Black Baptists have been well-established in Norfolk and Portsmouth, Virginia since the early nineteenth century. Their vibrant presence is testimony to the acceptance of blacks in Baptist churches, a preponderance of free blacks in the area, and three decades (the 1820s-1850s) as a disembarkation point for African American missionaries traveling to Liberia through the efforts…
The First Baptist Church of Northampton, Massachusetts burns today. While the building is not entirely destroyed, for the next eighteen months worship services are held in the Northampton Town Hall while the church meeting house undergoes repairs. Meanwhile, the Educational Association of Virginia is formed today in the basement of the First Baptist Church of…
Many in the Confederacy have reacted quite negatively to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln‘s recent Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction. The policy provides a way for Confederate citizens to pledge loyalty to the United States and thus receive a pardon, while also setting in place a plan to, over time, re-incorporate into the United States those…