This month in Virginia the American Baptist Home Mission society establishes the Richmond Institute, a school devoted to the training of African American preachers and teachers. Twenty-four initially enroll, and the classes are held at night. The following year the name of the school is changed to the National Theological Institute of Richmond, and in…
Today long-time Kentucky Baptist layman and former state politician Leonard Stephens writes to his brother William. Lamenting, in part, the difficulties he is having with his former slaves, Stephens offers a snapshot of white-black relations in the post-war months: “Since you left I have been considerably troubled over the threatening of my negroes to leave…
Six months following the war, guerrilla activity and murders of freedmen are common in the South. Less common in the sight of white southerners, and much resented, are “colored troops.” Today a U.S. Colored Troops officer, Lieutenant J. M. Warren of Company D, 42nd Colored Troops, stationed in Decatur, Alabama, is ordered to take a…