Baptists in America: A History

by Thomas S. Kidd

AFTER THE CIVIL WAR, Northern Baptist missionaries rushed to the South to help freed slaves build churches. At first these struggling black congregations relied almost entirely on the support they received from Christians above the Mason-Dixon Line.5 Congregationalists provided support for education, but black Christians were not fond of the Congregationalists’ worship style. Instead, African Americans attended Congregationalist schools during the week and then flocked to Baptist churches on Sunday. According to some estimates, when the Southern Baptist Convention was organized in 1845, black Baptists outnumbered white Baptists in the South. It was not uncommon in antebellum Baptist churches for black membership to dwarf that of whites, as at First Baptist, Richmond. First Baptist, Natchez, Mississippi, for example, had 442 members, 380 of whom were black, while in Columbus, Mississippi, 80 percent of Baptists were black. At the end of the Civil War, First Baptist Church of Montgomery, Alabama, had 600 black members out of a total membership of roughly 900. Thirty-five to 40 percent of Baptists in Georgia were black; by the early twentieth century they had become a majority.