It is generally known that during slavery the Negroes, for the most part, attended the white churches, where galleries were set apart for them, were members thereof, and were served by white ministers. After Emancipation, the Negroes withdrew from the white churches and built places of worship of their own. To-day, in all parts of the country, where Negroes live in considerable numbers, they have their own churches. In such cities as Boston, where the doors of all churches are in theory open to every race, Negro churches are found in the Negro districts. Although there is practically race separation in the churches of the whole country, all the difficulties have not been solved. In 1903, the Freedman’s Aid and Southern Educational Society, an organization of the bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church, general secretaries of the church department, and leading laymen, met in session in Lincoln, Nebraska. Inasmuch as the purpose of this body was to devise and discuss means of improving the educational opportunities of the Southern Negroes, the churchmen of that race were present in good numbers. Some of the hotels in the city gave notice that they could not allow the colored delegates to eat in the main dining rooms, but that they could furnish them sleeping accommodations and serve them meals in their apartments.[300] It is along this line that the difficulty usually comes. The Baptist denomination recently organized the General Baptist Convention of America, which held its first meeting in St. Louis in 1905. The next meeting was to have been in Louisville, Kentucky, May 5 and 16, 1906. The executive committee of the convention postponed the meeting for a year, assigning as their reason, or one of their reasons, the fact that they experienced difficulty in securing a church in which to hold the convention, the white Baptists being averse to having the colored members of the denomination assemble with them. It was arranged later that the whites and Negroes should meet in the same edifice, but that the Negroes should be restricted to the use of the balconies. This, however, was resented by the Negroes.[301] The Presbyterian Church also has had to face the race problem. In its general assembly at Des Moines, Iowa, in 1906, the committee on church policies recommended the erection of a synod in Alabama to include the presbyteries of Birmingham, Levere, and Rogersville, which are composed of colored churches. They had hitherto been included in the synod of Tennessee. The report provoked such a discussion that it was carried over to the next meeting, and no subsequent account has appeared.[302] At the general assembly of 1908, held in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, the question arose again out of a report of the Board of Freedmen’s Missions, some of the members from the North resenting such a separation in the missionary efforts.[303]