Tensions between whites and freedmen grow all the more in many towns and cities throughout the former Confederacy. In Atlanta this month black members of the white-led First Baptist Church yet use the white First Baptist Church facilities for their now-autonomous worship services. Once wanted in the church in order that white members might deploy…
The Alabama Baptist State Convention (white), meeting this month in Marion, discusses, among other matters, the state of race relations in post-war Alabama. Delegates pretend that nothing has changed, resolving to treat their former slaves no differently now that they are legally free. On the other hand, unlike their overt Confederate Christian nationalism voiced during…
In Hopkins, South Carolina the white Beulah Baptist Church today ordains William Weston Adams to the ministry. Adams is a former slave, one of three who are ordained in the post-war months of 1865 by Beulah’s pastor, James Lawrence Reynolds. Like many Baptist churches in South Carolina, the Beulah Baptist Church has far more black…