A PERSPECTIVE ON THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN
DENVER’S BLACK COMMUNITY
A CASE STUDY OF ZION BAPTIST CHURCH AND
SHORTER AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH
by
TERRI LYNNE SMITH GENTRY
M. H. University of Colorado Denver, 2013
A thesis submitted to the
Faculty of the Graduate School of the
University of Colorado in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Masters in Humanities
Humanities and Social Sciences
2013
This thesis for the Masters in Humanities degree by
Terri Lynne Smith Gentry
has been approved for the
Humanities and Social Sciences Program
by
Rebecca Hunt, Chair
Winston Grady-Willis
Thomas J. Noel
Date: November 12, 2013
ii
Smith Gentry, Terri Lynne (MH, Humanities and Social Sciences)
A Perspective on the History of Religion in Denver’s Black Community:
A Case Study of Zion Baptist Church and Shorter African Methodist Episcopal Church
Thesis directed by Professor Rebecca Hunt.
ABSTRACT
African American Christianity emerged from the depths of slavery and the intersection of
African based phenomenology, and ideologies imposed by the Anglican Church, evangelical
Protestant faiths, or Catholicism. The historiography of enslaved peoples as they moved toward
freedom through the newly created religious beliefs also revealed its impact on African
American migration and communities in the west. This movement west landed some African
Americans in Denver, where a small population started two churches during the 1860s. A case
study of Denver’s two oldest Black churches explored the efforts of their membership as they
established an African American community, and pursued their right to self determination.
The form and content of this abstract are approved. I recommend its publication.
Approved: Rebecca Hunt
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am especially grateful to the University of Colorado Denver Professor, Dr. Rebecca
Hunt, my thesis chair, who walked me through every step of this process, and coached me to see
the fruits of my labor. I am thankful to Dr. Margaret Woodhull, my Department Chair, and Dr.
Tom Noel, Colorado History Guru. I am indebted to Metro State University Africana Studies
Department, especially Dr. Winston Grady-Willis, and Dr. Ella Maria Ray, for their insight and
wisdom.
I appreciate the support of Charleszine “Terry” Nelson, Danny Walker, Althea Redd,
Annie Nelson, and Hadiya Evans from the Blair Caldwell African American Research Library. I
thank Robert Pratt, III for assisting me with research material on Shorter A. M. E. Church.
I must thank my dad, C. T. Smith, and inherited mom, Rosalyn Smith, my auntie, Dr.
Charlene Smith, my aunt, Harriette Brown, my sister, Dr. Tamie Smith, my sister, Toni L.
Bridges, and niece, Lasana Bridges, my son, Darrell C. Diggs and family, and daughter, Aris
Strong and family for being great cheerleaders.
I must especially thank my wonderful, loving husband Dwight Gentry, who took over
everything else I set aside, and has been my biggest supporter. I have grown and learned so much
more than I could ever write within these pages.
I dedicate this work to my mom, Anna McLuster, my grandparents, and great
grandparents, who have been rooting for me from heaven, and I will always love and appreciate
them.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I
INTRODUCTION AND STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
1
II
HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
3
III
CHRISTIANITY AND SLAVERY
14
African Based Theology
20
African Baptist Church
23
African Methodist Episcopal Church
24
AFRICAN AMERICAN MIGRATION
27
African American Migration West
29
Civil War
31
Western States
33
Exodusters
34
ZION BAPTIST CHURCH AND
SHORTER AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH
DENVER’S OLDEST BLACK CHURCHES
37
Zion Baptist Church
40
Shorter African Methodist Episcopal Church
50
CONCLUSION
58
BIBLIOGRAPHY
61
IV
V
VI
APPENDIX
v
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION AND STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
As the journey from slavery to freedom has continued, people of African
descent in the Americas have had to reinvent the meaning of their lives, and either
adapt or commingle new ideologies as part of their survival and their intent toward
self-determination. They began to redefine their spirituality, perception of religious
ideals, but also ask the questions about their place in the composition of God’s
creation. They studied the scriptures, internalized, and in varying degrees began to
recognize that slaveholders were not following the laws of God. Teachings from the
Bible influenced the transition for some enslaved people to become free. They were on
a path with a newly shaped sense of independence and freedom as they escaped
slavery, oppression and racism. The religion that enslaved them became the religion
that freed them.
How has Christianity sustained African Americans through, as W. E. B.
Dubois framed it, double consciousness of being Black and being an American? 1 How
has their quest for freedom been influenced by Christian doctrine? The path of
voluntary migration out of the South, juxtaposed against their involuntary migration
across the Middle Passage highlights new paradigms for creating a newly defined
sense of self.
The western migration created communities scattered between the Mississippi
River and the California coastline, from Canada to Mexico. Across Colorado there
1
W. E. B. DuBois. The Souls of Black Folk. (1903 (NP); reprinted, New York:
Bantam. 2005), 148 – 149.
1
were more than fifteen Black settlements established in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century. Some of those communities settled in and around Denver, the
largest northeast of downtown Denver. It is especially interesting to note that churches
or faith-based meeting spaces were at the foundation of their communities. Two of the
oldest Black churches in Denver were organized in the 1860s: Zion Baptist Church,
and Shorter African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. The African American
community within their faith and within the support structure of their churches
educated their children, took care of their neighbors, engaged in politics, and staged
campaigns for human and civil rights. The church was a place of refuge, a place for
social gatherings, and for spiritual, moral and emotional uplift. The churches were also
places to forge legacies, and embrace future generations with spiritual guidance and
teachings.
Research into the historiography of the broader spectrum of African American
Christianity will add insight into the religiosity of Denver’s African American
community. It will also shed light on the influence of religious ideals on the migration
of African Americans, and the intersection of their communities and experiences in the
West and specifically in Denver. This is a community rich with diversity of thought,
beliefs and ideals. This paper will examine how the community members collaborated
in pursuit of freedom, and self determination.
2
CHAPTER II
HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
The historiography of slavery, the spirituality and religiosity of the enslaved
people, the strategy toward self determination, and the intersection of these and other
complexities of their daily lives have been examined as part of the overall
conversation about African Americans and the Black churches. Churches were an
integral part of these communities throughout the country, but the primary focus has
been in the Eastern United States. This included research on the intersection of
African Americans, religion, and slavery, especially along the East coast and in the
Southern states.
Extensive research and multiple readings of the theories presented through
West African paradigms narrowed the focus of African spirituality as it integrated
with African American religion. One approach described in An Eco-cultural and
Social Paradigm for Understanding Human Development: A (West African) Context
by Dorris E. Ngaujah, counters the perspective of some western theorists, by engaging
social, eco-cultural, and environmental frameworks.2
The Journal of African American History, Winter 2007 edition, published a
“Special Editon: ‘Women, Slavery and Historical Research’,” which offered insight
into the intersection of Black women, slavery, gender, and religiosity. 3 The article by
2
Doris E. Ngaujah, “An Eco-cultural and Social Paradigm for Understanding Human
Development: A (West African) Context.” Biola University Human Development and
Learning (DE803) Dr. Dennis H. Dirks Fall 2003. Accessed April 9, 2013.
3
Brenda E. Stevenson. “The Question of the Slave Female Community and Culture in
the American South: Methodological and Ideological Approaches.” The Journal of
3
Brenda Stevenson traced the early accounts of African women enslaved from Angola,
“(T)heir names bore the marks of Catholic baptismal.” 4 The author investigated their
circumstances, their survival, cultural transition, self-identification, and the
intersection of their lives among other enslaved people and the slaveholders. In one
example she focused on the ratio of Black women enslaved on the farms of two related
men, and continued a discussion of the sociological variations in slave communities
throughout the South. She also identified that gender and ethnic diversity in
geographic regions of the South may have affected the degree of retention of traditions
and cultural norms. 5 The brutality of slavery imposed on women of African descent
not only forced the unreasonable demands of physical labor, but also chronic sexual
denigration. Many women were subjugated by the slaveholders’ family as involuntary
and abused nannies (the term used was “Mammy”), or nursing the slaveholders’
children. They suffered the trauma of forced denial of caring for their own children. If
there were few or singular women on plantations, the loneliness and ability to survive
the trauma of slavery was more difficult. The African women on plantations brought
their own cultural histories and identities and created circles of support. The women
within the slave community created their own theology within African belief systems,
African American History Volume 92, No. 1. Winter 2007. “Special Issue: ‘Women,
Slavery, and Historical Research’,” (V. P. Franklin, Ed.) 74.
4
Brenda E. Stevenson. “The Question of the Slave Female Community and Culture in
the American South.” 74.
5
Brenda E. Stevenson. “The Question of the Slave Female Community and Culture in
the American South,” 75-7.
4
layered with the necessity to formulate double consciousness strategies for survival
through self-identity, social, group and individual dynamics. 6
In the article The Middle Passage, Trauma and the Tragic Re-Imagination of
African American Theology, the author, Matthew V. Johnson Sr., examined the
evolution of African American Christianity through the psycho-traumatic and chronic
process of enslavement. It was created out of chronic mourning, tragedy, loss,
inhumanity, and incredible despair.
Africans arriving in the new world already suffering from the debilitating
effects of the sustained trauma of transport, complicated by violent separation
from family and community and the shock of the threateningly unfamiliar were
subjected to additional trauma and extreme stressors in the experiences of the
auction block, further violent separations, slave breaking, sexual exploitation
and abuse, and institutionalized violence to a degree that coercion defined and
exhausted the quality of African American participation in the nomogenerative, hegemonic culture.7
Communities of enslaved Africans created new theological references to
heaven, and other worldliness. The nothingness of their lives created a fatalistic vision.
The Middle Passage was part of the journey that never ended, as African Americans
suffered post traumatic stress of slavery and the effects of chronic oppression. 8
Charles Joyner wrote that there were divergent belief systems throughout the
landscape of Africa, and “they reinterpreted the elements of Christianity in terms of
6
Brenda Stevenson. “The Question of the Slave Female Community and Culture in
the American South,” 89-90.
7
Matthew V. Johnson, Sr. “The Middle Passage, Trauma and the Tragic ReImagination of African American Theology.” Pastoral Psychology, Vol. 53, No. 6,
July 2005. 549.
8
Mathew V. Johnson, Sr. “The Middle Passage, Trauma and the Tragic ReImagination of African American Theology.” 550-2.
5
deep-rooted African religious concerns … The originality of African American
Christianity, then, lies neither in its African elements nor its Christian elements, but in
its unique and creative synthesis of both.”9
John Roberts explained in his article African American Belief Narratives and
the African Cultural Tradition, how culture evolves as it is practiced and repeated
daily.10 Even as different cultural groups were situated together throughout slavery,
their belief systems, cultural norms, and religious expressions were more similar than
the unfamiliar and strange religious and cultural systems of the slaveholders.
Additionally, the idea of embracing a system that imposed such brutality, while
completely abandoning a lifetime of ritual and practices did not happen. Eventually,
over time, the African belief systems, adapted, evolved, and integrated these new
ideals into their own cultural and religious norms.
The Great Escapes: Four Slave Narratives illuminated the risks of escaping
slavery, and pursuing freedom. The editor Daphne Brooks introduced each storyteller.
In subsequent chapters, she transcribed four stories beginning with William Wells
Brown, who had to leave behind his mother and sister when he escaped to freedom.
Two narratives were written by Henry Box Brown, who packed himself in a large box
and shipped himself to the north. The last narrative was the story of William and
Ellen Craft, a husband and wife who traveled north. She passed as a white man with
9
Charles Joyner, “’Believer I Know.’ The Emergence of African American
Christianity.” African American Christianity: Essays in History, Paul E. Johnson, Ed.
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 37.
10
John Roberts, “African American Belief Narratives and the African Cultural
Tradition” Research in African Literatures, Vol. 40, No. 1, Oral Literature and
Identity Formation in Africa and the Diaspora (Spring, 2009), Indiana University.
6
his male servant. The stories described their experiences while enslaved, and the
strategy to gain their freedom.11 The common thread was their Christian belief and
how it fueled their action of escape.
As tension rose between the North and South during the 1840s strategies in
some churches and branches of government to end slavery spurred much debate.
Some northern states enacted laws to protect the freedoms of runaway slaves.
Congress, however, voted in the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, in an effort to reinforce
and strengthen the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793. The authors of African American
Odyssey detailed the fight of free labor versus slave labor. The story of William and
Ellen Craft was written as an example of the effort to protect fugitive slaves from the
journey back to Georgia.12 Creating Black Americans: African American History and
its Meanings, 1619 to the Present by Nell Irvin Painter detailed a time line of newly
enacted laws, Supreme Court decisions, and events that spurred the Civil War as the
country expanded west of the Mississippi River.13 Both books addressed specific
accounts of events that pushed or pulled African Americans west, and included stories
about urban dwellers, homesteaders, cowboys, Buffalo Soldiers, miners, and their
11
Daphne A. Brooks, Ed. The Great Escapes: Four Slave Narratives. (New York:
Barnes and Nobel. 2007), 305-6.
12
Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine, and Stanley Harrold. The African American
Odyssey, Combined Volume. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education Co. 2003),
210-13.
13
Nell Irvin Painter. Creating Black Americans: African-American History and Its
Meanings, 1619 to the Present. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2007), 117-9.
7
communities. Religion and the history of their churches were noted as part of their
cultural fabric and foundation. 14
Many stories examined the migration west and Black communities including
the establishment of their churches; but there is less discourse or scholarship on the
intersection of spirituality, or religiosity within the African American community.
Even fewer works focus on the history of Black churches specifically in Denver’s
African American community. The role of the church is an important consideration in
the movement and advancement of African American people and is important to this
Denver community. How have Black Churches shaped the ideas and influenced or
supported its members, especially in Denver’s African American community?
Quintard Taylor wrote In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in
the American West 1528 -1990 and inspired a deeper look into the history of the
western U S and the intersection of African Americans.15 It was a well-written
overview of African descendants enmeshed in the history of Mexico, Texas, New
Mexico, and California -free or enslaved - and later in other territories and states in the
west, including Colorado. It included accounts of men, women and children who
lived in and around the Denver area, within the overall context of African Americans
in the west, but also within the context of the other people that occupied the west.16
14
Nell Irvin Painter, Creating Black Americans, 48-9.
15
Quintard Taylor. In Search of the Racial Frontier: African American in the
American West 1528 – 1990. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998.
16
Quintard Taylor. In Search of the Racial Frontier.
8
In 2002 Taylor co-edited with Shirley Anne Wilson Moore, African American
Women Confront the West 1600 – 2000 on the little known history of Black women
who migrated west. Scholars from a variety of history departments across the western
U. S. contributed stories in more than eighteen chapters.17 The book encouraged
further research into the history of African Americans who migrated to Denver, a city
that rests where the Great Plains converge with the Rocky Mountains. This has
created a unique history among the people who have made it their home. Although
the history of the people in this area began more than ten millennia ago, the focus is
about the people of African descent - many of whom were formerly enslaved in other
regions of the country – as they migrated to this region beginning in the late 1850s.
From Slavery to Affluence: Memoir of Robert Anderson, Ex-Slave, by Daisy
Anderson, chronicled the life of Robert Anderson through slavery in Kentucky, his
military service during the Civil War, and his prosperity as a homesteader in
Nebraska. He spoke about religion during slavery. At seventy nine years old he
married a very young woman and school teacher, Daisy Graham and moved to
Nebraska. After his death, Daisy moved to Steamboat Springs with her sister, and
worked very hard as an unskilled laborer for many years. Throughout this story she
and her husband professed their Christian beliefs.18 She never remarried nor had
17
Quintard Taylor, and Shirley Anne Wilson Moore. Eds. African American Women
Confront the West 1600 -2000 Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.
18
Daisy Anderson. From Slavery to Affluence: Memoirs of Robert Anderson, ExSlave. (Steamboat Springs, CO: NP 1927).
9
children.19 In 1993, she moved to Denver and lived at the Amberwood Nursing Home.
In 1997 at the age of ninety-six, she attended a Gettysburg Memorial and met a Civil
War Confederate Widow. She died September 19, 1998, at the age of ninety-seven.20
A memorial service was held at Most Precious Blood Catholic Church in Denver on
September 30, 1998.21
These stories also revealed the political climate, the politics of hegemony, the
influence of religion, the cultural dynamics, the disconnections and
interconnectedness, but especially the stories from the storytellers, written from the
bottom-up. Who were the people in this community of African descendants? Where
did they come from? What were the circumstances that fueled their journey? How do
their experiences fit within the framework of the neighborhood? Why do these stories
need to be told? The research through church documents, Denver directories, journals,
diaries, newspaper articles, letters, court documents, government documents and other
resources, described a variety of ways the community worked to gain freedom, pursue
their right to self determination, and raise their children in a relatively safe
environment.
19
Robert McG. Thomas. “Daisy Anderson, 97, Widow of a Former Slave and Union
Soldier.” New York Times, September 26, 1998.
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/26/us/ daisy-anderson-97-widow-of-former-slaveand-union-soldier.html
20
Tillie Fong. “Daisy Anderson, Last Surviving Widow of Civil War Soldier, Dies.”
Rocky Mountain News (CO), Thursday, September 24, 1998.
http://infoweb.newsbank.com.ezproxy.denverlibrary.org/iw-search/we/ InfoWeb?
p_product=AWNB&p_theme=aggregated5&p_action=doc&f_lastaction=doc&p_doci
d=0EB4EC50D5A41507&p_docnum=3&p_queryname=1
21
Tillie Fong. “Daisy Anderson.”
10
The 1866 Denver City Directory listed nine churches, including an AME
(African Methodist Episcopal) Church and an African Baptist Church. Two of
Denver’s oldest Black churches, Zion Baptist Church, organized in 1865, and St. John
African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) - later changed to Shorter Chapel - organized in
1868, fueled the spirit of the new Denver residents. Both churches were meeting in the
early 1860s, but each had different experiences as they continued to expand their
congregations, and establish permanent facilities.22 Both churches have continued to
be anchors in the Black community into the twenty-first century.
What was the impetus, and what influence was religion for their congregants to
migrate west to Denver? The scholarship available examined the history of churches
across the nation, and what may have influenced the number of churches founded by
new Denver residents. Five books offered different perspectives into the lives of
African Americans and some examples of the churches. Each book established a
foundation with which to build research and created a roadmap for further inquiry.
The first was Growing up Black in Denver, co-written by Billie Arlene Grant,
Ernestine Smith, and Gladys Smith, and self-published in 1988.23 The authors
interviewed a number of Black families and individuals who talked about their
relatives’ or their own migration to Colorado. Many who were interviewed included
22
Ronald J. Stephens, PhD., LaWanna M. Larson, and the Black American West
Museum. Images of America: African Americans of Denver. (Charleston SC: Arcadia
Publishing, 2008), 20, 28.
23
Billie Arlene Grant, Ernestine Smith, and Gladys Smith. Growing Up Black in
Denver, Denver: (NP). 1983.
11
important details about their church affiliations, while others provided very little
information.
Lauren Mauck’s pictorial book, Five Points Neighborhood of Denver detailed
histories of residents in this neighborhood northeast of downtown Denver from 1870
through 2000.24 Seven years later, another pictorial book, African Americans of
Denver, written by Ronald J. Stephens, PhD, LaWanna Larson, and the Black
American West Museum, expanded the list of African Americans in Denver and some
in other areas of Colorado from the late 1850s through 2007.25
Bibliographic information from both books led to research housed at the Blair
Caldwell African American Research Library. Clementine Washington Pigford
researched and compiled a nine-volume collection on Zion Baptist Church.26 It
included biographies, letters, newspaper articles, interviews, excerpts from diaries,
legal documents, membership lists and other data. A life member of the church, she
researched the history of the church from the 1860s through 1999. She identified
members involved in various events who affected church history, Colorado history,
and U. S. history. The library is currently cataloguing boxes of Shorter A. M. E.
Church materials, such as books, newspapers, pictures, diaries, letters, and other
primary documents.
24
Laura M. Mauck. Images of America: Five Points Neighborhood of Denver.
(Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2001).
25
Ronald J Stephens, PhD., et al Images of America.
26
Clementine Washington Pigford, They Came to Colorado…With Dust of Slavery on
Their Backs: Book 1, Biographical Information 1863-1999. DPL R02301 12512. REF
286.178883P623th. Draft v 1. 1999, 3.
12
Denver Public Library Western Genealogy Department has digitally recorded
pictures, legal documents, newspapers, books, diaries, Denver directories, Colorado
census, and other primary documents and research data from the 1850s to present day.
The Stephen Hart Library at History Colorado provided extensive research into the U. S.
Census for Arapahoe County Colorado. Ancestry.com has digitally recorded census
data from 1860s through the 1940s.
Researching the archives of Zion Baptist Church, and Shorter African
Methodist Episcopal Church, the biographies, newspaper clippings, and other church
records helped to frame the history of the African American community in Denver.
Their perspectives are critical to understanding the intersection of various cultures,
ideology and history of Denver. Studies and patterns of the movement west, and the
research of earlier and evolved practices on plantations, the northeastern U. S. and the
antebellum south, may also help to formulate the framework for discovering the
insights and histories of these two churches, their impact on the communities they
serve, and the impact of the communities on the churches.
Although, there were many Black churches that organized in Denver between
1865 and 1900, this paper will only include history leading up to the two oldest Black
churches. It is a study of the lives of the people in these two churches and as a result
will be a source about the African American community, and how it fits in the greater
discourse on Denver history. It is the beginning of an effort to record these stories
and this history in depth.
13
CHAPTER III
CHRISTIANITY AND SLAVERY
Christianity was the dominant religion of the Americas. The conquest of the
Americas was formulated in the Doctrine of Discovery, endorsed by King Ferdinand
and Queen Isabella of Spain, and propagated by Christopher Columbus during the
fifteenth century, and by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and George Peckham in the sixteenth
century.27 Three popes during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries documented the
need to bring infidels into the fold and convert them to Christianity for the higher
good.28
As the Portuguese invested in the Trans-Saharan slave trade and brought back
slaves to the Iberian Peninsula, another opportunity opened in the Americas. Spain
joined Portugal, and eventually so did the Dutch, the French, and the English. Skin
color – (socially constructed) race - became a defining factor in the Transatlantic Slave
Trade. Christians deemed black-skinned peoples as infidels who should be enslaved
citing the curse of Ham (Noah’s son).29
The English gained control of the slave trade in 1713, and outlawed the
Transatlantic Slave Trade in 1807. The United States outlawed it 1808.30 The illegal
27
Robert A. Williams, American Indian in Western Legal Thought: Discourses of
Conquest. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990) 74-77, 151.
28
Robert A. Williams, American Indian in Western Legal Thought, 51, 159.
29
Marcus Jernegan.“Slavery and Conversion in the American Colonies." The
American Historical Review, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Apr., 1916), (Oxford University Press
American Historical Association1994), 504-527.
30
Darlene Clark Hine, et al. The African American Odyssey, 43-44.
14
transport of Africans to the Americas continued however, through the 1840s in the U.
S and 1860s in the Caribbean and South America.31 The domestic slave trade
increased with the demand for more labor in cotton producing states. Breeding slaves
for profit became an important base in the southern economy as African women were
more and more brutalized, and their families sold away. 32
However, ex-slave testimony supplies abundant evidence that some owners
coerced slaves’ sexuality in the interest of profitable reproduction. Virtually
all owners engaged in eugenic practices, such as rewarding women who bore
children regularly and pressuring and selling women who did not. Slave
women bore their first children around age nineteen, some two years earlier
than the white women who owned them. Slave women continued having
children every two and one-half years until they reached about age forty.
(Their mistresses, who could rely on wet-nurses, nursed their children for
shorter periods, and bore children closer together.)33
The southern economy was heavily dependent on slave labor on plantations, on
some small farms, and as assignments in the cities and small rural communities.
Slavery continued as an active system in the southern states until 1865, with the
signing of the Thirteenth Amendment.34
Slaveholders had different ideas about whether or not to teach the gospel to
enslaved people. The Church of England pushed to change laws about teaching the
Bible, but met much resistance from slaveholders fearing a baptized slave would be
considered Christian and the doctrines would then allow their freedom. Until the late
31
Beverly C. McMillan, Ed. Captive Passage: The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the
Making of the Americas. (Konecky and Konecky. The Mariners’ Museum,
Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002), 153-6.
32
Nell Irvin Painter. Creating Black Americans, 97.
33
Nell Irvin Painter. Creating Black Americans, 99.
34
Darlene Clark Hine, et al. The African American Odyssey, 255.
15
eighteenth century when perceptions and attitudes began to change, most did not allow
enslaved people to hear the gospel. If, however, the slaveholder allowed it,
Christianity was enforced by scheduling time during the week for plantation services.
Some slaveholders continued to believe if any slave was baptized, their status
would elevate, and they could be sued for enslaved people’s freedom.35 Some
slaveholders’ required white preachers, while others enlisted slaves as preachers. Of
course there were varying ranges of what enslaved people were allowed or not allowed
to hear. The preachers were required to focus on passages that encouraged enslaved
people to be docile or compliant, and to never speak passages that alerted them of their
equal status in the world. Eventually, laws were passed to exempt slaves from the
religious laws in the Bible; “baptism did not alter slave status.”36
Methodist and Baptist preachers had anti-slavery agendas that in the late
eighteenth century had to be curtailed in order to gain better access to enslaved people.
Still their sermons were interpreted with the idea “that they were ‘friendly toward
freedom’.”37 A large number of Black men were licensed to preach in the late
eighteenth century, and some had gained more autonomy when preaching on
plantations. Their sermons encouraged ways to live through slavery, and to have
independent thought. A number of independent Black churches with free and
enslaved memberships organized throughout the south.
35
Charles Joyner, “’Believer I Know.’ 21 23.
36
Albert J Raboteau, “African-Americans, Exodus, and the American Israel.” African
American Christianity: Essays in History. Paul E. Johnson, Ed. (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1994). 2-3.
37
Albert J Raboteau, “African-Americans, Exodus, and the American Israel,” 2-3.
16
In many areas enslaved people aligned Christianity with some western African
based ideologies. Some Catholic saints aligned with Orishas in Yoruba traditions.38
European Christianity interpreted a narrative from the Bible that explained their
Exodus out of Egypt into Israel. However, enslaved people saw their own fate as being
kidnapped out of Israel and “the Middle Passage had brought them to Egypt land,
where they suffered bondage under a new Pharaoh.”39
Enslaved people in Georgia and South Carolina Sea Islands had little contact
with the slaveholders, and were able to practice their traditional beliefs with little
interference. Known as the Gullah in the South Caroline Sea Islands and the Geechee
in the Georgia coast islands, they began to integrate their West African Muslim
practices with Protestant traditions, and eventually “embraced” a creolized
Christianity.40
During the late eighteenth century evangelical preaching influenced more
enslaved people to embrace Christianity. Many had hoped that with accepting
Christianity, it might get them closer to freedom.41 Early in the nineteenth century, in
some areas Black preachers gained more freedom to travel and preach. Many used the
Bible passages to inform their congregations about other events, family members,
planned uprisings or escapes. The call by the preacher and the response by the
38
Charles Joyner, “Believer I Know,” 21 - 23.
39
Albert J Raboteau, “African-Americans, Exodus and the American Israel,” 9.
40
41
Charles Joyner, “Believer I Know,” 21-23.
Albert J Raboteau, “African-Americans, Exodus and the American Israel,” 3.
17
congregation was a traditional African based form of communicating, and proved
effective on plantations. 42
Daisy Anderson recorded and published her husband Robert Anderson’s
memoirs, From Slavery to Affluence. He recounted his experiences with religion and
church services on the plantation where he was enslaved. The slaveholders in the
region attended church on Sundays, “and it was a social event as well as religious.” 43
He described the sanctuary having church pews for white congregation, and benches
upstairs for the enslaved people who were taking care of horses and carriages, or the
slaveholders’ children.44 He took care of the horse and carriage for his slaveholder,
and was able to attend the church service. It also gave him time to visit with enslaved
people from other plantations before the service started.45
He also spoke about the religious beliefs and church services on the
plantations. “The colored race is, as a whole, a very religious people. We people on
the plantation had our church services the same as the white folks.”46 He also
described the details of the service and what was covered during the sermon.
The religion was one largely of enchantment and fear, which fitted in very
nicely with the African religion of witch doctors and fear. The side of religion
as typified by Christ is his compassion for the sick, the poor, and the little
children, was not known in those days… “47
42
Nell Irvin Painter. Creating Black Americans, 56-57.
43
Daisy Anderson. From Slavery to Affluence, 20.
44
Daisy Anderson. From Slavery to Affluence, 21.
45
Daisy Anderson. From Slavery to Affluence, 22.
46
Daisy Anderson. From Slavery to Affluence, 22.
47
Daisy Anderson. From Slavery to Affluence, 24.
18
Music was also part of many African traditions. Enslaved people sang about
their despair or passed covert messages through the words about hope for freedom or
planned escapes.48 Robert Anderson spoke about the congregation taking Bible stories
and creating songs, and keeping rhythm through chants, swaying bodies, or patting
feet and hands.49 Music and Bible stories woven with African folktales provided a
forum for double consciousness; learn the ways to be and behave around slaveholders,
while holding on to the actual self.50 Learn to feign respect and passivity, while
holding on to the truth of their experiences and resisting their circumstances; learn to
live in the consciousness of a slave, and preserving the consciousness of the whole
person while strategizing their path toward freedom. This was a religion all their own;
separate and distinct from American Christianity. 51
48
Nell Irvin Painter, Creating Black Americans, 56.
49
Daisy Anderson, From Slavery to Affluence, 24.
50
Darlene Clark Hine, African American Odyssey, 143/4.
51
Nell Irvin Painter, Creating Black Americans, 102/3.
19
African Based Theology
Within the hopelessness and brutality of slavery, unexpected glimmers of hope
infiltrated the system. African spirituality traveled the oceans, as the slave trade
transported millions of souls to the Americas. Languages and cultures, families and
identities were devastated, but African descendents retained their religious beliefs and
connection to some part of their heritage. Within this system communities developed,
families were created, and churches were established. The enslaved people valued
other people, not materialism or hierarchy.52 African based theology evolved a new
paradigm: African American Christianity.
The peoples of African ancestry represent more than four hundred major
language groups, and within that, thousands of dialects that identify the diversity and
spectrum of the cultures and ideologies. Religiosity and spiritual beliefs are as
complex and diverse as language.53 John S. Mbiti wrote in his Introduction to African
Religion stated:
“Because African Religion developed together with all the other aspects of the
heritage, it belongs to each people within which it has evolved. It is not
preached from one people to another. Therefore a person must be born in a
particular African people in order to be able to follow African Religion in that
group … African Religion functions more on a communal than individual
basis… Since African Religion belongs to the people, no individual member of
the society concerned can stand apart and reject the whole of his people’s
religion.” 54
52
Nell Irvin Painter. Creating Black America, 103.
53
Mario Azevedo, “Religion in Africa.” Africana Studies: A Survey in Africa and the
Diaspora, Third Ed. Mario Azevedo, Ed. (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2005),
403.
54
John S. Mbiti. Introduction to African Religion, 39-40.
20
These are not separate, compartmentalized entities; each is collectively part of
daily life. African religion does not have a beginning, is not founded, or started by an
individual; it does not have a written history or scripture.55 It is taught through
conversation and example - oral tradition; it is lived through daily experiences, and
events, and evolves over time as circumstances, environment, and life experiences
change. Cultural heritage and standards, morality, personal accountability, work ethic,
interaction with nature and stewardship, choices, and beliefs are taught through
African religion. 56
Most have a monotheistic belief in a Supreme Being, and believe their
ancestors are part of the spiritual realm in this world. Some societies have spirits as
intermediaries leading up to God, who are in charge of various aspects of the societies’
existence.57 They honor their ancestors, respect and reflect their influences, and may
express that with a shrine or with rituals and ceremonies; but they do not worship their
ancestors.58
External observers, who do not fully understand the theology of African
Religion, mislabeled or misidentified some aspects as animism and fetishism. 59 In
African Religion, objects are not worshiped. As they worship God through rituals or
celebrations, they may include natural or man-made objects in the ceremonies, and
55
John S. Mbiti. Introduction to African Religion, 40-41.
56
John S. Mbiti. Introduction to African Religion, 40-41.
57
John S. Mbiti. Introduction to African Religion, 68.
58
John S. Mbiti. Introduction to African Religion, 47-49.
59
John S. Mbiti. Introduction to African Religion, 18/19.
21
may believe “that some of the spirits are thought to inhabit objects like trees, ponds,
and rocks… This is, however, only a small part of the many beliefs held in African
religion.”60 Family or community celebrations, rituals or festivals mark events such as
birth, circumcision, harvests, weddings, or deaths, or practice community prayers for
rain, to end droughts, or to change circumstances affecting their group. 61
African religion is everywhere, and every part of everything and every person.
It can be in sacred places, or in shrines, man-made or natural, where sacrifices or
offerings are made to God, or prayers are made to God. It is part of the art, in symbols,
in crafts, music and dance, storytelling, oral histories, myths, names of people and
places, culture, customs, mysticism, and every aspect of their belief systems.62
Witchcraft, sorcery, and spells are also part of African religion, but not its
main focus. It is a supernatural energy that can be used for healing, and can explore
beyond the scope of our three-dimensional being. It can also be used for evil and
impose harm and/or danger on some one.63
Christianity and Islam have been part of many societies, especially along the
Mediterranean coast and Eastern regions, for hundreds of years. 64 Areas in Egypt,
Ethiopia, Sudan and parts of Chad were Christian two thousand years ago. Islam
converted some Christian regions of Chad and north-central Africa and has dominated
60
John S. Mbiti. Introduction to African Religion, 14-15.
61
John S. Mbiti. Introduction to African Religion, 131,143.
62
John S. Mbiti. Introduction to African Religion, 45, 60.
63
John S. Mbiti, Introduction to African Religion, 165-167.
64
John S. Mbiti, Introduction to African Religion, 181,185.
22
the Mediterranean regions and West Africa since the late seventh century. 65 The
spread of these two religions have continued, with Islam primarily in the Northern
third of the continent, and Christianity in Sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar.
African religion is still practiced in most areas simultaneously with Islam and
Christianity; however, many rituals and ceremonies were lost during colonialism in
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Some communities are resurrecting past
practices, while others are reworking rituals and ceremonies in conjunction with
current systems.66 Conflicts are prevalent as African Christian cultural and belief
systems are not necessarily aligned with Western Christian cultural and belief systems
and the missionaries who attempted to enforce these systems. 67
African Baptist Church
Black preachers experienced a wide range of challenges during slavery. They
faced persecution, punishments, or ridicule during the late eighteenth century from
slaveholders. The Baptist churches in the south authorized ordained Black preachers,
who preached in front of mixed congregations, and eventually in all Black churches.
Some Baptist churches “conducted literary training and instruction of its Negro
members.”68
65
Mario Azevedo, Africana Studies, 410.
66
John S. Mbiti, Introduction to African Religion, 190.
67
John S. Mbiti, Introduction to African Religion, 190.
68
Walter H. Brooks, “The Evolution of the Negro Baptist Church.” The Journal of
Negro History, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Jan. 1922), 11-22 (Association for the Study of African
American Life and History), 21. Accessed August 2, 2013.
23
During the Eighteenth Century African churches emerged throughout the
south. In 1773, the First African Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia began meeting
and by 1777 was officially organized.69 In 1773 or 1775 the Negro Baptist Church in
Silver Bluff, South Carolina organized, and in 1776 the Negro Baptist Church in
Williamsburg, Virginia was organized.70 The Black churches were places of refuge
from the indignities and brutality of slavery. Members were taught scripture, taught to
read, forged relationships and built communities.71 Some church memberships
included enslaved people and free people of color. The Southern churches received
help and support from Northern churches when enslaved people transitioned to
freedom.72
African Methodist Episcopal Church
The first African Methodist Episcopal Church was established for African
Americans in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 1787, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones
founded the Free African Society, and began the framework for African Methodist and
Episcopal theology.
69
First African Baptist Church, First African Baptist Church History.
http://firstafricanbc.com/history.asp
70
Walter H. Brooks. “The Evolution of the Negro Baptist Church,” 21.
71
“Africans in America: First African Church of Savannah, 1778.”
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2p30.html. Accessed August 2, 2013.
72
Walter H. Brooks. “The Evolution of the Negro Baptist Church,” 21.
24
Richard Allen was born into slavery in 1760 in Delaware, and purchased his
freedom in 1777.73 He converted to Methodism and was a member and a minister at
St. George Methodist Church.
Absalom Jones was born into slavery in 1746 in Delaware, and purchased his
freedom in 1784. 74 He was also a member of St. George Methodist Church and was
the minister in charge of increasing Black membership. Church members were
alarmed by the increase, and demanded segregation of the Black members to the
upstairs balcony.75 When ushers tried to move them upstairs, Allen and Jones refused,
and led the Black members to walk out of church.76
Richard Allen & Absalom Jones founded the Free African Society in 1787.
Allen organized Mother Bethel A. M. E. Church, and became the first A. M. E. Bishop
in 1799. Absalom Jones helped organize the St. Thomas African Episcopal Church
73
Walter B. Posey. Review of “Richard Allen: Apostle of Freedom.” by Charles H.
Wesley. The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Feb., 1936), pp. 111-112:
Southern Historical Association. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2191567. Accessed: June
8, 2013
74
Jon Michael Spencer. “The Hymnody of the African Methodist Episcopal Church”
American Music, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Autumn, 1990), pp. 274-293 University of Illinois
Press http://www.jstor.org/stable/3052097 .Accessed: June 8, 2013.
75
Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. “The Archives of Richard
Allen Museum at the Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church.”
Philadelphia PA, Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, 1993.
http://www.motherbethel.org/arc_finder.php111. Accessed June 8, 2013
76
Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
http://www.motherbethel.org/arc_finder.php111.
25
and became the first African American Episcopalian Priest in 1804.77 James Forten, a
Founding Member of the American Antislavery Society, and American Moral Reform
Society, joined with Richard Allen and Absalom Jones in establishing the African
Masonic Lodge of Pennsylvania.78
Allen, Forten and Jones signed up to fight in the War of 1812. 79 They started
the Black Brigade in Philadelphia, but never saw combat because the English stopped
fighting when they did not capture Baltimore.80 Within their community, each worked
diligently to end slavery and change the course of history.
77
The Archives of the Episcopal Church DFMS/PECUSA. “Leadership Gallery:
Reverend Absalom Jones, 1746 – 1818.” The Church Awakens: African Americans
and their Struggle for Justice. © 2008.
http://www.episcopalarchives.org/Afro-Anglican_history/exhibit/leadership/jones.php.
Accessed June 8, 2013
78
Darlene Clark Hine, et al. African American Odyssey, 110.
79
Darlene Clark Hine, et al. African American Odyssey, 114.
80
Darlene Clark Hine, et al. African American Odyssey, 114.
26
CHAPTER IV
AFRICAN AMERICAN MIGRATION
Slave resistance, revolts, and efforts to escape occurred throughout the country.
Individuals devised plans and ran away, or gathered small groups to escape, conducted
mass insurrections, killed their own children, killed the slaveholders or committed
suicide.81 In her book, Hine Sight: Black Women and the Re-Construction of
American History, Darlene Clark Hine wrote that the combined influence of rape (or
the threat of rape), domestic violence, and a desire to escape economic oppression
born of racism and sexism are keys to understanding the hidden motivations of major
social protest and migratory movements in African American history. 82
The Underground Railroad moved enslaved people out of the south to Canada,
New England, Philadelphia, areas north of the Ohio River, or west beyond Missouri
until slavery ended in 1865. Harriet Tubman, known as “Moses of her People”
journeyed back to Maryland numerous times to free several hundreds of enslaved
people over ten years. 83
Free African Americans such as William Still and Frederick Douglas, religious
groups such as the Unitarians, Quakers and Black churches, and other abolitionist
groups and organizations scattered throughout the United States and Canada, actively
protested slavery, or assisted enslaved people finding safe routes, places of refuge,
81
Nell Irvin Painter, Creating Black Americans, 103.
82
Darlene Clark Hine, Hine Sight, 32-3.
83
Nell Irvin Painter, Creating Black Americans, 107-9.
27
food and shelter during their journey out of the south.84 Black ministers led antislavery activities in their churches and in other churches in their areas. They, along
with several anti-slavery newspapers and journalists, activated a rigorous campaign to
end slavery. Thousands escaped on their own without help.85
Frederick Douglass believed that Christianity, as it supported slavery ideology
in the United States, was vastly different than the “Christianity of Christ.” 86 He stated
“I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the
corrupt, slaveholding, women whipping, cradle plundering, partial and hypocritical
Christianity of this land.”87 He believed that the American form of Christianity in
many cases preached a false and malevolent gospel, and contradicted the truth of pure
Christianity.88
William Craft escaped slavery with his wife Ellen Craft in 1848. They
belonged to different slaveholders, and their fear of possible separation loomed over
their lives. He wrote in his diary:
Having heard while in Slavery that ‘God made of one blood all nations of men’
and also that the American Declaration of Independence says, that ‘We hold
these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are
84
Darlene Clark Hine, African American Odyssey, 200/1.
85
Nell Irvin Painter, Creating Black Americans, 105.
86
Frederick Douglass. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American
Slave, and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself. Harriet Jacobs.
(New York, Modern Library Mass Market Edition, 2004), 113.
87
Frederick Douglass. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 113.
88
Frederick Douglass. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 115.
28
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;’ we could not understand by what
right we were held as ‘chattels’.89
Migration West
A new chapter in American history began in the nineteen century as the lands
west of the Mississippi River were opened to mass migration. The indigenous peoples
who lived on these lands for thousands of years were soon to experience the
encroachment of new inhabitants.90 European explorers, political leaders and militia
had carved paths throughout the continent, and continued to move toward the west
coast. In order to facilitate their endeavors and to confiscate the lands, the U. S.
government enacted a number of new laws, issued proclamations, and established new
treaties to validate their intentions. They purchased the land claimed by the French The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 - between the Mississippi River and the Rio Grande
River. Mexico outlawed slavery in 1829. Texas fought for their right to own slaves
and gained independence from Mexico in 1836. Congress annexed the territory at
President Polk’s insistence in 1845. Slavery dramatically increased in Texas as new
slaveholders entered the territory and purchased land.91 The U. S. declared war
against Mexico in 1846 to protect its acquisition of Texas. As the Mexican-American
War concluded in 1848, the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and then the
89
William Craft. “Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or, the Escape of William
and Ellen Craft from Slavery.” The Great Escapes: Four Slave Narratives. Daphne
Brooks. (New York, Barnes and Noble, 2007), 223.
90
Richard Griswold del Castillo. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of
Conflict. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990, 3/4.
91
Darlene Clark Hine, et al. The African American Odyssey, 190-193.
29
Gadsden Purchase of 1854 brought on significant changes in the westward
movement.i92
The California Gold Rush in 1849 spurred the movement west through the
regions that are now Wyoming and Utah, or on the southern route, through what is
now New Mexico and Arizona.93 While heading west to California, some heeded the
rumors of gold in the western Kansas Territory. 94 As one of the bands of Arapahoe
Nation moved back to their winter station, they encountered these new inhabitants
setting up permanent shelter at the confluence of the Cherry Creek, and the Platte
River.95 November 24, 1858, men who had traveled west realized their dream of
chartering their recently established homestead.
As territories opened west of the Mississippi river, debates loomed over the
issue of free states versus slave states. The Kansas – Nebraska Act in 1854 nullified
the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and allowed “popular sovereignty” or the right of
the people to determine whether a territory would become a slave state or a free state.
96
Violence erupted in Kansas territory resulting in a Kansas Civil War, nicknamed
Bleeding Kansas.97 This was one of several major events to spur the American Civil
92
Richard Griswold del Castillo. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 5-7.
93
Dee Brown. An Indian History of the American West: Bury My Heart at Wounded
Knee, (New York: Picador; Henry Holt and Company, 1970), page 8, 23.
94
Carl Abbott, et al. Colorado, 44.
95
Thomas J. Noel and Duane A. Smith. Colorado: The Highest State, second ed.
(Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2011).
96
97
Darlene Clark Hine, et al. The African American Odyssey, 217/18.
Darlene Clark Hine, et al. The African American Odyssey, 217-221.
30
War. Court cases such as the Dred Scott Decision in 1857 set off a firestorm of debate
about slavery. The Supreme Court ruled that he was not a citizen of the United States,
and therefore could not sue for his freedom.98
Meanwhile in the west, African Americans were fighting for antidiscrimination laws, and encouraging protests against slavery moving to California
and western territories.99 In 1859, “Forty-nine delegates representing ten of
California’s twenty-seven counties attended the convention at St. Andrews AME
Church in Sacramento.”100
Civil War
The expansion west prompted debates on the expansion of slavery in the west.
President Lincoln was sworn into office March 1861, and faced the Civil War as it
began in April 1861. His intention was to end the Confederate hold on the south, and
reunite the secession states to the Union, not to end slavery. The war continued much
longer and with more casualties than he anticipated. The majority of enslaved people
walked away from their plight during the war, and many were captured by Union
Troops as “Contraband of War.”101
98
99
Darlene Clark Hine, et al. The African American Odyssey, 217-221.
Quintard Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier, 37-40.
100
101
Quintard Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier, 91.
Nell Irvin Painter, Creating Black Americans, 119-20.
31
In 1862 President Lincoln convened a meeting with Black abolitionists to plan
the relocation of enslaved people to Central America. 102 Eventually, as pressure
mounted he allowed the enlistment of Black men into the military, and abandoned his
push for relocation. “On September 22, 1862, five days after the Union forces won the
Battle of Antietam, Lincoln issued a preliminary proclamation that demanded that the
rebelling states return to the Union by January 1, 1863, or their slaves would be
‘forever free’.”103 The Emancipation Proclamation took effect January 1, 1863, and
freed enslaved people in the states seceding from the Union, but not the border states
of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri. 104 In 1865, the Thirteenth
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States declared all people were freed
(with the exception of those who commit crimes).
The Freedman’s Bureau provided assistance to the newly freed Black people,
and to educational institutions. Black churches, with the support from missionary
associations, the AME church, and other religious institutions throughout the north
and the south also supported the transition from slavery to freedom.105
The years after slavery, the church became the most important institution
among African American other than the family. Not only did it fill deep
spiritual and inspirational needs, it offered enriching music, provided charity
and compassion to those in need, developed community and political leaders,
and were free of white supervision.106
102
Nell Irvin Painter, Creating Black Americans, 121.
103
Judson L. Jeffries. “Juneteenth, Black Texans and the Case for Reparations.”
Negro Educational Review; Apr-Jul 2004; 55, 2/3; (ProQuest Research Library), 107.
104
Judson L. Jeffries. “Juneteenth,” 107.
105
Nell Irvin Painter, Creating Black Americans, 146.
106
Darlene Clark Hine, et al. African American Odyssey, 264.
32
Western States
As African Americans migrated out of the south, so did their spirited activism,
desire for freedom, commitment to thrive, and their religious beliefs. The push of
segregation, racism, violence, and the pull to perceived better opportunities, and hope
for a brighter future were part of the equation in the mass migration of African
Americans throughout the United States. In their attempt to move West, and escape
various forms of oppression, violence, racism, and unethical rules, many were
confronted with a gradual shift in attitudes, such as de facto segregation, limited
resources, restrictive housing covenants, and imposed borders.107 New laws in
California restricted homesteading, denied voting rights, and imposed other
exclusions. Oregon imposed laws excluding Black folks from most of regions in the
territory. Utah legalized slavery in 1850. 108 New Mexico was part of Mexico, until the
United States occupied it 1846. A few wealthy land owners maintained indentured
servitude for life, by increasing debt beyond the ability for those in service to pay. 109
In 1850 New Mexico there were more than 3000 enslaved Indians, and a large number
of enslaved Africans. Eventually legislation was passed to restrict free Blacks, and
enforce stricter slave laws. Many states such as Kansas, Nebraska and Utah continued
to impose restrictions on free Blacks.110
107
Quintard Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier, 82.
108
Quintard Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier, 74.
109
Quintard Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier, 75.
110
Quintard Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier, 82.
33
Exodusters
The Thirteenth Amendment in the U. S. Constitution legally abolished slavery
in 1865. The Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship in 1868, and the Fifteenth
Amendment granted Black men the right to vote in 1870. 111 Attitudes and behaviors
however, continued that these citizens with their newly established freedom were not
entitled to the rights and privileges guaranteed in the Constitution.112 Many had left
the south to escape slavery, and later Jim Crow Laws and Black Codes – oppressive
laws and imposed rules that enforced separatist and segregationist access to
accommodations, transportation, services, schools and housing.113 The laws and rules
dramatically increased during the decline of Reconstruction Era (1865 – 1877).114
Lynchings and other forms of extreme brutality coupled with the effort to push
Black folks backward as closely to slavery as possible without calling it slavery,
spurred migration north and west. Some of these laws imposed impossible or
unreasonable limitations on their livelihood and access to resources. Sharecropping
left many in deeper debt and few options to improve family or living conditions. 115
It also included people with adventure on their minds, desire for military duty,
to escape share-cropping and farm their own land, establish businesses, or to rear their
111
Darlene Clark Hine, et al. African American Odyssey, A9-A10.
112
Nell Irvin Painter, Creating Black Americans, 141-2.
Quintard Taylor. In Search of the Racial Frontier, 138.
113
Quintard Taylor. In Search of the Racial Frontier, 138.
114
Darlene Clark Hine, The African American Odyssey, page 313 -15.
115
Quintard Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier, 138/9.
34
children in a place of freedom.116 Many people loaded up their belongings and moved
to the west-African coast of Liberia, moved north into the industrial cities, or west of
the Mississippi River, looking for their own land to farm, or settlements to start a new
life.117
Several waves of post-slavery African American migration from the south
occurred from 1865 through 1945.118 One of the earlier waves of migration, from
about “1865 to 1880, 40,000 black people known as the ‘Exodusters’ moved to
Kansas.”119 ” Leaders of the migration included, W. R. Hill, one of the founders of
Nicodemus, Kansas, and Benjamin “Pap” Singleton, formerly enslaved in
Tennessee.120 The end of the Reconstruction Era spurred African Americans to leave
the south en masse fearing re-enslavement. 121
The migrations of 1879–in which 6,000 African Americans settled in Kansas–
took on a religious tone. African American migrants saw themselves as taking
part in a biblical exodus, with Kansas as the Promised Land. In 1879, often
referred to as the Exodus Year, more than 20,000 black men, women, and
children passed through St. Louis to Kansas and points west.122
116
Darlene Clark Hine, The African American Odyssey, page 324 -26.
117
Darlene Clark Hine, et al. African American Odyssey, 319-21.
118
Darlene Clark Hine, et al. African American Odyssey, 323.
119
Darlene Clark Hine, et al. African American Odyssey, 323.
120
Darlene Clark Hine, et al. African American Odyssey, 323.
121
Nell Irvin Painter, Creating African Americans, 152.
122
Jack Ravage. “ Exodusters.” Encyclopedia of the Great Plains. David J. Wishart,
Ed., Center for Great Plains Studies, 2004, 14.
http://plainshumanities.unl.edu/encyclopedia/doc/egp.afam.018.
35
Ida B. Wells Barnett, a member of an A. M. E. church, an activist, and a
journalist for thirty or more years, wrote news articles and publications in Nashville,
New York and Chicago that urged black people to leave the south to get away from
lynchings and violence, and more than 7,000 took heed and moved west.123 As one of
the co- founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,
she brought national attention to lynchings and justice system.
There were settlements in Indian Territory such as Boley, Liberty, and
Langston, Oklahoma; and the migration continued throughout the western states,
including large settlements in Nebraska, New Mexico, Colorado, California, British
Columbia and other Canadian and Indian territories. Smaller settlements or families
scattered across most of the western states.124
123
Darlene Clark Hine, et al. African American Odyssey, 321-3.
Jacqueline Jones Royster, Ed. Southern Horrors and Other Writings: the AntiLynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900. 17/19.
124
Darlene Clark Hine, et al. African American Odyssey, 321-3.
Jacqueline Jones Royster, Ed. Southern Horrors and Other Writings. 17/19
36
CHAPTER V
ZION BAPTIST CHURCH AND
SHORTER AFRICAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH
DENVER’S OLDEST BLACK CHURCHES
November 22, 1858, several men who had traveled west established Denver
City Town Company at the confluence of the Cherry Creek, and the Platte River.125
Three Russell brothers from Georgia named an earlier settlement Auraria, after their
own home town, and the name on the Periodic Table for gold. Nearby, the Saint
Charles Settlement, and Denver City were also established in 1858. Along the west
side of the Platte River, Highland was established in 1859. The boundaries for the
Jefferson Territory defined the area in the western Kansas Territory as a separately
governed entity, Arapahoe County, K. T.126
The House of Representatives and Colorado Territory were established in
1861, with intended plans for state-hood in 1864. The area continued to expand
northeaster along the grid originally established in Auraria and Denver City.127 Henry
Brown platted Capitol Hill on a compass grid – north, south, east, west - starting at
Broadway Street and moving east.128 As the streets running northeast converged with
125
Carl Abbott, et al. Colorado: A History of the Centennial State, 44-5.
126
Carl Abbott, et al Colorado: A History of the Centennial State, 56-7.
127
Jerome Smiley, History of Denver, 504.
128
Jerome Smiley, History of Denver, 504.
37
the new grid, and eventually when the neighborhoods intersected it created several
corners with five points.129
As the area continued to grow, the common denominators were houses of faith.
The 1866 Denver City Directory listed nine churches, including an African Methodist
Episcopal Church and an African Baptist Church.130 The directory lists both the A. M.
E. Church on Holladay Street between H & I (between 17th and 18th Streets), and the
African Baptist Church at Holladay Street between H & I and William Norrid as
pastor. Zion Baptist Church, organized in 1865.131 St. John African Methodist
Episcopal (A.M.E.) - later changed the name to Shorter AME Church - organized in
1868.132
In Eugene H. Berwanger’s article, “Hardin and Langston: Western Black
Spokesmen of the Reconstruction Era” he commented that the Black churches were
slow to be established and, “…not the influence of black ministers; extant sources
indicate that the black clergy did not play a prominent role in the civil rights
movements in Kansas and Colorado…” although members and the clergy of both Zion
129
Lauren Mauck, Images of America, 17.
130
J. E Wharton. History of the City of Denver, from its Earliest Settlement to the
Present Time; and D. O. Wilhelm, To Which is Added a Full and Complete Business
Directory of the City. Denver, CO, Byers and Dailey Printers, News Office, 1866
http://www.colorado.gov/dpa/doit/archives/dcd/dcdhome.htm.
131
Clementine Washington Pigford. They Came to Colorado…With Dust of Slavery on
Their Backs: Book 1, Biographical Information 1863-1999. DPL R02301 12512. REF
286.178883P623th. Draft v 1. 1999, 3.
132
Shorter A. M. E. Church. Centennial Celebration 1868-1968: 100 Years of
Progress. 12.
38
and St. John signed the petition in 1864 to grant Black men voting rights.133 He also
suggested that the delay in establishing the churches was possibly due to the “parent
churches” focus on the Civil War, its aftermath, and emphasis was placed on
supporting churches in the south. 134 It is a possible explanation of why the delay in
church activity. However, Clementine Pigford stated in her article that William Norrid
was formerly enslaved and led a rebellion against slavery. 135 He was one of the
founding members of the Colored Masons, a member of the Republican party, a party
delegate, and he signed the petition for the United States to withhold Colorado’s
statehood to gain voting and equal rights. Reverend Norrid actively pursued civil
rights issues and worked on the idea of starting a “colored” colony.136
Population may have also been a determining factor starting the churches.
According to the 1860 U. S. Federal Census, fourteen mulatto or Black men, and
seven mulatto or Black women lived in Denver. 137 The population increased to 146
133
Eugene H Berwanger. “Hardin and Langston: Western Black Spokesmen of the
Reconstruction Era”. The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 64, No. 2 (Spring, 1979), pp.
101-115 Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Inc.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2717202. Accessed May 13, 2013, 110.
134
Eugene H. Berwanger. “Hardin and Langston,” 110.
135
Clementine Pigford. Denver Public Library, Western Genealogy Department.
Beautiful, Beautiful Zion: the Majesty of Gods Power and Grace, First Chronicles,
Chapter 29, verse 11; 138+ Years of Faith, Works and Historical Significance. 3
http://digital.denverlibrary.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15330coll23/id/8132/
rec/33
136
Clementine Pigford. Beautiful, Beautiful Zion. 3.
137
Ancestry.com. 1860 United States Federal Census, Denver, Arapahoe County,
Kansas Territory. http://interactive.ancestry.com/7667/4230560_00077?backurl=
http%3a%2f%2fsearch.ancestry.com%2fsearch%2fdb.aspx%3fdbid%3d7667%26
path%3d&ssrc=&backlabel=ReturnBrowsing#?imageId=4230560_00077
39
mulatto or Black men, and ninety-one mulatto or Black women in Denver by 1870. 138
A slow, but steady increase in the number of residents began to fill the memberships
in the churches.
Zion Baptist Church
139
140
Zion Baptist Church was organized November 15, 1865, with a membership of
9 persons. The founding members were Minister William Norrid, his wife Rachel
Norrid, William and Jane Bosier (Bozier), Emma Green, Thomas J Riley, Jane
Jackson, Carrie Armstrong, and Lucy Boyd.141
After renting space for more than two years, the congregation built a church on
the corner of 20th (L street in 1873) and Arapahoe Streets in 1868. Another building
138
Ancestry.com. 1870 United States Federal Census, Denver, Arapahoe County,
Colorado Territory. http://interactive.ancestry.com/7163/4259440_00005?backurl=
http%3a%2f%2fsearch.ancestry.com%2fsearch%2fdb.aspx%3fdbid%3d7163%26path
%3d&ssrc=&backlabel=ReturnBrowsing#?imageId=4259440_00129.
139
Colorado Department of Personnel and Administration: State Archives, Denver
City Directory, 1866. http://www.colorado.gov/dpa/doit/archives/dcp/bd5.html.
140
Denver Public Library, Western Genealogy Department, Zion Baptist Church,
Burnis McCloud 1908 – 1990. http://digital.denverlibrary.org/cdm/singleitem/
collection/p15330coll22/id/32608/rec/30.
141
Clementine Washington Pigford, They Came to Colorado, Draft 3 v 3, 1089.
40
with a brick façade replaced it in 1881. They purchased the Calvary Baptist Church on
Twenty-Fourth Avenue and Ogden Street in 1913, where it is still located today.142.
Efforts to include Negro suffrage in the Constitution when the Colorado filed
for Statehood in 1864 were futile.143 William J Hardin, a local barber and Black
community leader was the spokesman on behalf of the Black community when he
engaged politicians. Hardin, along with Henry O. Wagoner, and Edward Sanderlin
organized community members to interfere with Colorado becoming a state until they
gained voting rights. Church members were also actively involved in civil rights issues
and believed that Negro Suffrage should be included in the Colorado Constitution... In
1864, 137 men signed a petition to the U. S. Congress, including members of Zion and
Shorter, such as Reverend Norrid, Lewis H. Douglass, and Frederick Douglass, Jr.,
sons of Frederick Douglass, Denver entrepreneurs and civil rights activists, and
Barney (B. L.) Ford:144
To The Honorable Senate and House of Representatives of the United Stated,
in Congress assembled – Your petitioners, Colored Citizens of the Territory of
Colorado, would respectfully represent, That, since the passage of the law of
Congress, enfranchising our people in the territories, we have fully and freely,
and without molestation, exercised the Elective franchise in this Territory.
142
Clementine Washington Pigford. They Came to Colorado, Draft 1, v. 1. 4.
143
Carl M. Frasure. “Charles Sumner and the Rights of the Negro.” The Journal of
Negro History, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Apr., 1928), 126-149. Association for the Study of
African American Life and History, Inc., 138. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2713959.
Accessed May 11, 2013.
144
Eugene H Berwanger. “Hardin and Langston: Western Black Spokesmen of the
Reconstruction Era”. The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 64, No. 2 (Spring, 1979),
101-115. Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Inc, 104.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2717202. Accessed May 13, 2013.
41
And we have full confidence that if the State of Colorado be admitted, into the
Union, …145
President Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill to grant Colorado statehood, and
Congress did not address the petition. However, in Washington, U. S. Senator Charles
Sumner learned of their agenda, and advocated for their right to vote. 146
Barney Ford was born in 1822, enslaved in Virginia, and walked away from
slavery when he was sent on an errand in a free state. He arrived in Denver in 1860.
He was an entrepreneur, and worked as a barber, and later opened the Inter-Ocean
Hotel in downtown Denver. He was also voted into the state legislature in the 1870s.
A local newspaper, the Denver Dailey News wrote an article Mar 16, 1874 (no
author listed) entitled Sumner, that the African Baptist Church had a memorial service
for U. S Senator Charles Sumner, an antislavery and human right activist. 147 The
Fifteenth Amendment was ratified in 1870, which affirmed for Black men the right to
vote.148
Clara Brown, who traveled to Denver in 1859 on a wagon train, forged her
way to a decent living in Central City. Black women in Denver, had almost no
145
Clementine Washington Pigford. They Came to Colorado, Draft 3, v. 3. 1086
146
Carl M. Frasure. “Charles Sumner and the Rights of the Negro.” The Journal of
Negro History, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Apr., 1928), 126-149. Association for the Study of
African American Life and History, Inc., 138/40.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2713959. Accessed May 11, 2013.
147
Colorado Historic Newspapers. Denver Daily Times (no author listed) Monday,
March 16, 1874, 4. http://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/
Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp? From=Search&Key=DTM/1874/03/16/4
148
U. S. National Archives and Records Administration. The Constitution of the
United States, Amendments 11 – 27.
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_amendments_11-27.html.
42
political clout, nor did they have much power or influence in other areas, such as their
working lives. A very small percentage of Denver’s population, many of the working
Black women were employed as cooks, maids, laundress, and in other service rolls.149
Some were able to push the boundaries and become entrepreneurs or work in hotels
and restaurants.150
Working women also supported their families and their communities. At home
they cooked, cleaned and cared for their family. Through their church affiliations
many women set up missionary societies or other faith based organizations to educate
their families, to take care of the needs of neighbors, and to provide mutual support
among the members.151 African Americans began migrating to Denver at a much
increased rate, and “as the population increased from fewer than 500 in 1870 to over
11,500 in 1910, demands for race reparation increased.”152 During the late nineteenth
century and early twentieth century, as Jim Crow laws became more and more
restrictive, Black people pushed back through self help and national organizations. 153
As for the Afro-Americans, they were not strangers in the city either. They
were among its first citizens in 1858 and by the late 1880s approached 4,000 in
number, out of a population of slightly over 100,000 persons. They had a well149
Glenda Riley. “American Daughters: Black Women in the West.” Montana: The
Magazine of Western History, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Spring, 1988), 14-27. Montana
Historical Society: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4519131 .Accessed: 12/02/2012, 21.
150
Glenda Riley. “American Daughters,” 22
151
Moya Hansen. “Try Being a Black Woman!” African American Women Confront
the West 1600 – 2000, Quintard Taylor and Shirley Anne Wilson Moore, Eds. Norman
OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003, 146/7.
152
Carl Abbott, et al., Colorado, 215.
153
Moya Hansen, “Try Being a Black Woman!” 147/8.
43
defined, albeit segregated, community replete with a number of social
institutions, the strongest of which was the black church. And although as a
group they were clustered in the lower socio-economic strata, there were a few
exceptional individuals of rather handsome means.154
The duties and responsibilities of church members followed along gender lines.
The men of Zion and Shorter were in charge of the Pastorate, Board of Trustees and
the Deacons, while the women were responsible in large part, the choirs, and various
missionary and benevolent groups. 155
In 1885 Reverend William Gray ministered to Andrew Green, who was tried
and convicted of robbing and killing Joseph A. Whitnah, a trolley driver.156 Several
women in the church choir joined Reverend Gray, to make sure that Green had a
proper service. Andrew Green was visited by two other ministers, Reverend Dr. I. W.
Tripplett of Shorter A.M.E. Church, and Reverend Dr. Lewing of a Pueblo, Colorado,
A.M.E. Church, and other church members.157
Women in their church ministries supported the endeavors of the minister’s
work, through outreach, prayer services, the choir, and collection of food and clothing
for community members needs.158 During celebrations or special events, the women
provided the feasts. The ministries expanded outside of the churches and created
154
William King. “The End of an Era, Denver’s Legal Last Public Execution July 27,
1886.” The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 68, No. 1 (Winter, 1983), 37-53.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2717458?origin=JSTOR-pdf, 41 Accessed: May 6, 2013.
155
Shorter A. M. E. Church. Centennial Celebration 1868-1968: 100 Years of
Progress. 22-25. Robert Pratt III Collection.
156
William King. “The End of an Era,” 41.
157
William King. “The End of an Era,” 41.
158
Clementine Washington Pigford, They Came to Colorado, Book 2, v2, 963.
44
separate clubs and organizations to work for women’s suffrage, equal rights and
challenge racism, sexism and sexual harassment, and to improve other social and civic
issues. 159
In 1892, Elizabeth P. Ensley and her husband moved to Denver, and helped
organize the Colorado Equal Suffrage Association. 160 She was the treasurer of this
non-partisan group, and helped gain the votes in favor of women’s suffrage in the
Colorado Legislature in 1893. She was a journalist for the National Association of
Colored Women’s newsletter Women’s Era. 161 Their motto was “Lifting as We
Climb.” Ensley and Ida DePriest, a member of Zion, later started the Colored
Women’s Republican Club, and garnered enough support to elect the first Black
Colorado legislator, Joseph Stewart in 1897.162 DePriest, who was the first Black
woman to work at the Denver U S Mint as a weigher, was also a member of the
Women’s League of Denver. 163
In 1891 minister W. P. T Jones and thirty members left Zion and with
permission from Reverend John Ford and started Central Baptist Church. In 1912
Central built a new sanctuary at 2400 California Street, where it is currently located.164
159
Jacqueline Jones Royster, Ed. Southern Horrors and Other Writings.
160
Autry National Center of the American West, Women of the West Museum:
Elizabeth Piper Ensley (1848 – 1919) Colorado Suffragist.
http://theautry.org/explore/exhibits/suffrage/ensley_full.html. Accessed June 8, 2013.
160
Autry National Center of the American West, Women of the West Museum.
162
Autry National Center of the American West, Women of the West Museum.
163
Lynda F Dickson. “Lifting as We Climb,” 374.
164
Clementine Washington Pigford, They Came to Colorado, Book 1, v1, 4.
45
Attorney Edwin Hackley and his wife Emma Azalia Hackley, the first Black
graduate of the University of Denver, were church members.165 Hackley was the
owner and editor of the Statesman, and sold half of his interest to Joseph D. D. Rivers,
who renamed the paper to the Colorado Statesman.166 Azalia Hackley was an
accomplished singer and lead the choir as Zion Baptist Church. 167 July 1898 she
directed a program held at Shorter A. M. E. Church, and the “choral union,” members
of several churches, sang several songs, including ‘Steal Away,’ and ‘The
Redemption.’”168
A new minister to Denver, Reverend John Ford joined Zion in 1899 and served
until 1907.169 He was credited with increasing the membership from 200 to 525, and
reduced the church’s debt while he increased the amount of property they owned. 170
He was married to Denver’s first Black woman physician, Dr. Justina Ford, who
ushered in a new perspective on women and their role in their community and in the
165
Clementine Washington Pigford, They Came to Colorado, Book 2, v2, 499.
166
Glenda Riley “American Daughters: Black Women in the West.” Montana: The
Magazine of Western History, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Spring, 1988), pp. 14-27 Montana
Historical Society: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4519131 .Accessed: December 2, 2012
167
Clementine Washington Pigford. Beautiful, Beautiful Zion: The Majesty of God’s
Power and Grace 138+ Years of Faith, Works and Historical Significance. Blair
Caldwell African American Research Library Collection (no publisher) 1993, 2/3.
168
169
170
Clementine Washington Pigford. Beautiful, Beautiful Zion, 2/3.
Clementine Washington Pigford, They Came to Colorado, Book 1, v1, 4.
Clementine Washington Pigford, They Came to Colorado, Book 1, v1, 4.
46
church.171 She, like most of the women at Zion, believed in service to her
community.172
Reverend John Ford resigned in April 1907, and left Denver for a severalmonth tour of Europe. When he returned to the United States, he accepted a position
with a Baptist church in Florida. Their marriage ended, and Dr. Ford remained in
Denver. In 1911 she married Albert Allen, also a member of Zion Baptist church.
During her fifty year career in Denver, she delivered more than 7,000 babies, from
more than thirty-seven nationalities, and could speak many languages and dialects. 173
African American women in the Denver area started more than twenty two
clubs and organizations between 1900 and 1925.174 Lynda Dickson extensively
researched Black women’s clubs in Denver, and noted in her article, “Toward a
Broader Angle of Vision in Uncovering Women’s History: Black Women’s Club
Revisited,” the challenges she experienced looking for evidence of their work in the
community. What she discovered was that these clubs needed to be examined through
an unfamiliar point of reference.175 Previous research suggested negative,
dehumanizing ideology to express the behavior of people of African descent, or
171
Wallace Yvonne Tollette. Justina Lorena Ford, M. D.: Colorado’s First Black
Woman Doctor. Denver: Western Images Publishing, 2005, 77/8.
172
173
174
Wallace Yvonne Tollette. Justina Lorena Ford, M. D., 79.
Wallace Yvonne Tollette, Justina Lorena Ford, M. D., 82.
Lynda F. Dickson. “Lifting as We Climb: 372/3.
175
Lynda F. Dickson. “Toward a Broader Angle of Vision in Uncovering Women’s
History: Black Women’s Clubs Revisited.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies,
Vol. 9, No. 2 (1987), 62-68. University of Nebraska Press, 67. http://www.jstor.org/
stable/3346191?origin=JSTOR-pdf. Accessed November 26, 2013.
.
47
reflected the racist attitudes and biased anti-Black opinions of the time. Other
scholarship looked strictly through the lens of how oppression affected the clubs.
Much of the commentary continued down a path of categorizing Black women as
socially deviant, highly sexualized and a low moral compass. As part of the reaction to
these ideas, and the increased experiences with discriminatory rules and laws, Black
women sought ways to change some of these perceptions, or to create a circle of
support.176 In some cases, women did not reference the experienced discrimination,
but sought only to enjoy the company of other women in various activities. 177 Still in
other cases, they actively engaged issues of homelessness, education, employment
opportunities, politics, and access to resources, but they also focused on uplifting their
community, especially the children.178 Some projects were perceived as small or
insignificant, while others appeared to have higher expectations or results. They
worked at improving the lives of their families, and acquiring or enhancing their skills.
In some cases it was in the face of oppression, but in other cases oppression was not
included as an issue. It was important to combat racial and sexual stereotypes of Black
Lynda F. Dickson. “Toward a Broader Angle of Vision in Uncovering Women’s
History, 67/8.
176
Lynda F. Dickson. “Toward a Broader Angle of Vision in Uncovering Women’s
History, 67/8.
177
178
Lynda F. Dickson. “Lifting as We Climb: African American Women’s Clubs 18801925.” 372 -392. Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women's West.
Elizabeth Jameson, Susan Armitage, Eds. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1997. 372/3. Accessed June 8, 2013.
48
women’s images in the local and national spotlight, but to also have a social outlet,
and fellowship with other women.179
The members of Zion and Shorter were also active in social clubs and
organizations. They endeavored to thrive within their community, operate and support
local businesses, educate their children, and support philanthropic events. Dr. Joseph
Henry Peter Westbrook, later to become a member of Shorter A.M.E. Church arrived
in Denver in 1906 and started his medical practice. A few months later his best friend
from college, Dr. Thomas Ernest McClain, later to become a member of Zion Baptist
Church, arrived and started his dental practice in February 1907. 180 Both were
activists in the Black community.
The Glenarm Branch of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and
the Phyllis Wheatley Branch of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA)
were started to support social engagement of the young people in their communities
during the 1920s. 181Members from Zion, Shorter and other Denver churches
supported the programs and annual memberships 182 Members of both churches and
179
Darlene Clark Hine. Hine Sight, 14.
Lynda F. Dickson. “Toward a Broader Angle of Vision in Uncovering Women’s
History: Black Women’s Clubs Revisited,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies,
Vol. 9, No. 2 (1987), 62-68. (University of Nebraska Press.) http://www.jstor.org
/stable/ 3346191?origin=JSTOR-pdf. 67. Accessed November 26, 2013.
180
Denver Public Library, Western Genealogy Department, Central Library, Level 5
Microfiche. Colorado Statesmen Newspaper, February 9, 1907.
Billie Arlene Grant, et al. Growing Up Black in Denver. 94.
181
Ronald J. Stephens, et al, Images of America, 71/72.
182
Denver Public Library Western Genealogy Department, Digital Images. YMCA
Glenarm Branch Members List.
49
other churches in Denver area were interconnected through clubs, organizations,
special church events, and opportunities to support and/or uplift their communities.
The church still holds a strong membership and active ministries.
Shorter African Methodist Episcopal Church
Mrs. Mary Smith, and Mrs. Mary Randolph, who became friends when they
met in Denver, worked together to form the first Colored Methodist Episcopal Church
in Denver. Ms. Smith visited gambling establishments to raise funds to start a church,
and accumulated enough to build a church on land donated by Civil War Union army
officer, Major Fillmore, near the Platte River. 183 According to Shorter Community
AME Church website their first building was a log cabin, and members of St John
were meeting as early as 1864 but did not formally organize their charter until 1868.184
With Mrs. Randolph’s partnership, they built the church in 1866. Bishop Thomas M.
D. Ward and Reverend John Wilkerson formally organized St. John African Methodist
Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church in July 1868, as the first A.M.E. Church in Colorado, on
Stout Street and K (Nineteenth) Street.185
http://digital.denverlibrary.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15330coll1/id/1146/r
ec/4.
183
Mrs. Justina Grizzard. Shorter Community A. M. E. Church 125th Anniversary,
April 1993, 1868 – 1993. Robert B. Pratt III collection, 7.
184
“About Shorter.” Shorter African Methodist Episcopal Church.
http://www.shorterame.org/pc/about.html
185
Mrs. Justina Grizzard. Shorter A. M. E. Church, 125th Anniversary, 7.
50
186
The July 14, 1873 edition of the Denver Daily Times published a brief article
about Shorter A.M. E. Church. Reverend James Madison was soliciting donations to
complete the new church structure. He had so far raised $1000, and needed $1200
overall to complete the project.187 In 1878 at the cost of $2000, the church built a new
structure at Stout Street and Nineteenth Street, and changed their name in 1880 to
Shorter Chapel in honor of the Right Reverend James A. Shorter, ninth Bishop of the
A. M. E. church. In 1886 they sold the building for $15,000.188 Over the next year,
Shorter purchased land in several locations to build their church, only to meet with
resistance from the local residents. “For almost a full year and at three different
locations, Shorter Chapel experienced considerable opposition from neighbors against
having a Black Church in their community.”189 They bought land at California Street,
186
Denver Public Library, Western Genealogy Department, Shorters [sic] Chapel
A.M.E. 23rd & Cheyenne Sts X-25622, F11152 DPLW, 10025622.tif
http://digital.denverlibrary.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15330coll22/id/39291/rec/22
187
Colorado Historic Newspapers. Denver Daily Times, July 14, 1873.
188
“About Shorter.” Shorter African Methodist Episcopal Church.
http://www.shorterame.org/pc/about.html
189
“About Shorter.” Shorter African Methodist Episcopal Church.
http://www.shorterame.org/pc/about.html
51
and Twenty-forth Street for $10,000, then sold it soon after for $12,000.190 They
bought land at Glenarm Place and Seventeenth Street for $10,000 and started
construction, when neighbors opposed, so they sold it for $14,000. They bought and
sold property at the corner of Lincoln Street, and Nineteenth Avenue. 191
The church purchased land at Cleveland Place and Twenty-Third Street
(Twentieth Avenue and Park Avenue West) with two homes, for $9000 and later one
became the parsonage. In 1887 they erected their new church at a cost of $24,000, but
because of all their land sales in the previous year, only had an outstanding debt of
$7000.192
193
194
190
Shorter African Methodist Episcopal Church. 117th Anniversary, Rejoicing
Remembering Recommitting. February 9, 1986, Rev. J Langston Boyd, Pastor. Robert
B. Pratt III collection, 8.
191
Shorter African Methodist Episcopal Church. 117th Anniversary, 8.
192
“About Shorter.” Church Shorter African Methodist Episcopal Church.
http://www.shorterame.org/pc/about.html
193
Denver Public Library, Western Genealogy Department, Digital Images. Shorters
(sic) A M E Church (colored) 20th Ave and Washington, X-2563, F3763 DPLW,
10025623.tif ,Photograph, http://digital.denverlibrary.org/cdm/singleitem/
collection/p15330coll22/id/39292/rec/55.
194
Cleo Parker Robinson Dance. cleoparkerdance.org
52
The church was burned down April 9, 1925, allegedly by the Ku Klux Klan.195
Clementine Pigford’s research included a copy of an article, the May 16, 1925 edition
of The Denver Star, which noted that Shorter A.M.E. church was the conference
headquarters for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples
(NAACP) sixteenth annual national conference, but because of the fire, the conference
had to be moved to Zion Baptist church. Nationally recognized attorney Clarence
Darrow of Chicago, and Judge Ben Lindsey of Denver were guest speakers at the
conference. “…Judge Lindsey, whose recent re-election was contested by the Ku Klux
Klan.”196
Shorter A.M.E. shared space in another Black church, Peoples Presbyterian
Church while building a new sanctuary at the same site, and moved back in April 4,
1926, where they remained through 1994.197 They moved into a new church in 1994 at
3100 Richard Allen Court, near Colorado Blvd and Martin Luther King Blvd, where
they are today.198 Cleo Parker Robinson’s Dance theatre owns and occupies the
former Shorter Church building.199
195
“About Shorter.” Church Shorter African Methodist Episcopal Church.
http://www.shorterame.org/pc/about.html.
196
Clementine Pigford, They Came to Colorado, Book 2, v2, 853.
197
Mrs. Justina Grizzard. Shorter Community A. M. E. Church 125th Anniversary,
April 1993, 1868 – 1993. Robert B. Pratt III collection, 10.
198
Mrs. Justina Grizzard. Shorter Community A.M.E. Church 125th Anniversary, 10.
199
Lauren Mauck, Images of America, 121.
53
200
The first of Denver’s schools was established in December 1862. The first
school rented space at 16th and Market, and operated about a year and a half, then ran
out of money. In 1866 two schools opened, one a German school and the other rented
space from J. H. Kehler at the Windsor Hotel.201 By 1868, the schools were reorganized to accommodate as many as 500 students. Denver residents required
separate schools for the 42 black children, so they attended school in rented space at
Zion Baptist Church (African Baptist Church).202 In 1873 the school was moved to
Shorter AME Church. The Arapahoe school was built in 1874 on Arapahoe Street
between Seventeenth and Eighteenth Streets , and all of Denver’s students attended.203
200
“About Shorter.” Church Shorter African Methodist Episcopal Church.
http://www.shorterame.org/pc/about.html
201
Denver Public School History
http://www.dpsk12.org/aboutdps/history/dps_history_no1.shtml
202
Denver Public School History
http://www.dpsk12.org/aboutdps/history/dps_history_no1.shtml
203
Denver Public School History
http://www.dpsk12.org/aboutdps/history/dps_history_no1.shtml
54
The school closed in 1881 and the building was demolished in 1955 to make way for
the new Federal Reserve Bank.204
George and Gertie Ross were members of Shorter A.M.E. Church. He was a
local attorney, and she was music teacher and the church organist. Both were active in
civil rights and members of various organizations.205 They led a protest in 1915
against the film Birth of a Nation.206 He was the first president of the Denver Chapter
N.A.A.C.P.207
Dr. Joseph Henry Peter Westbrook was a beloved physician and activist. He
and his wife, Mildred, were members of Shorter A.M.E. Church. He was credited with
naming Dearfield, Colorado, an all Black settlement east of Greeley. He stated “the
fields are dear to us.”208 He infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s, and kept
the Black community abreast of their plans.209
204
Old Arapahoe School. Denver Public Library, Western History/Genealogy, Digital
Collections. http://digitaldenverlibrary.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/
p15330coll22/id/59932/rec/28.
205
Denver Public Library Western Genealogy Department, The Denver Star
Newspaper 1913. 1/3
http://cdm16079.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p15330coll1/id/
868/rec/10
206
207
Lynda F Dickson, “Lifting as We Climb,” 378.
Ronald Stephens, et al, Images of America, 42.
208
Ronald Stephens, et al. Images of America, 53.
209
Ronald Stephens, et al. Images of America, 53.
55
George Morrison, Sr., his wife Willa Mae, and children were members of
Shorter. 210 He was a bandleader and professor. He owned two night clubs, one in
Golden, and one in the Five Points Neighborhood. The Ku Klux Klan had threatened
to burn down his club in Golden, but burned down the foundation of his new home on
Gilpin Street. 211
Joseph D. D. and his wife, Richie J. Rivers were members of Shorter. He
bought the Colorado Statesmen from Edwin Hackley in the 1890s.212 During the next
twenty years, his paper merged with the Denver Star, and continued publications until
1961. He kept his audience updated on daily events in politics, race relations, church
programs, and human interest stories in the Denver community and surrounding areas,
but also published national and international articles. After he died, his wife married
William Greenwood. Their son William Greenwood, Jr. married Marie Anderson
Greenwood, the first black tenured teacher in Denver Public Schools. 213
Addye Hall Lightner, president of the Denver Federation of Colored Women’s
Club was also a member of Shorter. She worked in the real estate industry and later
worked for American Woodman in their real estate department. She was a civil rights
210
This Far by Faith, Sanctuary Dedication Day, Sunday, June 24, 1990, Shorter
Community A.M.E. Church, Denver, Colorado, Reverend J. Langston Boyd, Jr.
Pastor, 41.
211
Billie Arlene Grant, et al. Growing Up Black in Denver, 73.
Ronald Stephens, et al, Images of America, 59/60.
212
Clementine Pigford, They Came to Colorado, Draft 1, v 1, 113/4.
213
Clementine Pigford, They Came to Colorado, Draft 1, v 1, 113/4.
56
activist focused on fair housing, and worked with the Urban League. 214 Her brother –
in – law was the Supreme Clerk at the American Woodman.215
Shorter’s congregation continued to grow and the church continued to prosper.
In 1979, they purchased land and a building from the Denver School Board north of
Barrett Elementary School, in the 2900 block of Jackson Street in northeast Denver.216
The building currently houses their day-care facility.
In 1980 Shorter member Iris Slack canvassed the neighbors across the street
from the land to change the name from Jackson Street, to Richard Allen Court. 217 She
worked with community members, including Macedonia church members and city
agencies to change the name of East Thirty-Second Avenue to Martin Luther King
Boulevard.218 Over the next ten years, they built a senior housing apartment building,
and their new sanctuary.219 “The new Shorter is now located at ‘Freedom Crossroads’
and the impact is overwhelming.”220 Shorter remains financially sound, and are
214
Billie Arlene Grant, et al. Growing Up Black in Denver, 68.
215
Shorter Community A.M.E Church. Shorter Community A.M.E Church 125th
Anniversary, April 1993, 1868-1993. (no publisher listed) Robert B. Pratt, III
Collection, 9/10.
216
Shorter Community A.M.E Church. Shorter Community A.M.E Church 125th
Anniversary, 9/10.
217
Shorter Community A.M.E Church. Shorter Community A.M.E Church 125th
Anniversary, 9/10.
218
Shorter Community A.M.E Church. Shorter Community A.M.E Church 125th
Anniversary. 9/10.
219
Shorter Community A.M.E Church. Shorter Community A.M.E Church 125th
Anniversary, 9/10.
220
Shorter African Methodist Episcopal Church, 117th Year Anniversary, 11.
57
working on expanding their reach, by building a Justice Center on their property in the
near future.221
“About Shorter.” Shorter African Methodist Episcopal Church.
http://www.shorterame.org/pc/about.html.
221
58
CHAPTER VI
CONCLUSION
African American Christianity for many has been the foundation of their
survival through slavery, reconstruction, and beyond. A closer look at the evolution of
this ideology revealed that African religious ideals were not lost during the Middle
Passage, but in fact most people enslaved found a way to merge new religious doctrine
into their belief systems. The double consciousness of Africans was a requirement to
survive a brutal system with virtually no option to change. Christianity in its truest
form became distorted and mutilated when preached to enslaved people as a matter of
maintaining false beliefs in their humanity, and in order to reinforce slavery. The
unexpected outcome was that people enslaved recognized through scripture, the words
of God did not enslave them. The word of God and scriptures paralleled many of their
own beliefs before their enslavement, and supported their ideas about their freedom,
their spirits, their humanness, and their right to dictate their own lives.
As they created opportunities to escape slavery, their Christian beliefs
supported and encouraged their transitions. When slavery ended, their transition to a
new way of living was still supported in their Christian beliefs. Some settled in
Denver before, during and after slavery, and continued fighting for their right to self
determination, sometimes with the support of others, sometimes as a concession by
others, and sometimes with intense opposition by others. The fight, nonetheless, never
diminished.
The two oldest Black churches in Denver, revealed that wherever the journey,
the members brought with them a strong faith, and a determination to move forward in
59
their lives, with spiritual support. Their Christian faith, as it has evolved, carried them
through many challenges and turmoil as they built churches, and increased
membership. The challenge has been to learn more about the individual contributions
and memberships between 1865 and 1900 as continued research reveals many gaps in
the data. The research provided greater details about women’s clubs and ministries
during the twentieth century than in the nineteenth century. The Colorado Statesman
recorded church members and church events in every published issue, whether it was a
concert, a special guest minister, a church picnic, political meetings, or community
based events. This was especially helpful aligning the church records with the
newspaper articles.
Zion Baptist Church archives had been thoroughly researched by Clementine
Washington Pigford, who assembled nine volumes (almost 3000 pages) of historical
records and interviews. Shorter was much more difficult to research. Unfortunately,
many of the Shorter archives are in a private collection, and the staff at Blair Caldwell
Library have continued their efforts to acquire these documents. Some documents and
records have been donated to the library by other church members, but it has created a
long term project of organizing the data in a chronological and efficient format.
This paper has barely scratched the surface of these histories. This is only the
beginning of a multitude of long and fulfilling research projects still ahead.
In the Twentieth Century both Zion Baptist Church and Shorter A. M. E.
Community Church have had dynamic and spirited members who were poised to take
on the challenges of racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression. Within that effort,
they were also about making their lives meaningful, embracing their communities
60
socially, and supporting or uplifting their neighbors. Tuskegee Airmen, former Buffalo
Soldiers, politicians, Black fraternities and sororities, and other organizations were
founded, organized or supported by church members. Men and women worked to
sustain the churches and support their community. They started various clubs and
organizations to challenge laws, civil and voters’ rights, and supported or enrolled in
political campaigns. In addition, many of the women’s organizations also focused on
improving their own lives, improving the perception of Black women beyond their
communities, educating or teaching skills to their members, and uplifting their
communities. Men managed the church money and deacon boards, while the women
led most of the outreach ministries in their community, prepared food for the picnics
and special events, and managed many of the church administrative functions. The
members supported the churches and the churches supported their members. The
church helped to support and sustain their sense of community, their financial
struggles and other challenges, as well as their emotional and spiritual needs.
Both churches have continued to be anchors in the Black Community, with
large memberships, into the twenty first century. Ministries are currently led and
supported by both men and women, whether it is the deacon board, the trustees, the
music and the choir, the children and family, or outreach ministries.
The history of the two churches illuminated the beginnings of the African
American community in Denver, but this story also reached back into African
theology as it transformed into African American Christianity. It is an encouraging
story about their spiritually invigorating their pursuit of living full and productive
lives, and the legacy for their descendants to honor.
61
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74
APPENDIX
1.
Appendix 1:
Official Website of the African Methodist Episcopal Church
http://www.ame-church.com/our-church/our-history
THE MISSION
The Mission of the AME Church is to minister to the social, spiritual, and physical
development of all people.
THE VISION
At every level of the Connection and in every local church, the AME Church shall
engage in carrying out the spirit of the original Free African Society, out of which the
AME Church evolved: that is, to seek out and save the lost, and to serve the needy. It
is also the duty of Church to continue to encourage all members to become involved in
all aspects of church training.
THE PURPOSES
The ultimate purposes are:
1. make available God’s biblical principles,
2. spread Christ’s liberating gospel, and
3. provide continuing programs which will enhance the entire social development
of all people.
THE OBJECTIVE
In order to meet the needs of every level of the Connection and in every local church,
the AME Church shall implement strategies to train all members in: (1) Christian
discipleship, (2) Christian leadership, (3) current teaching methods and materials, (4)
the history and significance of the AME Church, (5) God’s biblical principles, and (6)
social development to which all should be applied to daily living.
1
2. Appendix 2
First African Baptist Church, Savannah, GA
http://firstafricanbc.com/history.asp
3. Appendix 3
Denver Daily Times, Friday, December 5, 1873
4. Appendix 4
Gettysburg Times, Wednesday, July 2, 1997, by Robert Holt
Civil War Widows,
Confederate Soldier Widow Alberta Martin, 90, of Elba, Alabama
Union Soldier widow Daisy Anderson, 96, of Denver Colorado
2
5. Appendix 5
Denver Public Library Western Genealogy Department:
Cosmopolitan Club
Title
Creator(s)
Summary
Date
Notes
Physical
Description
Is Part Of
Subject (topic)
Subject (name)
WH1270
Cosmopolitan Club Group Photo
McCloud, Burnis, 1908-1990.
Group photograph of members of the Cosmopolitan Club of Denver. Caption on back says
"Cosmopolitan Club Event Unidentified. Row 1 L-R: 1. Holmes, Clarence (Dentist) 2.
Unidentified Person 3. Fresquez, James 4. Lightner, Lawrence (American Woodman) 5.
Unidentified Person 6. Draine, Elliott 7. Brown, Harold Sr. Row 2 L-R: 1. Hawkins, Clayton
(Physician) 2. Mann, Earl (Ret. Lt U.S. Army) 3. Barbour, Miller (Urban League) 4.
Unidentified Person 5. Unidentified Person 6. Abernathy, 7. Minori, Yosui 8. Unidentified
Person 9. Unidentified Person 10. Roberts, Paul (Dean St. John Episcopal Church) 11.
Unidentified Person
undated
Item Located in Photo Box 1 Folder 78
1 photographic print: b&w
Clarence and Fairfax Holmes papers, 1911-1974, 1890-1978.
African Americans--Colorado--Denver.
Clubs--Denver--Colorado.
Holmes, Clarence F., 1892-1978.
Cosmopolitan Club (Denver, Colo.)
Subject
Five Points (Denver, Colo. : Neighborhood)
(geographic)
Rights
Contact Western History/Genealogy Dept. Denver Public Library, Denver, Colorado.
Reproduction
Available for
Yes
Purchase
Digital Origin
reformatted digital
Format-Medium Photograph
http://digital.denverlibrary.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15330coll1/id/1598/rec/146
3