The Big Creek Baptist Church of South Carolina today issues its first formal statement pertaining to freedpersons: Should “colored members” leave “their former owners without leave, they shall notify the church.” They then “must apply for letters of dismission within the space of six months or their names shall be erased from the church book.”…
In Raleigh this day the first Convention of the Colored People of North Carolina convenes, a gathering “novel to the white people.” Prior to the end of the war and the defeat of the Confederacy, such an assembly was not merely unlawful, but inconceivable. Even now, many delegates from distant towns and cities traveled to…
Born in 1839 in Lowndes County, Georgia, the future Rev. James Madison “Boss” Hendry as a child moved with his parents to Florida. There he lived when the war broke out. He acquired the nickname “Boss” because of his “aggressive” nature. Enlisting on May 4, 1862 as a private at Fort Meade, Florida, he serves…