As the way opened during and following the Civil War to reach the masses of the South both white and Negro, the Methodist Episcopal Church extended its work of reorganization southward among both races. Her Bishops and other church officials organized missions and conferences and opened up schools. Each benevolent society of the church aided financially. The support of pastors was supplemented by the Missionary Society; the Board of Church Extension aided in building houses of worship; the Sunday School Union and Tract Society gave their co-operation, and the Freedmen's Aid and the Southern Educational Society, now the Board of Education for Negroes, and the Woman's Home Missionary Society developed the educational work. In 1864, the Negro work in Maryland, Delaware and adjacent territories was organized into the Washington and Delaware Annual Conferences. In the other border States where the Negro membership was small, the preachers with their congregations were admitted into white conferences. With unwavering and magnificent purpose for over half a century, with fraternity and co-operation for all other churches in the same field, and impelled by a conviction of duty to needy millions irrespective of race, this branch of Methodism has gone forward with its work of education and evangelization irrespective of race. The results have been very remarkable. The white membership has grown on what was slave territory from 87,804 in 1860 to 475,641 in 1922; while the Negro membership in the same territory has increased from 18,139 in 1864 to 370,477 in 1922. Following the wishes of both races the policy of separate conferences, churches and schools has been carried out in the South. There are several strong Negro churches in white conferences in the North. The New Conference elected Dr. W. H. Brooks, one of its Negro pastors, a delegate to the General Conference in 1920. The Methodist Episcopal Church has thirty-seven annual conferences in the Southern States with properties in parsonages, churches, schools of different grades, hospitals, and the like valued at $63,495,130.00. In 1856 the property of this church of all kinds in the same territory was less than $2,000,000. Seventeen of these conferences include the work among white people, and nineteen, the work among Negroes; and each group of conferences covers the Southern States from Delaware to Texas.