I take as the South the eleven old slave states, which stood at one time
in armed array against the rest of the United States, which are to-day
as loyal and true to the General Government as any other states in this
great and favored land of ours. They are Virginia, North and South
Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana,
Arkansas and Texas. These states make up one-fourth of the area of the
United States, and their population is about one-fourth of that of the
whole country. These figures and the others that I shall give cannot be
exact, as we are so far away from the last census; but they are close
estimates, and present, I think, a fair idea of the facts as they are
to-day.
In this large section of our country, with only 1.6 per cent. foreign
born, the negroes make up 40 per cent. of the population. They are found
chiefly in the cities and towns, and in the country along the coastal
plains and on the first rise of the hills; we see very few in the
mountain districts.
What of the religious affiliations of the negroes? Nearly every negro is
a nominal church member. The first reason for this is that his childish
emotional nature is essentially religious, fearing or adoring the unseen
powers. The second reason is that the Church is not only the religious
but the social center for the negro, largely taking the place with him,
which the secret and benevolent societies hold among the white people.
Very few are Roman Catholics. The Roman Church has not made the progress
among the negroes, which one would expect of the Church which has such a
hold on the common peoples of Southern Europe. Only about four thousand
are members of the Presbyterian Church; and to the Episcopal Church
belong only 9,000 communicants. The rest are divided between the
Baptists and Methodists. The low educational standard of the ministry
for these Churches, their easy methods of organization and their
insistence on feeling rather than on conduct have appealed strongly to
the great mass of the negroes.
Looking more closely at those in our Church, we find that out of nine
million negroes in the South, we have about nine thousand communicants:
one in a thousand. They vary from one in 381 in Virginia to one in 7961
in Mississippi. In my own State of North Carolina we have one negro
communicant to every 480 of the negro population.
What was the religious condition and teaching of the negroes before the
Civil War? In 1816 in Philadelphia the African-Methodist Episcopal
Church separated from the whites; and they have formed the strongest
negro organization in the country. A large number of the negro
Methodists remained, however, with the whites; and for some of these,
churches were built, and a white preacher regularly set aside by the
white Conference to minister to their black people. Others came to the
same church with the whites, occupying the gallery or pews allotted to
them in the rear of the Church. The colored Baptists and Presbyterians
worshipped in the same way with the whites, and were ministered to by
white preachers. In the Church we had no colored ministers; but the
negroes worshipped with us in separate parts of the same Church
building, and the white clergyman felt responsible for the black portion
of his flock. In many Churches--I have one now particularly in mind--the
white people sat in the front pews in the morning and the negroes in the
back. In the afternoon, the same clergyman, in the same Church, preached
to the negroes, sitting in front, and the white people, some of whom
generally came, sitting behind. At the Holy Communion and at
Confirmation whites and blacks came together, the blacks generally last.
In South Carolina, when the Civil War began, there were very nearly as
many black communicants in the Church as white. On every plantation and
in nearly every Christian home throughout the South, without regard to
religious affiliations, the negroes were taught in Sunday-schools by the
mistress and her older daughters. Many of the large planters employed a
regular chaplain for their negroes. I knew intimately the Rev. George
Patterson, who began his ministry in East Carolina as chaplain to the
negroes belonging to Mr. Josiah Collins.
Just a word or two here about slavery, this suggestion coming to me from
a Northern clergyman, who has for the past twenty years been doing noble
work for the negroes in North Carolina. Slavery with all its horrors was
over-ruled by God to be a great missionary institution. The savage black
men were brought into the closest contact with the highest Anglo-Saxon
civilization, the best negroes coming into personal touch with the best
whites as servant and master. They were taught Christ by as fair
representatives of his religion as the world has ever seen. The negroes
were brought under law, and were forced to see the blessings of order
and justice. As Booker Washington also admits, they were taught the
value of work and its necessity. So, through slavery the negro in the
United States to-day stands far above the wild and ignorant African who
now inhabits the land from which he came. When you read Uncle Tom's
Cabin, remember that Uncle Tom was a product of slavery and that the
fairer side as presented by Mrs. Stowe was the most common in the whole
South. Do not misunderstand me; together with a large majority of the
thinking white men of the South, I rejoice that slavery is a thing of
the past; I would not have it again if I could; I see its frightful
evils; but we must all acknowledge that slavery has been a potent factor
for good in the evolution of the negro in the United States.
The great Civil War swept over the South; and the negro was made a free
man. How did this change affect his religious position? The negroes as a
rule left their old masters, to try their wings and see if they were
really free. One sad incident in my early childhood comes back to me
now. I was awakened one night by the uncontrollable weeping of my
mother. "Mother, Mother," I cried, "what is the matter!" "Hagar"--my
dear black mammy--"is going to leave us." I broke out with her in still
louder lamentations. Mammy came in; and then her tears fell with ours.
"You aren't going to leave me, Mammy?" "Yes, chile, I'm bound to go."
"Why?" "All the cullud people is gwine down de river; and I must go
too." And so for pride and fear of race, though her heart was breaking
for us, she went away. I am happy to tell you that in a few months she
came back, and was, just as before, my loving and beloved mammy, until
the day of her death. The negroes left the white churches in like
manner, and most of them stayed away in their own negro churches. The
Baptists and Methodists separated entirely from the whites, becoming
completely independent. After working together for many years the
colored Presbyterians have become an independent organization. We in the
Church tried to keep them with us just as before in the days of slavery;
but we only partially succeeded. We began to train colored men for the
ministry; we built Churches for them; we admitted them to our Diocesan
Councils on equal terms; and we strove manfully to cling to the Catholic
idea: one Church for all peoples and races.
What are we doing now? First here is our educational work. In some
parishes of every diocese we have parochial schools, teaching the
children mentally and morally, hoping to get hold of the next
generation, feeling the importance of a moral and religious training
which cannot be given by the public schools. We have now in all our
dioceses nearly a hundred of these parochial schools. In North Carolina
and Virginia we have a group of institutions well worth mentioning, with
which I am in close personal touch, on which we are building great hope
for the future: St. Augustine Normal and Industrial School, Raleigh,
N. C.; St. Paul's Normal and Industrial School, Lawrenceville, Va., and
the Bishop Payne Divinity School, Petersburg, Va. In these schools we
are educating for our part of the South workmen, teachers, business and
professional men, and clergymen. We are combining in them education for
the hand, for the head, for the heart, and for the spirit of man; we are
giving these negroes the education that trains for life in all its
phases, fitting them to be workers and leaders among their people. You
have heard of the "Church Institute for the Negro." I beg you will give
it your hearty sympathy and cordial co-operation. The good purpose of
the Institute is to raise money first for these three Institutions, to
lift them forward and to so increase the area of their influence that
they will do in the Church a work similar to that done outside the
Church by Hampton and Tuskegee. After placing these three schools on a
firm financial basis, the Institute hopes to continue its good work,
helping in the whole South to increase the number and to add to the
efficiency of all of our parochial schools.
I should not forget at this point of my address to give brief but hearty
mention of the blessed Christlike work for the negroes, which is being
done by Mrs. Buford's Hospital and Home in Brunswick County, Va., St.
Peter's Hospital, Charlotte, N. C., and St. Agnes Hospital and Training
School, for Nurses, a department of St. Augustine School, Raleigh, N. C.
What are we doing to evangelize the negroes and build them up into
Christian men and women? I will tell you a little of the work which I
know myself, in my own State of North Carolina, in our two dioceses and
our one missionary jurisdiction. Bishop Atkinson--our great Church
Father during and after the Civil War--felt his responsibility for the
souls of the black folk; and he and his successors have been in more or
less degree pressing the work of the Church among the negroes. We have
now in the State two arch-deacons, thirteen clergymen, 1,400
communicants and 35 parishes and missions. Each arch-deacon goes all
about his own diocese, visiting the colored parishes and missions,
consulting with the clergy, and opening out new fields. The clergy are
doing just the same kind of work among their people that the white
clergy are doing in their white parishes and missions, with the
exception that the colored clergy are giving more of their time to
educational work. I have about the same size classes for Confirmation
among the negroes that I have among the whites in the Churches of the
same numerical strength. I have been Bishop of East Carolina about two
and a half years; and I have confirmed 106 negroes and 644 white people,
being an increase of 25 per cent. for the negroes and 18 per cent. for
the whites. I am really proud of my staff of negro clergy; they are men
of high moral character and are doing good and effective service. Work
like this I have described in North Carolina is going on in every one of
our States, larger or smaller as the Church of the white people has been
larger or smaller in strength and numbers, and as the Bishop has been
more or less interested in this special work.
In this purely missionary field many of us are trying to develop and
utilize Catechists, men of age and character without the necessary
literary qualifications for the ministry, who can go forth to teach and
preach to their people the simple facts of the Gospel, bringing the
power of Christ to bear on their daily moral life.
Two special ways in which the Church is influencing the negro race I
take pleasure in mentioning. Arch-deacon Russell is holding every summer
on his school grounds at Lawrenceville a "Farmers' Conference." The
negroes come from all over the county and spend the day together, asking
and answering publicly questions about their progress or their failure,
their customs, good or bad, praising or criticising one another, and
listening to selected speakers, urging them on to the best lines of
development for their race. I attended this conference last summer; and
I was much impressed and greatly encouraged for the true progress of the
negro. Another far different kind of influence is going out from the
Church in Arkansas. Bishop Brown and his Council have made an entire
separation between the whites and blacks in his diocese. He has
appointed a negro arch-deacon for the negro race, and has given him
large power and wide discretion. Arch-deacon McGuire is appealing to the
negroes both within and without the Church, attending all large negro
gatherings, speaking to them about the Church, her customs and claims.
He is getting a large and sympathetic hearing; and he and Bishop Brown
have great hope of rapid progress for this negro branch of the Church in
Arkansas.
Now, my friends, while the work is slowly going forward, as I have
shown, while the average per cent. of growth among the negroes is nearly
that of the progress among the whites; yet conditions are not
satisfactory. While we can excuse ourselves, if we will, by pointing to
the changed conditions after the war; by telling of the days of
re-construction, which did more to separate and to make antagonistic the
two races than many wars; by speaking of the high moral standard, which
we demand and which the negroes in the mass will not accept; by
deprecating the use of our beautiful liturgy which they cannot
understand; yet we ought to have done, we ought to be doing far more
with the negroes than we have done or are doing. We are barely touching
the edge of the negro people; just think of it: one in one thousand,
while we have among the whites one in about 121 of the population. In
Virginia, where there is one in 50 of the white population who are
members of the Episcopal Church, there is only one in 381 of the
negroes; in North Carolina one in 115 whites and one in 480 blacks. In
South Carolina, where in 1860 the whites and blacks were about equal,
the whites have gone forward to seven thousand, and the negroes have
fallen back to one thousand. Yet that is not the most unsatisfactory
part of the matter. We are not strongly attracting to the Church the
element we ought to have; the exceptional negroes, the educated and
enterprising, the leaders of their race. Why? Let the facts answer. I
have already said that the Church strove to continue after the war the
same method of dealing with the negroes as before. She tried to keep the
races together; but she has found it impractical, that impracticability
growing more and more clear as the years have run on. The races have
been steadily drifting apart in all social or semi-social life; the
better class of each race is coming less and less into contact with each
other; and race prejudice is increasing and deepening in the great
masses of both the white and the black people. Soon after the war,
wherever the negroes were in great numbers, we found it necessary to
build separate churches for them. We admitted their clergymen and laymen
to the Councils of the diocese on equal terms with the whites; but that
custom has been steadily changing. Some twenty years ago South Carolina
and Virginia, dreading too great an increase of negro clergy and laity,
led the way to new conditions. South Carolina excluded them entirely
from the Diocesan Council, without any further provision for them.
Virginia did not disturb those already having seats in the Council, but
simply refused to let any more come in on the same terms. She erected a
separate Convocation for the negroes, and now allows a certain number to
have seats as representatives from the Convocation to the Council. Two
years ago Arkansas put the negroes aside into a separate Convocation
with no representation in the Council of the Diocese. Georgia last year
formed a separate Convocation; but has allowed them by the act of
separation to come into the Council to vote for the Standing Committee,
the deputies to the General Convention and for the Bishop, whenever one
is to be elected: giving them, you see, legal representation in
important affairs. The Convention of the Diocese of North Carolina is
now discussing the matter of separation, and is only delaying its own
action, while waiting to see what shall be done next fall by the General
Convention. In our own Diocese of East Carolina, the negroes are
formally and legally on the same basis as the whites; but is that
satisfactory? Not at all. The negro laity rarely go to the Council. The
negro clergy go; but they take a back seat; they have nothing to do or
say; they are not expected to show their interest or their will, except
by voting. Instead of its doing them good to come to the Council, it
really does them harm. They are depressed, they feel the difference
between themselves and the white men; they have little or no opportunity
to take responsibility and to develop Christian manhood. Perceiving this
state of things, the clear headed leader of the forces for separation in
the Diocese of North Carolina tells me that he is urging this separation
for the real good of the negro as well as for the growth and influence
of the Church among the white people of the State.
The fact is, say what we will about it--it would carry me too far
afield to explain it to-night--that the negro cannot work together on
equality with the white man; he either assumes an apparent insolence
and stubbornness, which the whites will not allow; or he puts on a
civility and submission, which strips him of his manhood. So, we are
placed in this condition: when we keep the negro close to us on formal
equality, he has no real opportunity to grow and develop in the true
characteristics of manhood; when we put him off in an inferior diocesan
Convocation, he feels that he is not treated as a man; he is forced
steadily to realize his inferiority to the white man, that inferiority
declared and impressed upon him by the Church of God. This, it seems
to me, is the chief reason why we are not now growing as we ought to
among the leading influential negroes of the South; and the reason why
there is much restlessness and want of satisfaction among the negroes
who are already in the Church.
What ought we to do to meet these conditions? Let us turn aside for a
moment to consider the general conditions of the negroes and their
relation to the white people. We have to-day about the same relative
proportion of blacks to whites in the whole country as we had in
1860--about 12 per cent.--; and we have nearly the same in the South,
about 40 per cent. What is to become of the negro for the next fifty
years? No man would dare suggest an answer looking farther ahead than
that: God only knows. Some say he will amalgamate with the whites. Many
thought so immediately after the war who do not think or say so now. No;
after forty years the separation between the races is clearer, wider and
more distinct than ever before. The thoughtful black men do not desire
amalgamation; and the white men will not have it. Some say the negro
will be colonized. I think that there is less reason in this answer even
than in the former. The negroes do not wish to go; and we cannot force
them. Think of the difficulty of deporting forcibly nine million people!
No; as Dr. Booker T. Washington says, "This problem is not to be solved
by deportation or by amalgamation." The negroes are here to stay with
us, and the bulk of them will stay in the South.
For years there has been a steady movement of the negroes from the
country to the towns and cities of the South, and from the Southern
cities to the Northern. I think they are coming and will continue to
come North in sufficient numbers for our brethren of the North to learn
to know them, to sympathize with us in our problem and to have something
of a problem themselves, and to feel that we must all work together
towards its true and final solution. The negroes are dividing into two
distinct classes more decidedly, it seems to me, than any other
nationality in our country; and I hope they will continue to keep and
increase this distinction. A minority are improving, are taking
advantage of education, are advancing in morality and industry, are
acquiring property and becoming worthy citizens. These few are setting a
standard, and are giving us hope of what the negro can and may become.
The majority are not improving, but rather retrogressing. They are
looking on liberty as license; they are thinking that a little education
will give them the privilege of living without manual labor; they are
making higher wages the way to less work rather than the way to a higher
standard of life; they are shiftless, immoral, and criminal. Now, as I
study this race so dividing in the great laboratory of Nature, under the
law of God which works on so justly, ofttimes apparently so cruelly,
always for the general good of man, I look forward with the hope that
this smaller, higher class will increase, and that the larger, lower
class will decrease. The better class will increase as all good things
do and will increase in the providence of God and with the help and
sympathy of true good men. The larger, meaner class of negroes will
steadily diminish in two directions; the first by movement of their best
into the higher class, swelling that slowly into the majority; the
second, by the stern sloughing off of their worst by the diseases which
spring from idleness, self-indulgence, filth, and immorality.
What we white men of the North and South ought to do to encourage and
help this better class of negroes is, in brief phrases, this: First, to
keep our faces as flint against all social intermingling that looks
toward amalgamation. Then, across this chasm, which both races frankly
accept, to join hands with those trying to lift and better themselves,
cheering, encouraging, and helping them. We must give them full
protection in their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness; we must give
them even handed justice in law and in politics; we must give them
equality of opportunity in earning their bread, in making their homes,
in educating their children; we must give them every chance and all
cheer and sympathy in seeking the fulfillment of the aspirations of the
human heart among their own people. And, my friends, I want to tell you
here in Chicago to-night that we men of the South are largely doing all
of these things now, and we are going to do them more and more
completely. We are coming to see more and more clearly that it will not
do to have forty per cent. of the people of our Southern land sullen and
suspicious, discontented and hopeless; but that we can only go forward
at our best pace towards a happy and noble civilization, with both races
cheerful and hopeful, sympathizing with each other in their peculiar
perplexities, trusting their brother man on earth and their Father God
in Heaven.
Keeping clearly in mind these conditions, what ought we Christians in
the Church of God to do to help and strengthen this smaller, higher
class and to persuade many of the larger, lower class to join this
higher? In the first place, we must frankly acknowledge the hard _facts_
of the case, and, as far as possible, put to one side _theories_. We are
confronted by a condition, as far as I read and study, absolutely new in
the history of mankind, where we have no exact precedent to guide us.
The underlying practical fact is this: there must be _separation_ not
_from_ but _in_ the Church between the two races, for the growth of the
Church among white men and black men, and for the development of
Christian manhood among the black men. Having settled and agreed on that
fact, how are we to effect that separation so as to do justice to the
negro? How shall we keep him still in the One Holy Catholic Church in
the United States of America and bestow on him her priceless blessings;
how shall we keep him close enough to receive the sympathy, the support
and the guidance of the white race; and yet put him far enough apart to
grow and to strengthen, to meet responsibility and to make character, to
develop a manly independence and to cultivate a brave and sober
initiative? We have long given up the point of contact in the one parish
Church, and have made the separation there; we are now giving up the
point of contact in the Diocesan Council, and are making the separation
there. What more shall we do? The true answer to my mind is: make the
point of contact the General Convention, and make the separation, not by
superior and inferior Councils in the same Diocese under the one Bishop;
but by the erection of Missionary Jurisdictions, made up out of the
colored people in different Dioceses under their own Bishop, on equality
with any other Missionary Jurisdiction in the Church. We must have
Missionary Jurisdictions in the South--one, or at most, two to begin
with--composed of the negroes of two or more contiguous Dioceses, which
shall be a part of the General Church, independent of the Bishops and
Councils of those Dioceses, bearing the same relation to the General
Convention that the white Missionary Jurisdictions do. That is to say,
they shall have their representatives to the House of Clerical and Lay
Delegates and their Bishops in the House of Bishops. The negro clergy
and laity would thus meet together in their Missionary Convocation in
numbers great enough to hearten one another and to stir enthusiasm; they
would become responsible for their own success or failure; they would
discuss, resolve and do their own committee work; they would have large
missionary gatherings, which would make a deep impression on the negroes
living in the city where the Convocation meets.
Of what race should be the Bishop of this negro Missionary Jurisdiction?
There are two answers to this question. One answer comes from those in
the Church who still cling to the theory that there must be no race
division whatever in the Church, that there must be under all conditions
conceivable or inconceivable one Bishop in the same territory to all
kinds, classes and races of people. "No," say they, "no negro Bishop.
Whatever be your divisions in Councils or Convocations or Conventions,
let one white Bishop be the bond of unity." The same answer comes as a
practical matter from men who differ widely from the above theory. It
comes from those who look too much, it seems to me, at the mass of the
negroes, the lower majority of whom I have spoken; it comes from those
who are hopeless of doing much for or with the negroes, who regard them
as children, careless and unreliable, with different aspirations from
those that actuate the white man. They say, "we must have a white man;
no negro is fit to be a Bishop."
The other answer comes from the men who think that we are confronted by
facts, not theories, and that theories must be given up in the face of
opposing facts; who think that the Church in her wisdom must rise up to
meet this opportunity and responsibility, must adapt and adjust her
system to the facts; who say that if a negro Bishop is acknowledged to
be the best means to Christianize and save the negroes, then we must
have a negro Bishop. This answer, again, comes from those who are
looking more closely at the few, better, advancing negroes, thinking of
them as men, with manly hopes and powers and aspirations, believing that
races must be lifted by their own race leaders, that they can only truly
understand and follow their own heroes. We say, "Remember Frederick
Douglass, look at Booker Washington, know that wonderful Presbyterian
Missionary, William H. Shepherd, consider the African Methodist
Bishops, strong men, leaders of their fellows, against whom no murmur of
scandal is raised. Surely among our own men in the Church, or our system
is woefully at fault, we can find one or two honest, true, able, pure
men, fit to be Bishops to their own race." Such a man would be a Bishop
indeed to his race, such a Bishop as no white man can possibly be. He
will enter, as only a negro can, into their perplexities, their hopes
and their joys, sharing really in their social life, of which their
religious life forms so great a part. He and his people will be a real
part of the Holy Catholic Church, all worshipping according to her
incomparable liturgy, all living under the same Canon law. He and his
Deputies will come into close contact with their white brethren in the
General Convention, and will gain much from such association and
consultation. He will meet with the white Bishops, from whom his
Jurisdiction is taken, in brotherly conference as his Council of Advice.
From such friendly contact and advice from the highest and most
sympathetic white men, he will go forth among his own people as their
Apostle, their true Bishop and Father in God. In this double relation,
in this position of high responsibility, he will stand forth as a true
mediator between the races, pleading with both for peace, harmony,
justice.
This action of the Church, this frank and fair position given to the
negro will so appeal to the better class of the leading negroes, will so
cheer and encourage them in their true progress, that they will come, I
believe, steadily and largely into the Church.
From this line of thought, which grows clearer and clearer to me the
more I read and think and see, I look forward with hope to a wise and
fair adjustment of the relation between the races of this land, and to a
happy future for a part of the negro race--how large a part God only
knows. Towards this adjustment this Church of ours can make a rich
contribution; and I believe she has, under God, a great part to play in
enlarging the choice remnant and in bringing it to its true salvation.
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| Transcriber's Note: |
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| Page 13: Changed are'nt to aren't (You aren't going) |
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| Page 15: Changed ouside to outside (to that done outside) |
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| Page 17: Moved period inside end-quotes for consistency with text |
| ("Farmers' Conference.") |
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| Page 21: Changed "the the" to "to the" (rarely go to the Council) |
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| Page 27: Changed conposed to composed (composed of the negroes) |
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