The History of the Negro ChurchWoodson, Carter Godwin
Religion
The History of the Negro Church
Woodson, Carter Godwin
African Americans -- Religion
It will be interesting to mention some of the men in the North, who
constituted the management of the home offices of these aid societies
and who used their time and influence in raising the necessary funds.
Among the officers of the American Freedmen's Aid Commission, a sort of
general agency in New York for several relief societies, were William
Lloyd Garrison, the famous abolitionist, as vice-president; Frederick
Law Olmsted, the noted traveler through the South prior to the war,
serving as general secretary; and, as directors, John G. Whittier, the
anti-slavery poet, Francis G. Shaw, another abolitionist, and Henry Ward
Beecher, the true and tried friend of the Negro. Lyman Abbott became
general secretary of the combined organizations. The American Freedmen's
Aid Commission and The American Union Commission added to their staff
William Cullen Bryant, Phillip Brooks, Bellamy Storer, and Edward L.
Pierce, who had done so much for the contrabands in South Carolina prior
to the close of the war. When most of these societies in a convention in
Cleveland united under the name of the American Freedmen's Union
Commission, they had for president Chief Justice Chase, who not only by
word but by actual sacrifice of his means did much to promote the
Christian education of the freedmen.
Among the supporters of the New England Society there appeared many
workers known before as friends of the Negro. The Rev. Edward Everett
Hale and J. M. Manning were most active in Boston in raising funds and
finding teachers and missionaries to work in Negro schools. Gov. John A.
Andrew served as the first president of the New England Freedmen's Aid
Society, Edward Atkinson as secretary, and James Freeman Clarke as
vice-president. And from New England came scores of workers, following
up the work commenced by those gallant soldiers, Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, and Robert Gould Shaw.
Southern people were not exactly neutral on the enlightenment of the
Negro. They did not, as a whole, seriously object to it and in the
course of time there appeared among them men of their own group
fearlessly advocating Negro education. Dr. A. G. Haygood, a
distinguished churchman among the Methodists, deserves here some
mention. He represented in a large measure the best thought in the South
concerning the Negro. He came forward to impress upon the South the
claims of the Negro on the "sympathy and helpfulness of all who were
more fortunate, especially those who called themselves the followers of
Jesus Christ." This sentiment he set forth in a book, entitled _Our
Brother in Black_, which struck the North with agreeable surprise and
led the South to think more seriously of another solution of the
so-called Negro problem. Invited to be the Director of the John F.
Slater Fund established soon thereafter, Dr. Haygood had an opportunity
to spend nine years translating into action the theory set forth in his
book.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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