The formation of autonomous black Baptist churches in the South continues unabated. Today in the deep South town of Albany, Georgia the Mount Zion Baptist church is established in a blacksmith shop on the corner of State and Jackson streets. The Rev. R. R. Watson is the church’s founding pastor. Within six months a second…
Passed in the United States Senate on April 8, 1864, and the U.S. House on January 31, 1865, a proposed national amendment formally abolishing slavery in the United States is ratified by Georgia this day. Georgia’s approval represents the threshold of three-fourths of the states needed to make the act an amendment to the U.S.…
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…