Climbing Up to Glory (27 page)

Because most freedmen were poor, they were severely limited in their ability to buy or construct churches and were forced at first to worship in primitive locales. For example, Atlanta's First Baptist Church gathered in a railroad boxcar, and the First Baptist Church of Memphis met in a “bush arbor” in 1865. Blacks in Danville, Virginia, worked tirelessly to secure enough funds to rent an old tobacco warehouse for services, and it became the High Street Baptist Church. Similarly, blacks on an island in the James River initially held services in the home of a worshipper but eventually secured a warehouse in Richmond.
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In many cases, the homes of worshippers where religious services were held were little more than crude dugouts, as was the case for members of the AME and Baptist churches in Nicodemus, Kansas.
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It is noteworthy to acknowledge the role that many black women played in organizing several of these makeshift religious bodies that sometimes grew into large politically and socially active churches. Mary Smith, for example, volunteered both her organizational skills and her home in Austin, Texas, for the Sweet Home Baptist congregation until they secured a permanent church in 1882.
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Sister Mattie Rainey's log cabin, with her blessing, became the home of New Hope Baptist Church in Dallas in 1873. In addition, the Third Baptist Church in Austin began in the home of Mrs. Eliza Hawkins in 1875, and Matilda Lewis helped organize the Macedonia Baptist Church of Georgetown, Texas, in 1881 in her backyard.
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A largely ignored but significant fact is that black women not only played a crucial role in organizing churches but also constituted a majority of the charter members. For instance, women made up six of the seven charter members of the New Hope Baptist Church in Dallas, and eleven of the thirteen charter members of the First Baptist Church in Austin, which was formed in 1867, were women. Black women also constituted 122 of the 174 early members of the African Congregational Church in 1868 in Paris, Texas.
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That they would play a vital role in the black church should come as no surprise. Indeed, without their overwhelming participation, the church might not have become the central institution that it was in the black community.

After freedom, some Southern whites assisted blacks in organizing, building, and securing places of worship. In Elizabeth City, North Carolina, for example, in 1866 when blacks who had attended the First Baptist Church for whites during slavery decided that they wanted their own church, a group of whites in the city helped them build the Olive Branch Baptist Church.
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And when freedmen in Jonesboro, Alabama, from the congregation of the white Canaan Baptist Church opted to leave and establish their own church, some white members assisted them in constructing a new building.
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In 1867 when all thirty-eight black members of the Fairfield Baptist Church of Northumberland County, Virginia, decided to withdraw, they not only received the blessings of their white brethren but were also given two plots of land.
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Moreover, with the consent of the white members, thirty-seven black members of the Ruhama Baptist Church near Birmingham, Alabama, withdrew in 1868 and formed Mount Zion Baptist Church. The church was built on land donated to blacks by Obadian Woods, formerly one of the largest slaveowners in the area.
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In each of these instances, it is difficult to discern what, if any, motives whites had in assisting blacks. Perhaps they did so out of genuine kindness or else to ensure that blacks would have their own churches apart from white congregations. If not helping to erect church buildings or donating plots of land, some whites found other ways to aid blacks. For example, from 1865 through 1867, the white Church of Christ in Circleville, Texas, allowed blacks to use its facilities until they could purchase a separate meeting house. Likewise, the Methodist Episcopal Church (South) in Houston allowed the African Methodists there to use its sanctuary until they could secure their own.
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Despite the occasional assistance of Southern whites, blacks in most instances had to rely on themselves. Often, freedmen had to wait until they could save enough money to secure adequate facilities. To speed the process, blacks from different denominations sometimes cooperated with one another, raising money as a community to build or rent one building where all denominations could worship. In 1867 in Waco, Texas, for example, black Methodists and Baptists pooled their resources and erected a small church that they used on alternate Sundays. Six years later, they tore it down, divided the building materials between the two denominations, and parted on friendly terms to construct two separate churches.
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Moreover, in most areas of Travis County, Texas, Methodists and Baptists used a common building. One denomination used the church for morning services and the other for afternoon worship. And freedmen built a community center in a segregated shantytown in the Brenham suburb of Watrousville, Texas, which met the religious needs of all the black denominations and also served as the headquarters of the Loyal League.
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Sometimes, however, when such efforts did not bear fruit, freedmen used more desperate means. For example, shortly after emancipation, a group of freedmen in Selma, Alabama, who had worshipped as slaves at the St. Phillips Street Baptist Church, now First Baptist Church, attempted to forcefully seize it from whites. They were prevented from doing so when the pastor, the Reverend J. B. Hawthorne, alerted the white community, who then armed themselves and put an end to the threat.
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It is likely that the freedmen did not see themselves as rebels in a conventional sense. They were simply reclaiming what they thought was rightfully theirs. After all, their tireless labor had contributed to the bulk of the work done on the church, the few pennies they had as slaves were used for its upkeep, and their overall labor certainly generated not only the cash flow to build the church but also to maintain it. Consequently, since Southern whites had stolen from them all their lives and had engaged in treason against the U.S. government by taking up arms against it while the slaves remained loyal to the Union, in the minds of several freedmen, then, everything that Southern whites had previously owned should now belong to them—their land, houses, crops, dairy, poultry, and, certainly, churches. In other words, blacks had a moral right to all of these things.

In most instances, the members of individual denominations raised money among themselves to purchase land and erect their own churches, and some donated property. In addition, various denominations organized successful building-fund campaigns. Black women as well as black men often gave financially or more commonly donated land for church construction. Former slave Delilah Harris gave land for the Smith Chapel, African Methodist Church. Double Bayou built its church on land donated by Martha Godfrey in 1877, Emily Brown donated land for the St. Emily United Methodist Church in Chambers County, Texas, and in 1868, Mrs. Annie Blackley gave a large sum and a church bell to the First Colored Baptist Church, renamed the Palestine Missionary Baptist Church, in Victoria, Texas.
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Despite great poverty, enormous amounts of money were often raised by blacks to build churches. For example, the Reverend Morris Henderson's congregation in Memphis, Tennessee, raised $5,000 to purchase a lot in October 1866, and three years later built the Beale Street Baptist Church in the city. Of significance, although largely ignored by most scholars, is the role played by black women from Beale Street in raising money to help pay the $5,000 mortgage on the church lot. On one warm Sunday afternoon in June 1865, several black church women organized the Baptist Sewing Society, a group dedicated to securing funds for a permanent church. Through their collective efforts, the women raised more than $500 during the first nine months of the society's existence. Once built, Beale Street Baptist Church spawned several other churches and went on to become Memphis's most famous black church.
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Black denominations in Charleston, Macon, and Richmond duplicated the building-fund campaign of the black Baptists in Memphis, even though many of their members were penniless. And, here in Charleston, even schoolchildren contributed coins. It was estimated that Emanuel Church, under the guidance of the Reverend R. H. Cain, would cost about $10,000. As early as the fall of 1865, $1,500 of this amount had been raised. Blacks who could not give money to this venture often provided their own labor instead. In fact, everyone who worked on the building was black, including the architect, Robert Vesey. Subsequently, Emanuel Church, located on Calhoun Street, was completed to serve some 2,500 people. With the rapidly increasing membership of the AME Church, however, it soon became necessary to find an even larger facility, and, once again, members raised money to purchase another church and lot which would cost $8,000. By the summer of 1866 they had already raised $2,000.
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In Macon, Georgia, during one of his many trips South, John W. Alvord of the Freedmen's Bureau observed the completion of a beautiful black church. He noted, “I saw in Macon a colored church edifice going up, of brick, to cost $10,000. It was planned and constructed by their own mechanics—tasteful in style, and to be paid for wholly by themselves.”
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Black Baptists in Richmond under the leadership of the Reverend James H. Holmes also prospered. Holmes became pastor of the First African Baptist Church in 1867, and in only twelve years, he paid off the huge church debt and increased membership to a staggering 5,000. This church grew so rapidly that it spawned two others, Ebenezer Baptist Church and Sixth Mount Zion Baptist Church.
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Despite the success of some blacks in raising substantial amounts of money to erect handsome churches and to retire their debt, however, most blacks could not duplicate this feat. As a consequence, even those in the majority who built small, modest churches for only a few members sometimes could not pay the mortgage. And they were devastated when this failure resulted in the loss of their church. The Freedmen's Bureau was besieged by letters from congregants weighed down by the financial burden. Thomas Allen, a Baptist minister, wrote in 1867 to General Howard that his congregation owed $250 on its building. Local whites had constructed and financed the church, but the members could not pay the mortgage. Facing the cold reality of the situation, Allen acknowledged that “we cannot rase the money til next year if then, and the fact is the church will be taken from us ... if I can not get the money.” In Georgia, in another case, Henry M. Turner wrote to the state superintendent of education about a church struggling desperately against a crushing debt: “I would remark that the people are very poor and I cannot see how they can possibly pay this debt.” He found it despicable that the church's white creditors were not only trying to force its sale but also seemed to delight in doing so. With concern for the devastating effect that the sale would have on the congregation, Turner continued, “these poor people have worked hard to get their church and school built. And now to have it sold for half its value, from them, is really discouraging.”
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Those blacks able to pay the mortgages on their churches still faced several overwhelming obstacles in day-to-day operations. Black and white preachers, for example, were often attacked for holding services for blacks. Many of these attacks had political implications. Obviously, many whites feared the development of black independence, even in religion. In the churches, blacks were able to hone the organizational, leadership, and oratorical skills needed to produce some of the most vocal and politically active leaders of the African-American community. At a time when Southern whites were determined to halt the rising tide of black political participation, attacks on all aspects of black religion had to be launched. Although both black and white preachers of freedmen were sometimes threatened and assaulted, blacks along with their congregants lost their lives in greater numbers than did whites. For example, a group of whites near Austin, in 1869, murdered George Porter, a black minister. Owing to the fact that Porter provided leadership for local blacks, counseled them on their rights, and complained to authorities about ill treatment of black apprentices, whites had targeted him for assassination. Whites in Grayson County, Texas, also murdered a black preacher who was viewed as a formidable obstacle to white political and economic control of the county. In addition, in Columbia, Texas, a group of whites invaded a black church, called the black minister a “d *** son of a B****” and ordered him to stop preaching. A black congregant tried to protect him when one of the whites drew a gun, but the white shot him dead.
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Indeed, throughout the South during Reconstruction, so many black preachers were assassinated that Federal officials sometimes assigned them bodyguards. Carl Schurz, a Northern white correspondent, wrote of one of these cases in Mobile, where Major General Woods had assigned a black minister a special guard.
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As the physical symbols of black autonomy, churches were especially targeted by Southern whites. Many were burned down. For instance, in North Carolina, in the first few months of emancipation, a black Baptist church in Wilmington was destroyed by fire, and in Cleveland County a black church was “burned to the ground.”
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However, Southern whites were not the only ones bent on destruction. For example, Union soldiers demolished an AME church in Atlanta simply because one of the local white citizens complained that blacks were making too much noise during services.
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To the dismay of Southern whites, however, when a black church was destroyed, regardless of denomination, the entire community would dedicate itself to rebuilding it. Black churches were too important to the community to not do so. After all, it was the only true institution that blacks could call their own.