On Hilton Head Island on the coast of South Carolina a convention of Colored Baptist churches assembles this day at Mitchelville. The South Carolina coast since 1862 has been home to tens of thousands of freedmen. The initial free blacks in the area were liberated during the war by the Union Army during the war…
When Northern missionaries, many Baptists, in 1863 onward arrived in the South to work among freedmen, they oftentimes found black congregations led by licensed, and in some cases ordained, preachers. This was especially true in Savannah, where the First African Baptist Church and Third African Baptist Church, both among the older black Baptist churches in…
The post-war exodus of former slaves from the South to the North is already in progress. They follow paths trod by hundreds of thousands who fled to freedom during the war. In Indiana, Evansville, just across the Ohio River from Kentucky, is a top destination for freedmen from the South. Today former slaves who have…