The African American Church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1815-1963

A Shelter in the Storm

Wilson Fallin, Jr.

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351629287
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This study, first published in 1997, attempts to fill a gap in the historiography of the African American church by analysing the role and place of the African American church in one city, Birmingham, Alabama. It traces the roles and functions of the church from the arrival of African Americans as slaves in the early 1800s to 1963, the year that the civil rights movement reached a peak in the city. This title will be of interest to students of nineteenth- and twentieth-century religious and social history.

I

Slavery, Religion, and African American Churches in Pioneer Jones Valley

Religion was important for the African American slaves who moved into the pioneer community of Jones Valley in the early 1800s. Attending camp meetings, the churches of their masters, or worshiping in their own settings, slaves in Jones Valley developed a unique Christianity that was a merger of traditional African and white evangelical religion. It provided them with hope, understanding, and security. Slave masters encouraged and sometimes forced slaves to become members of their churches. These churches disciplined slaves but allowed them no voice in the business of the church or the opportunity to worship in their own way. Wanting independence and the freedom to worship as they pleased, African American slaves after emancipation left the churches of their masters and formed their own churches with African American ministers serving as pastors. These churches became significant institutions for the freedmen of Jefferson County in the small agricultural communities where they lived.

African Americans first came to what includes today the city of Birmingham as slaves when the area was known as Jones Valley. They were brought by their slave masters who migrated from Tennessee, Georgia, and South Carolina. Many of these white settlers became familiar with Jones Valley because they fought with Andrew Jackson in the Creek War of 1813. After the war they moved with their families and slaves to the area that became Jefferson County in 1819, the same year that Alabama became a state.¹

Most slaves in Jones Valley lived and worked on farms where there were only a few slaves. The relatively poor soil of the area was not conducive for large scale cotton plantations like those in the Alabama Black Belt that required large numbers of slaves. In 1860 only eight farmers in Jones Valley owned more than forty slaves. The largest slaveholder was Williamson Hawkins who owned 106 slaves and farmed on 2,000 acres five miles west of what is today downtown Birmingham. The few slaves that came to Jones Valley, only 2,649 by 1860, primarily worked side by side with their slave masters on small farms.²

These early settlers saw religion as essential to building a strong community for themselves and their slaves. Almost immediately after erecting houses in the valley, they formed churches. The churches were often rustic log cabins, and services were simple and emotional. Baptists, Methodists, and Cumberland Presbyterians formed the largest number of churches. In 1860 there were seventeen Baptist churches, fifteen Methodist churches, and four Cumberland Presbyterian churches in the county.³

Evangelism resulting from camp meetings and protracted revivals was the major reason for the success of these three denominations. Lasting for several days, camp meetings and revivals recruited members through conversion experiences. The services were very emotional; preaching and singing was done with wild excitement. The people jerked, danced, and sang. Some churches in Jones Valley, such as Bethlehem Methodist located in the western section of the county, and First Methodist Church of Tarrant, previously known as the Bethel Methodist Church, located in the southern section of Jefferson County, became leading centers for camp meetings. For weeks during the layby time, usually in late July and August after the cultivation of the crops but before harvest time, people came in wagons with their families and slaves with services held in brush arbors. The people usually lived in tents around the brush arbor where services took place.⁴

To distinguish their evangelistic meetings from the camp meetings of the Methodists, Baptists called their meetings protracted revivals. These meetings, usually held in churches, lasted for two or three weeks with a visiting minister preaching throughout the duration of the revival. Some Baptist churches, however, held camp meetings in the early days of the valley. The Canaan Baptist Church located in the western section of the county in the Jonesboro community was a center for camp meetings. One Baptist pastor and historian left an account of a camp meeting which occurred near the Canaan Baptist Church in 1831. He reported that in October twelve to fifteen families came in wagons, ox carts, by horseback, and on foot to participate in the meeting. The people built a brush arbor, spread their tents, and began preaching, praying, and singing. This revival started an evangelistic awakening in Jones Valley to such an extent that within twelve months nearly five hundred people received baptism in three or four churches, both whites and slaves.⁵

Observers of camp meetings noted the tremendous emotional outbursts that came from the slaves present at these meetings. Charles A. Johnson, in his study of camp meetings, reported that slave masters were encouraged to bring their slaves because of the belief that religion would make their servants obedient. African American participation was largely unplanned and spontaneous. Breaking away from whites, African Americans held their services on the same camp grounds. Praying, dancing, singing, and shouting were common features of these worship services. When an African American preacher was present, he would deliver a “hell fire” sermon designed to convict his hearers and lead to conversions and religious frenzy.⁶

Besides worshiping at camp meetings and protracted revivals, slave masters in Jones Valley made other provisions for the religion of their slaves that followed the pattern for slaves in Alabama. The rule seems to have been in Alabama and throughout the South that separate missions began where there were large numbers of African Americans. According to the minutes of the Annual Conference of the Methodist Church, South, of 1870, the Reverend W. H. Riley founded a Methodist mission called the Elyton Iron Works Colored Mission by 1865. Separate missions, such as the Elyton Iron Works Colored Mission, began as early as 1827 by Charles Capers, a Southern Methodist evangelist to slaves. In 1844, after the formation of the Methodist Church, South, separate missions increased. The Methodist Church, South, established these missions first on plantations, but as African Americans moved to cities and larger communities, the church founded African American missions in these areas so that by 1857 there were at least 76 African American Methodist missions in Alabama.⁷

At least two plantation slave churches existed in Jones Valley. One of these was what is called today the Mt. Joy Baptist Church of Trussville, that traces its beginnings to 1857. Prior to that time, the African American slaves in the area were members of the white Baptist church where they sat in the rear of the church during the morning worship service. They could not participate in the worship or vote on church matters. In the afternoon, the pastor would preach to them in the church. In 1857 a group of slave members received permission to leave the church and hold services in a separate building. These slaves held services in a log cabin on a plantation owned by Sam Latham. Because most of the members were Sam Latham’s slaves and the church was on his plantation, the slaves called it “Latham’s Baptist Church.” The slaves worshiped on the Latham plantation, located three miles from Trussville, until after the Civil War.⁸

In the Oak Grove community of Jones Valley, Hewitt Ladd provided accommodations for his slaves to worship. Ladd operated on the theory that religion made better servants. His accommodations consisted of a building with seats and a pulpit. Other slaves from the community would often come and worship with his slaves. Ladd observed in these sessions that slaves would worship “in their accustomed way,” which meant that he noted the difference between the religion of the African American slaves and whites in the area.⁹

Although religion was emotional for almost all southern Christians, there were unique features to slave religion that Ladd and other observers of slaves in Jones Valley recognized. One observer of pioneer Jones Valley recalled that slaves in worship would get happy and shout and mourn all night. At baptism services many slaves became so emotional they would jump in the creek and would have to be saved from drowning. Another observer recalled that on some occasions slaves would assemble at a tree and worship in a way characterized by emotionalism, with one of the self-styled slave preachers in the community leading them in the worship. Trees were important places for slave worship because according to traditional African religion the spirits of the deceased resided in them. White slave owners, such as William Mims, viewed slaves, and their religion especially, as simply superstitious.¹⁰

Evidence for the uniqueness of slave religion has also come from historians, slave masters, and travelers throughout the South. The historian Eugene Genovese, after examining private letters and memoirs of southern plantation owners, found that many whites “never doubted that their slave’s Christianity contained a big dose of African belief.” In his travels through the South, Frederick Olmstead, a northern journalist, found a strange religion practiced by slaves and the general recognition of it by whites. In New Orleans he observed among African Americans what was for him at the time the strangest worship service that he had ever seen. The worship consisted of running, dancing, screaming, and shouting. He reported that a South Carolina rice planter complained to him that his slaves petitioned to have the seats removed from the chapel where they worshiped because when they prayed they needed room for dancing and leaping.¹¹

African American teachers and missionaries who came into the South immediately after emancipation noted the peculiar nature of African American slave religion, with some being appalled by what they saw. Charlotte Forten, a teacher from Philadelphia, called the religious gatherings on the Sea Islands of South Carolina “barbarous.” William Wells Brown, a former slave and abolitionist, noted the bizarre emotionalism that characterized many churches. For him this was a cause of the moral and social degradation of the freedman. Daniel Payne, bishop of the AME Church, described what he saw as ignorant and intemperate. For him and other Northerners such actions were a result of the debilitating effects of slavery and needed to be discarded.¹²

In explaining the uniqueness of African American religion, scholars have suggested that it was a synthesis of evangelical Protestant Christianity and African traditional religion. From evangelical Christianity the slaves accepted the God of the Bible, Jesus as savior, and the emotional conversion experience that was an integral part of camp meetings. From their African past they retained spirit possession, the ring dance and shout, and ritual sacrifice. Combining elements of both African and American evangelical religion, the slave’s religion was different. African American slaves tended to form rings where they would shout and dance. The ring symbolized the eternal cycle of birth, death, and reincarnation that were a part of traditional African ceremonies. The hand clapping, foot-tapping, rhythmic preaching, and the antiphonal singing and dancing of the slaves showed vestiges of their African past. In the camp meetings and their own religious services, slaves synthesized the African custom of spirit possession with the Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The result was an unbridled emotionalism that seemed strange and mysterious to most whites and northern blacks.¹³

The experience of conversion shows the merger of African and evangelical elements and how slaves welded Christian ideas with African religious traditions. The evangelical Christian doctrine of conversion, in which sinners entered into a state of the recognition of their sinfulness and sought atonement, reminded many slaves of African initiation rites, including initiation into the service of the spirits. Similarly, growing ill and loss of appetite which many seekers experienced was a clear warning from the spirits to change their ways or a call from a god to undergo initiation into their service. Many African American slaves described their experience of conversion in terms of the evangelical Christian and West African world view of death and rebirth. For others, there was more emphasis on the traditional African notion of spirit possession. For these slaves the act of conversion began with the feeling of being estranged from the spirit world. God or his surrogate, commonly an angel, then spoke to the seeker in a manner similar to the way the gods of the spirit world spoke to their African ancestors. The seeker entered the spirit world where he became a new person, both physically and spiritually. The response was dramatic and emotional, with the new convert lapsing into trance-like behavior, uncontrollable and body wrenching contortions, singing and dancing. These emotional features were an integral part of African religion.¹⁴

Slave religion also differed from white Christianity in its broader Biblical and theological emphases. While for southern whites and African Americans religion was a personal relationship between the believer and Christ that resulted in salvation and a new life, the African American slave’s desire for freedom also caused them to identify with the slavery of the Israelites. Just as Moses had delivered his people, God would in due course deliver them. The exodus was told repeatedly in both sermons and songs and was expressive of the theme of deliverance and liberation that was important in African American slave religion. There was a close relationship between Moses and Christ. Slaves often collapsed the two into a single, powerful figure who could destroy the shackles of slavery. In other cases, Moses was the deliverer who prefigured Christ, the perfect deliverer.¹⁵

The spirituals were one of the most explicit expressions of the uniqueness of African American slave religion. Making no distinction between the sacred and the secular, the African American slaves in these songs expressed their desire for freedom and the assurance that God would deliver him. There was the constant identity with the children of Israel and their deliverance. “My Lord Delivered Daniel,” “Go Down Moses into Egypt Land, Tell Old Pharaoh to let My People Go,” and “Steal Away” were but a few spirituals that expressed the themes of deliverance and liberation. In addition, the spirituals showed the impact of traditional African survivals. Slaves often sang the spirituals in a call and response manner, some shouted them, and still others danced them. All of these reflected modes found in traditional African religions.¹⁶

The slave’s religion provided them with a sense of community and group solidarity. Going to camp meetings, attending their master’s church, or worshiping in plantation church settings slaves met each other and discussed common concerns. Although able to obtain passes to visit other slaves from time to time, religious settings provided an opportunity to meet regularly. A part of the religious meetings were social activities such as picnics and dinners on the grounds, that were also engaged in by the slaves. Worshiping in their own settings not only provided slaves with an opportunity to socialize but also to exercise responsibility and develop leadership. In these worship services slaves also garnered support from each other and gained strength to endure slavery.¹⁷

Religion was most of all the means by which African American understood their own experience as slaves. Although some antebellum journals and writings in Jones Valley pictured slavery in paternalistic terms, it was also a cataclysmic experience. Kidnapped from their homeland, brought to an alien environment, and forced into servitude, slaves survived through the comfort of their religion. Primarily through the singing of spirituals and the preaching of slave exhorters, they conceived their servile state as merely a temporary state through which they would receive greater reward. If like Daniel and the three Hebrew boys they remained faithful, God would vindicate and reward them with even greater blessings than their masters. For the slaves, God was no respecter of persons but was just and merciful. In addition to liberation, such themes as equality, worth, and ultimate victory were prevalent themes in slave religion.¹⁸

Although there were a few plantation churches where slaves were relatively free to exercise their unique form of worship, most African Americans in Jones Valley worshiped in white churches where their style of worship and activities were circumscribed. A few pioneer Baptist Churches of Jones Valley have included bits and pieces of information in their compiled church histories concerning slaves as members in their churches. For example, the Canaan Baptist Church had 37 slave members in 1837. African American slaves worshiped in the balcony and were subject to the same discipline as whites, which meant they received public reprimands or exclusion from membership because of moral offenses. An African American slave named Dinah was a founding member of the Ruhama Baptist Church in 1818. Ruhama disciplined its slave members for stealing, adultery, drunkenness, and irregular church attendance. By 1868 there were 37 African American members of the Ruhama Church. The Mt. Hebron Baptist Church of Leeds voted in 1828 to construct an annex for its African American members. The church disciplined both slaves and white members, with one slave being excluded from the church in 1836 for attempting to run away from his master. The first African American slaves became members of the Salem Baptist Church in 1843, where their owners were members. Whites worshiped in the front and slaves in the back, separated by a rail. The Cahawba Baptist Church of Truss ville accepted slaves into their church’s members...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter I Slavery, Religion, and African American Churches in Pioneer Jones Valley
• Chapter II Migration and the Formation of African American Churches in the New South City of Birmingham
• Chapter III Expansion and African American Church Life
• Chapter IV Leadership, Institution-Building, and the African American Church in Birmingham
• Chapter V The African American Church Between the World Wars
• Chapter VI The African American Church Between the World Wars
• Chapter VII Rising Militancy and the African American Church from World War II to the Civil Rights Movement
• Chapter VIII The African American Church and the Civil Rights Movement
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index