At Salem Church, near Greensboro, the Alabama State Convention (white)
was organized October, 1823, not quite forty-five years before the
organization of the Colored Baptist Convention in 1868, and its first
anniversary was held at Marion, in Perry county.
Reference is made to these facts in order to introduce other facts
bearing a closer relation to ourselves. Within a circle of twenty-five
miles of Marion--and Greensboro, is near this point--some of the
mightiest influences in support of Baptist views have risen up and
gone forth upon the colored Baptists of Alabama. The colored people of
Marion, and throughout the country around, are hardly less noted for
their refinement than they are for their Baptistic opinions. In this
section arose those colored men of power and of pioneer fame--Revs.
James Childs, the first pastor of the Marion Church (colored); Henry
Stevens, first pastor of the Greensboro Church, and John Dosier,
so long pastor of the church in Uniontown. This point, till right
recently, has been the educational center of our white brethren, and
here in Marion, the first colored State Normal school began, as the
result of the influence of the late Hon. A. H. Curtis, of Baptist fame.
[Illustration: Mrs. A. A. Bowie, Instructress in Dressmaking, Selma
University.]