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Building the Black Community: The Church

By: Vincent Stanec & Erin Wright

It quickly became clear that to African Americans, freedom did not just mean release from the shackles of southern plantations – to them, it meant autonomy as a community and within families, economic independence, and equality under the law.

Eric Foner’s The Meaning of Freedom Thesis

Following the abolition of slavery post-Civil war, African Americans sought to establish their first sense of community and identity through the creation of a separate and wholly black church. Through this church, African Americans of the reconstruction period sought to further their call for equality and strengthen their identity, both as people and a community.

The Creation of the Black Church Thesis

Antebellum South: Biracial Congregations

Withdrawal: Wholly African-American Congregations

We are the Chosen Ones

Churches: Architecturally & Financially Modest

Faith: Important in African-American Community

Church: Center of African-American Community

Spirituality: Distinctive African-American Faith

Leaders: In Politics and Religion

Congregations: Spirit of Self-Improvement

Hon. H.R. Revels, United States Senator Elect from Mississippi. February 19, 1870. HarpWeek. Harper's Weekly, 2004. Web. 16 Dec. 2011. http://blackhistory.harpweek.com/7Illustrations/Reconstruction/HRRevels.htm

Jackson, M, Jr. Family Worship In a Plantation in South Carolina. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division. Digital Schomburg Images of 19th Century African Americans. Shomburg Center for African American History New York Public Library, 1999. Web. 3 Jan. 2012. http://digital.nypl.org/schomburg/images_aa19/aa19c_info.cfm?

Moore, Joanna P. BANNER BIBLE BAND, NASHVILLE, TENN. 1902. Photograph. "In Christ's Stead": Autobiographical Sketches., Chicago. Documenting the American South. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2004. Web. 3 Jan. 2012. http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/moore/ill28.html

Photograph. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division. Digital Schomburg Images of 19th Century African Americans. Shomburg Center for African American History New York Public Library, 1999. Web. 3 Jan. 2012. http://digital.nypl.org/schomburg/images_aa19/aa19c_info.cfm?

Photograph. King-Tisdell Cottage Foundation. King-Tisdell Cottage Foundation. Web. 3 Jan. 2012. http://www.kingtisdell.org/Jubilee2.jpg

Religion So Sweet. 1867. Photograph. Documenting the American South. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2004. Web. 3 Jan. 2012. http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/allen/ss17.jpg

Sheppard, W. L. Interior View of the First African Baptist Church in Richmond. 1874. Digital History: America's Reconstruction: People and Politics After the Civil War. Harper's Weekly, 2011. Web. 3 Jan. 2012. http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/reconstruction/section2/section2_07b.html

White, Elizabeth. All God's Chillun's Got Wings! 1933. Soft-ground etching and aquatint. Courtesy of the Sumter Gallery of Art, South Carolina. African American Odyssey. Library of Congress. Web. 3 Jan. 2012. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aopart5b.html

Bibliography

church13. N.d. blackartdepot.com. Web. 3 Jan. 2012. <http://www.blackartdepot.com/ gallery/ blackchurch/ crops/ church13.jpg>.

E.C. Morris. 1901. JPEG file. Joanna P. Moore, 1832-1916 “In Christ’s Stead”: Autobiographical

Sketches. 1902. JPEG file. Martin Luther King at Church. N.d. JPEG file. Moses Parts the Red Sea. N.d. JPEG file. Richard R. Wright (Richard Robert), b. 1878 Centennial Encyclopaedia of

the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Containing Principally the Biographies of the Men and Women, both Ministers and Laymen, Whose Labors During a Hundred Years, Helped Make the A. M. E. Church What It Is; Also Short Historical Sketches of Annual Conferences, Educational Institutions, General Departments, Missionary Societies of the A. M. E. Church, and General Information about African Methodism and the Christian Church in General; Being a Literary Contribution to the Celebration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Formation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church Denomination by Richard Allen and others, at Philadelphia, Penna., in 1816. 1916. JPEG file.

Bibliography