Today the First Baptist Church Capitol Hill in Nashville, Tennessee, gains independence. In 1824 the First Baptist Church of Nashville was established, and ten years afterward the white-led congregation was half white and half black. As in other Southern, white-led, biracial congregations prior to the war, slave members were constantly reminded from the pulpit that…
This week Tennessee’s black leaders assemble in Nashville for their state’s first Colored’s Men Convention. Saint John’s African Methodist Episcopal Church hosts the gathering, which includes black citizens of various religious denominations, including Baptists. According to today’s Colored Tennessean newspaper, the convention called for final ratification of “the 13th National Amendment, as well as citizenship…
Today the Colored Shiloh Baptist Association, comprised of individual black congregations in central Virginia, is formed in Richmond. The association is created from a meeting held at Richmond’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. Three congregations in Richmond, three in Petersburg and one in Manchester comprise the seven churches represented whose combined membership is nearly 10,000. Some individual…