Reconstruction, moreover, when the Negro in the South had been removed from politics, a much larger number of bankrupt leaders entered the ministry or devised schemes to make use of the various churches.
An impetus toward improvement came from mutual a.s.sociations. The Baptist churches were not obligated to unite to form a.s.sociations and when formed did not necessarily have to be bound by the action of these annual meetings; but immediately after the war Negro Baptist churches, which in the South had formerly been coolly received by white bodies and were not permitted to form a.s.sociations of their own, readily united for mutual benefit in the exercise of their new freedom. In those meetings the uninformed heard of the urgent need to educate the ma.s.ses, the duty of the ministry to elevate the laity, and the call upon all to Christianize the heathen. The periodical visits of white churchmen, interested either in the Negro or in exploiting them, brought new light as to what was going on in the other bodies conducted by men of higher attainments.
As the Negro Baptists, however, did not soon effect more potential organizations than the district Baptist a.s.sociations then composed of a few churches, they never had a national policy; and their local democracy would have furnished no machinery to carry out such a policy, if they had adopted one. To the State groups, then, must the reader look for the signs of progress and thanks to the genius of the Negro, such evidence was not long wanting.
The Negro Baptists of North Carolina organized the first State Convention in 1866. Alabama and Virginia followed in 1867, and very soon thereafter came Arkansas, Kentucky, and finally all of the States in the South. Immediately thereafter they began to affiliate with larger national bodies. The first of these larger groups was the Northwestern and Southern Baptist Convention, organized in 1864. In 1866 there was held an important convention in Richmond, when it was determined to consolidate all of the general interests of the Negro Baptists, the Missionary, the Northwestern and Southern conventions as one large body, to be called the Consolidated American Baptist Missionary Convention.[10]
This convention operated largely in the South and tended to decline. In 1873 the West revived its organization under the name of the Baptist a.s.sociation of the Western States and Territories, while the northern churches adhered to another organization called the New England Missionary Convention, organized in 1875. In the course of time these two bodies so expanded as to embrace the whole country, yet in 1880 certain Baptists here and there formed a national body to do work in foreign lands, designating it the Baptist Foreign Mission Convention of the United States. The feeling, however, that there should be a concentration of the efforts of all Baptists directed through one national body to a particular point of attack led to a more significant national meeting of the Negro Baptists held in St. Louis in 1886. The work of the Baptist Foreign Mission Convention was later so modified that all of the national and international church work of the denomination was unified through the organization of the National Baptist Convention.
That these Baptists despite their excess of liberty succeeded as well as they did, was due in a measure to the fact that they exercised the good judgment in not immediately getting too far from their friends. The Negroes used the same polity, the same literature, and sometimes the same national agencies as the white Baptists. The southern Baptists were then less interested in these communicants whom, some say, they gladly got rid of when they could no longer dictate their spiritual development as the master did that of the slave; but the northern Baptists felt obligated to send their missionaries among the freedmen. These apostles to the lowly brought words of good cheer, expounded the gospel, established new churches, and distributed books for the enlightenment of the ma.s.ses. Among some of these lowly people these men were received as apostles of old, welcomed to a new harvest which had long been waiting, for the laborers among the lowly were few.
CHAPTER X
RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AS A PREPARATION
The separation of the Negro churchmen from the white organizations, however, was not necessarily a declaration of war. Most Negroes regarded this as the right step toward doing for themselves what others had hitherto done for them and some whites so considered it. As a matter of fact, the ties which have bound the Negro church organization to the whites were not such as could be severed by a mere change in the management of church affairs. The Negroes had already been divided from the whites by an unwritten law. The upheaval of the Civil War merely furnished the occasion for the separation. There still remained among the northern whites numerous philanthropists who desired to help them in the promotion of religion and morality. From this group, therefore, came numerous Christian workers supported by funds freely contributed to deliver the captive and proclaim the year of jubilee.
[Ill.u.s.tration: WILBERFORCE UNIVERSITY DURING THE CIVIL WAR.]
These Christian workers, however, cared not so much about proselyting as they did about education, the greatest need of the freedmen. The Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians, who had considerable communicants among the Negroes prior to the Civil War, took the lead in this movement, establishing at strategic points schools which they believed would become centers of culture for the whole race. The Baptists established Shaw University at Raleigh in 1865; Roger Williams at Nashville and Morehouse at Atlanta in 1867; Leland at New Orleans and Benedict at Columbia in 1871. The Free-will Baptists founded Storer College at Harpers Ferry in 1867. The Methodists, who were no less active, established Walden at Nashville in 1865, Rust at Holly Springs in 1866, Morgan at Baltimore in 1867, Haven Academy at Waynesboro in 1868, Claflin at Orangeburg in 1869, and Clark at Atlanta in 1870. The Presbyterians, who could not compete with the Baptists and Methodists in proselyting Negroes, largely restricted their efforts to the establishment of Biddle at Charlotte in 1867 and to the promotion of the work begun at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, established as Ashmun Inst.i.tute in 1854. The Episcopal Church showing the tender mercy of the wicked, established St. Augustine at Raleigh in 1867. The American Missionary a.s.sociation, an agency of the Congregational Church, established Avery Inst.i.tute at Charleston, Ballard Normal School at Macon, and Washburn at Beaufort, North Carolina, in 1865; Trinity at Athens, Alabama, Gregory at Wilmington, North Carolina, and Fisk at Nashville in 1866; Talladega in Alabama, Emerson at Mobile, Storrs at Atlanta, and Beach at Savannah in 1867; Hampton Inst.i.tute in Virginia, Knox at Athens, Burwell at Selma, now at Florence; Ely Normal in Louisville in 1868; Straight University at New Orleans, Tougaloo in Mississippi, Le Moyne at Memphis, and Lincoln at Marion, Alabama, in 1869; Dorchester Academy at McIntosh, and the Albany Normal in Georgia in 1870. The Congregationalists, moreover, figured in the establishment of Howard University, which was chartered by the United States Government in 1867 with provision for the education of all persons regardless of race.
Some other less effective forces were at work during this period accomplishing here and there results seemingly unimportant but in the end productive of much good. In 1862 Miss Towne and Miss Murray, members of the Society of Friends, established the Penn School on St. Helena Island. Cornelia Hanc.o.c.k, a Philadelphia woman of the same sect, founded the Laing School at Mount Pleasant, near Charleston, South Carolina.
Martha Schofield, another Friend of Pennsylvania, opened at Aiken in 1865 the Schofield Industrial School. In 1864 Alida Clark, supported by Friends in Indiana, engaged in relief work among Negro orphans in Helena, Arkansas, and in 1869 established near that city what is now known as Southland College. The Reformed Presbyterians maintained a school at Natchez between 1864 and 1866, and in 1874 established Knox Academy at Selma, Alabama. The United Presbyterians opened a sort of clandestine school in Nashville in 1863, and in 1875 established Knoxville College as a center for a group of schools for Negroes in Eastern Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, and Northern Alabama.
Franklinton Christian College, maintained by the American Christian Convention, was opened in 1878 and chartered in 1890. Stillman Inst.i.tute was established by the southern Presbyterians at Tuscaloosa in 1876.
Paine College was founded at Augusta in 1884.
With these striking examples of sacrifice in behalf of the education of their race, the Negro churches themselves began to partic.i.p.ate in the extension of education as a means to spread the gospel through an intelligent ministry and to enable the laity to appreciate it as the great leverage in the uplift of the man far down. The African Methodists had through the efforts of Bishop Payne already undertaken the establishment of Union Seminary near Columbus, which was finally merged with Wilberforce, established by the Methodists in 1858 near Xenia, Ohio. The African Methodists also established Western University in Kansas. To extend their educational work in the South, however, this same denomination established Allen University at Columbia in 1881; Morris Brown at Atlanta in 1885; and later other schools at Waco, Texas; Jackson, Mississippi; and Selma, Alabama. The Zion Methodist Church too was planning the establishment of Livingstone College in 1879 and removed to the present site of Salisbury in 1882, was popularized extensively by the eloquent J. C. Price. Early emphasizing education, the Colored Methodist Church opened Lane College at Jackson, Tennessee, in 1882 and later established other schools at Birmingham, Alabama, Holly Springs, Mississippi, and Tyler, Texas. With the support of the American Baptist Home Mission Society the Negro Baptists have done likewise and, moreover, have established independently of the whites other such schools as the Virginia Theological Seminary and College at Lynchburg, largely developed by the talented Gregory W. Hayes; the William J. Simmons University of Louisville; the Arkansas Baptist College, now under the direction of the efficient J. A. Booker; and the National Training School for Girls in Washington, D. C., an inst.i.tution so well managed by the noted orator and indefatigable worker, Nannie H.
Burroughs.
[Ill.u.s.tration: J. C. PRICE
An orator and educator in the church.]
To make proper use of the schools various organizations cooperating under the name of Freedmen"s Aid Societies sent workers into the South to meet every need of the Negro. These efforts were not altogether those of the church, but so many churchmen were connected therewith that the story of the Negro church would be incomplete without it. Cooperating with these agencies, the American Missionary a.s.sociation had in 1868 as many as 532 missionaries and teachers working among the Negroes, spending as much as $400,000 a year. Then there came the National Freedmen"s Relief a.s.sociation of New York with 14 teachers and funds amounting to $400,000 and $250,000 in supplies; the Pennsylvania Freedmen"s Relief a.s.sociation or Philadelphia Society with a force of 60 teachers and a fund of $250,000 in 1865; the Western Freedmen"s Aid Commission with receipts aggregating $227,000 to support teachers in the South in 1865; the Northwestern Freedmen"s Aid Commission sending to the South in 1865 as many as 50 teachers. In the District of Columbia, among the Negroes themselves, there were organized and operated the National Freedmen"s Relief a.s.sociation and the National a.s.sociation for the Relief of Dest.i.tute Colored women and children, the latter being supported by funds appropriated by Congress.
The Friends, a distinctly religious body, early partic.i.p.ated in the same work through various local agencies. Among the first was the Friends a.s.sociation of Philadelphia and its vicinity for the Relief of Colored Freedmen, which between 1863 and 1867 expended $210,500 among the freedmen in Virginia and North Carolina. More interested in education and religion, the Friends" a.s.sociation for the Aid and Elevation of the Freedmen worked among the Negroes of Virginia and South Carolina, where between 1862 and 1869 they maintained 14 schools with 732 students and expended for schools, seeds, supplies, donations to asylums, and 50,000 copies of the New Testament, $57,500. The New England Friends began work among the freedmen in 1864 in Washington, D. C., operating there a store at cost prices and conducting day, evening, and Sunday schools.
Finally there cooperated with the New England Friends those of Maryland organized in 1864 as the Baltimore a.s.sociation for the Moral and Educational Improvement of the Colored People. This society was fortunate in receiving annually for some time a subsidy from the city of Baltimore to the amount of $20,000.
Foreign friends of the race were equally active in promoting education and religion among the freedmen. In 1863, members of the Society of Friends in England contributed to this relief work 3,000. The following year 5,000 came from this source in England and 1,500 from Ireland.
That same year there came through the New England Society $2,100 from the London Freedmen"s Aid Society, smaller sums from France and Ireland, and $1,313 from five Pa.r.s.ee firms in London. Similar contributions were secured from abroad by other relief societies organized in the United States. According to facts obtained by the Freedman"s Bureau the English aid societies contributed to the relief of the Negroes between 1865 and 1869 at least $500,000. Dr. J. L. M. Curry believed that the total receipts in money and supplies reached $1,000,000.
The facts set forth above well represent the activities of the Friends and of the Congregationalists, Free Will Baptists, Wesleyans, Methodists, and Reformed Dutch, for whom the American Missionary a.s.sociation served as an agent; but there were in the field several churches working independently. Among these were the Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians. To systematize its efforts the Methodists organized in 1866 "The Freedmen Aid Society of the Methodist Church."
The first efforts of this society were directed toward primary, normal, and higher education. In 1868 the Methodists had then established through this agency 29 schools with 51 teachers and 5,000 students in Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Georgia. By the end of the sixth year of its existence the receipts of the society amounted to $315,100.
During these years the American Baptist Home Missionary a.s.sociation supported by Presbyterians and United Brethren in Christ, was sending workers right in the wake of the Union armies invading the Mississippi Valley. The Baptists had opened a school for Negroes in Alexandria in 1862, and by 1864 had sent missionaries into the District of Columbia, Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Louisiana. Because of the freedom exercised by the Baptists locally, there was among them much duplication of effort which resulted in confusion; but the American Baptist Home Missionary a.s.sociation finally emerged as a unifying factor among these workers. This society had made such rapid strides by 1867 that it had in the field 50 ordained ministers and a large number of Negro students in training for the work. The Free-Will Baptists while cooperating with the American Home Missionary a.s.sociation made some efforts by themselves. They carried on some work in the Shenandoah Valley and in the West with 40 missionaries and teachers and 3,467 students.
The Presbyterians also took this work seriously. The General a.s.sembly in session at Pittsburg in 1865 appointed a special committee on freedmen, with 18 members, two of whom were designated as secretary and treasurer.
As there were already in the field 36 teachers as missionaries supported by local societies, this general bureau took over their work. The following year there were in the field 55 missionaries, reporting 3,256 day pupils, 2,043 Sunday School scholars, and six churches with 526 members, in Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, and Kansas. The income for this work was $25,350 in 1865, together with 30 or 40 boxes of clothing; but between 1865 and 1870 this denomination expended $244,700 to maintain their workers, who in 1820 had increased to 157, of whom 105 were Negroes. The Old School and United Presbyterians did not accomplish so much but they had a few missions here and there. In 1864, there were in Washington five schools with 174 students supported by the Reformed Presbyterian Board of Missions with an expenditure of $3,000 a year.
Some other sporadic efforts in behalf of the freedmen deserve at least casual mention. The Protestant Episcopal Freedmen"s Commission was organized in 1865 to engage in this work, but with the exception of some physical relief extended the unfortunate it accomplished very little.
From The Ma.s.sachusetts Episcopal a.s.sociation for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge among the Freedmen and other Colored Persons of the South and Southwest, organized that same year, still less a.s.sistance came. The American Bible Society up to 1868, however, distributed a million copies of scriptural and religious works among the freedmen. The American Tract Society also sent out such works, opened some schools, and conducted church services in Washington.
The Negroes, although poor in the goods of this world, soon made sufficient sacrifice materially to give impetus to the relief work among themselves. The Negroes in Maryland gave $23,371 to aid the relief work promoted by the Baltimore a.s.sociation for the Moral and Educational Improvement of the Colored People. They organized bodies of their own, moreover, to partic.i.p.ate directly in this uplift work. In 1864 there was established in Brooklyn "The African Civilization Society," which gradually extended its work through churches and schools into the District of Columbia, the Carolinas, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The reports of this organization show that in 1868 it employed 129 teachers instructing 8,000 students at an expense of $53,700. For some years the society operated in Brooklyn an orphan asylum with the aid of the Freedmen"s Bureau, but in 1869 the management found itself embarra.s.sed for lack of funds. From 1864 to 1868 the African Methodists so extended its mission and school work as to have 40,000 Sunday school pupils and 39,000 volumes in school libraries.
It will be interesting to mention some of the men in the North, who const.i.tuted the management of the home offices of these aid societies and who used their time and influence in raising the necessary funds.
Among the officers of the American Freedmen"s Aid Commission, a sort of general agency in New York for several relief societies, were William Lloyd Garrison, the famous abolitionist, as vice-president; Frederick Law Olmsted, the noted traveler through the South prior to the war, serving as general secretary; and, as directors, John G. Whittier, the anti-slavery poet, Francis G. Shaw, another abolitionist, and Henry Ward Beecher, the true and tried friend of the Negro. Lyman Abbott became general secretary of the combined organizations. The American Freedmen"s Aid Commission and The American Union Commission added to their staff William Cullen Bryant, Phillip Brooks, Bellamy Storer, and Edward L.
Pierce, who had done so much for the contrabands in South Carolina prior to the close of the war. When most of these societies in a convention in Cleveland united under the name of the American Freedmen"s Union Commission, they had for president Chief Justice Chase, who not only by word but by actual sacrifice of his means did much to promote the Christian education of the freedmen.
Among the supporters of the New England Society there appeared many workers known before as friends of the Negro. The Rev. Edward Everett Hale and J. M. Manning were most active in Boston in raising funds and finding teachers and missionaries to work in Negro schools. Gov. John A.
Andrew served as the first president of the New England Freedmen"s Aid Society, Edward Atkinson as secretary, and James Freeman Clarke as vice-president. And from New England came scores of workers, following up the work commenced by those gallant soldiers, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Robert Gould Shaw.
Southern people were not exactly neutral on the enlightenment of the Negro. They did not, as a whole, seriously object to it and in the course of time there appeared among them men of their own group fearlessly advocating Negro education. Dr. A. G. Haygood, a distinguished churchman among the Methodists, deserves here some mention. He represented in a large measure the best thought in the South concerning the Negro. He came forward to impress upon the South the claims of the Negro on the "sympathy and helpfulness of all who were more fortunate, especially those who called themselves the followers of Jesus Christ." This sentiment he set forth in a book, ent.i.tled _Our Brother in Black_, which struck the North with agreeable surprise and led the South to think more seriously of another solution of the so-called Negro problem. Invited to be the Director of the John F.
Slater Fund established soon thereafter, Dr. Haygood had an opportunity to spend nine years translating into action the theory set forth in his book.
Less interested in Christian education but nevertheless effective in promoting generally the cause which made the situation of the Negro church so much better in the South was Dr. J. L. M. Curry, a lawyer and congressman, representative of the Southern Confederacy. His work as Director of the Peabody Fund, easily connected with the systematic efforts of Dr. Amory Dwight Mayo, a northern man, who investigated the Negro schools in the South, set forth methods for their improvement and kept the North and the South well informed as to the forces at work among Negroes for the good of all. The southern churches as a whole during this period, however, did not so quickly forget their prejudices as to do anything of consequence for the good of the Negroes. The Negro had been begrudgingly granted his freedom and the northern teacher and missionary seemed like interlopers to be tolerated but not worthy of cooperation. The South, moreover, could not have done very much for Negro missions for the reason that immediately after the war it was decidedly impoverished; for many of the aid societies which a.s.sisted the Negroes ministered also to the whites in the desolated areas.
These missionary teachers came with a determination to do something like that of Francis Xavier, Henry Martyn, and Adoniram Judson, who bore the religious message to the Orient. They came to change the character of the freedmen through an intelligent religion based upon actual knowledge of G.o.d as revealed in the Bible. Among these workers one should mention Rev. D. L. Johnson, a teacher of refugees in Washington; Solomon Peck, a volunteer teacher of the contrabands at Beaufort, South Carolina, in 1862; Horace b.u.mstead, afterward President of Atlanta University; and Gen. O. O. Howard, President of Howard University.
The sort of education promoted by these workers will further explain the significance of the movement. All of the church aid societies and many of those beyond the control of churchmen had for their purpose the industrial, social, intellectual, and religious improvement of the freedmen. The capstone of the structure they would build then had its foundation in moral and religious instruction. Most workers, therefore, were chosen with regard to their fitness to function in these positions as missionaries in the school room. Few persons volunteering to do such work at that time could be devoid of a sympathetic nature, but more than this was required to build in these new citizens that Christian character which would make them helpful to their fellows and useful in the work of the Master. While education was necessary for the Negroes as for all other persons, the chief need of the Negro, as most of these workers observed it, was religion.
Acting upon this idea, therefore, almost every Negro school provided in some way for religious instruction. If the course of study were not sufficiently broad to base thereupon a more advanced course, there was usually provided some instruction in the English Bible. In case the course of study became so pretentious as to style itself a college curriculum, there was usually added the regular course in theology, which, in spite of the fact that it was the only professional work in which such inst.i.tutions engaged, was sufficient for them to take over the t.i.tle of university. Although lacking adequate understanding sometimes, however, these inst.i.tutions had so much of the right spirit that they accomplished all but wonders. While they did not always hold the students long enough to impart all that a college graduate or a professional man should know, they so inspired the youth with the love of study that the habit once formed led them into fields of research and endeavor which men much better trained often failed to reach.
The emphasis of the northern churches upon instruction rather than upon mere proselyting immediately after the war, therefore, was not misplaced. They no doubt wrought more wisely than they thought. The Negro already had his predilections toward the Methodists and the Baptists and the mere contest for the increase of church membership to be recruited among a people, the ma.s.ses of whom could not then serve G.o.d intelligently would have been love"s labor lost. Northern denominations wisely cooperated with one another regardless of sectarian lines to do whatever was needful whether or not the largest contributor to the success of the enterprise received credit for it. Negroes who went from these schools had, of course, the impress of the respective denominations to which they owed their education, but very often, as it was in the case of the Presbyterians, the denomination lost to the others of a more popular appeal most of the men which it trained.
Lincoln and Biddle Universities have by their training of men who, on leaving school joined the Methodists or Baptists, contributed to the success of these denominations. When one thinks of Walter H. Brooks, the popular Baptist minister in Washington, and of Joseph C. Price, the idol of the Zion Church, as graduates of Lincoln University, this contention becomes convincing.
With all of these workers in the field promoting religious education without regard to creed, the Negro churches soon had a much larger number of men equipped to extend their work. The minister who could neither read nor write became an exception to the rule and when still ambitious in spite of such shortcomings he sometimes ceased to have a following. Preaching became more of an appeal to the intellect than an effort to stir one"s emotions. Sermons were made as an effort to minister to a need observed by careful consideration of the circ.u.mstances of the persons served, hymns in keeping with the thought of the discourse harmonized therewith, and prayers became the occasion of thanksgiving for blessings which the intelligent pastor could lead his congregation to appreciate and of a pet.i.tion for G.o.d"s help to live more righteously. In fact, the tone of worship in the Negro church had been as a result of the post bellum efforts in education very much changed as early as 1875 and decidedly so by 1885.
Given such an impetus the work of the Christian church among Negroes was rapidly carried forward. Within a few years the neglected ma.s.ses of the freedmen unto whom the gospel had never been successfully preached were generally evangelized and provided with some sort of facilities for religious instruction. Publication societies sold through colporters and missionaries religious literature adapted to the special needs of the freedmen and religious workers organized in churches circles devoted to the study of Christian doctrine and the Bible. As the church thus liberalized offered the Negroes a much better opportunity for development than the other inst.i.tutions, many of which for years after emanc.i.p.ation were regarded as spheres which the Negro should not enter, the freedmen specialized in the study of this one concern thrown open to them, mastering in a few years the principles of the Christian religion and the story of the Bible to the extent that their friends and enemies were all but startled. As a result, therefore, Negroes of to-day have a much more thorough knowledge of these fundamentals than most white men.
CHAPTER XI
THE CALL OF POLITICS
This favorable beginning, however, was not indicative of a straightforward attack on the tents of wickedness. Many Negroes who were trained for the ministry never entered thereupon because of the lure of politics during the days of Reconstruction. Some who had engaged in this Christian work found out that in spite of the most thorough training by pious men, they were not fitted for such a calling and abandoned it for the political arena. Others who were seemingly successful in the ministry divided their time between their profession and politics, either because of the exigencies of the situation or the desire to attain positions of prominence in keeping with the traditions of the white people of the South, who have emphasized unduly the status of the professional cla.s.s.
There were during the Reconstruction period, moreover, so many other necessities with which the Negroes had to be supplied that the Negro preacher, often the only one in a community usually sufficiently well developed to lead the people, had to devote his time not only to church work but to every matter of concern to the race. In some respects, the Negroes after the war were not far removed from the conditions obtaining in the North before the war. Many of their former problems still confronted them. The chief difference was that after the war the Negroes had fighting ground on which to stand to wage a battle for those things which, having been begrudgingly granted, were being gradually taken away.
That the Negro preacher should continue a man of so many interests was but a natural consequence of the trend in the development of the race in this country. Up to this time the Negroes had established and maintained only one inst.i.tution of their own. That was their church. When the time came for them to exercise other functions in society this one inst.i.tution had to be overworked to supply the needs of others. Inasmuch as the church then became the center of so many activities the minister in charge often had to take the lead in shaping the policy of his people that they might advance in the right way. Ministers who abandoned their pulpits for the political world may be condemned as deserting their post of duty; but when one considers the call of their race in the situation in which it was and the valuable services some of them rendered, he cannot hastily conclude that the race thereby lost more than it gained.
History should be studied sympathetically. The devotee to the faith should not denounce these men as recreant to Christianity and the student of politics must not dub them as interlopers in a forbidden field. Never before had a race been liberated under such circ.u.mstances.
Never before had a group in such an undeveloped state been called upon to do so many things in such a short time. That the procedure of the race in this infinitely complex situation differed somewhat from that of others who had centuries to do what the Negroes were required to accomplish in a day, should be no cause of surprise.