Today Texas Baptist layman, lawyer and former slaveowner Jacob Eliot takes “the oath of allegiance to U.S. government.” Eliot, however, yet often refers to black individuals with the phrase, “belongs to.” Many other white Southerners also continue thinking of black persons as property, rather than free persons. In many instances, local Baptist church records employ…
In Selma, the county seat of Dallas County, Alabama, freedpersons feel anything but free. Major J. B. Houston is is the provost marshal for Selman’s Freedmen’s Burea. This month he files a report concerning a dozen cases of “white-on-black violence,” the incidents of which are “but a small part of those that have actually been”…
Today in Montgomery, Alabama an “old negro woman” enters one of city’s “principle churches,” walks down the church aisle, and sits down in a seat of her choice. The woman, after all, is now free. Or so she might think. A white church member quickly intercedes, “politely” telling her that the church has “prepared another…