Baptists in America: A History

by Thomas S. Kidd

Perhaps more surprising was the vigorous Baptist growth among southern African Americans. One estimate holds that from 1845 to 1860, black Baptist membership doubled from two hundred thousand to four hundred thousand. Many white Baptists, feeling the sting of the abolitionist controversy, and remembering the tumult over Baptist outreach to blacks in Nat Turner’s wake, redoubled their efforts to evangelize blacks in the fifteen years following the creation of the SBC. In Virginia, the influential Dover Association, in Richmond, saw the percentage of black members go up consistently in the years after 1844. That year, black membership stood at just over eight thousand; in 1860, it had reached just under fourteen thousand. Many African American Virginians belonged to “quasi-independent” churches, often technically pastored by a white minister but in reality allowed to operate with relative autonomy. In 1843, whites reopened the Williamsburg African Baptist Church, which they had anxiously closed after Turner’s revolt.