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…
With gathering momentum, African slavery is losing ground following the Emancipation Proclamation. Nowhere is this more evident than within Union-controlled areas along the South Carolina coast. In the state where the first shot of the war was fired, and where prior to the war some of the richest men in the nation lived–all large plantation…
A new chapter in Baptist life has been unfolding this month as freedmen on St. Helena Island off the coast of South Carolina, under the protection and with the assistance of the United States Army, form an autonomous Baptist congregation and establish a Baptist-related school, the Penn School. The school teaches reading, writing, agricultural and…