America is obsessed with race. Slavery has been gone for 150 years. Segregation crumbled in the 1960s and ’70s. Relationships have improved between the races yet race remains a defining issue in so many phases of American life.
Virginia Baptists have their own story of cultivating relationships between whites and blacks. There were black members of Virginia Baptist churches at least as early as the 1750s and likely earlier. Before the war of 1861-65, black and white Baptists in Virginia for the most part were in mixed congregations except for a few separate and somewhat independent black Baptist churches. Baptist churches appealed to most of the slaves and freedmen. William Sands, editor of the Religious Herald, contended in 1837 that the blacks “followed the Baptist preachers because no others seemed to care for their souls.” For certain, many non-Baptist slaveholders sent their slaves to the Baptist meetings for their religious education; and Baptists espoused a certain degree of freedom and respect for each individual.
Fred Anderson
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Immediately after the war, blacks — who comprised some 57 percent of members of Baptist General Association of Virginia churches — left mixed churches in droves. Almost immediately separate organizations were established which somewhat mirrored existing ones: black Baptist district and state associations, a black Baptist newspaper, a black Baptist seminary. Separateness was institutionalized.
In the 1930s Virginia Woman’s Missionary Union led the way with inter-racial conferences, the inclusion of a prominent black Baptist woman on programs and the hiring of a black woman on their staff to promote inter-racial cooperation. At the same time the BGAV appointed a standing Inter-racial Committee and appointed specialists to provide educational training for black pastors and churches.
Year after year, the BGAV’s Inter-racial Committee displayed what one contemporary described as “an earnest effort, an intelligent understanding of the nature of the problems involved and a courageous, crusading spirit.” In 1938 the committee decried the disparity in public school funding in Southern states, where an average of $44 was spent per white child compared to $12.57 per black child. Messengers were informed about housing for blacks which was “unfit for human habitation,” about exploitation of labor including paying black boys “ten cents an hour for work which would ordinarily require the services of a man,” and the shockingly inadequate availability for health care and hospitalization for blacks.
In 1939 the BGAV approved a recommendation that local Baptist ministerial organizations invite black Baptist pastors to meet with them on a monthly basis and “that the Religious Herald be asked to devote one issue during the coming year to information concerning the Negro situation in Virginia.”
In 1941 the Inter-racial Committee studied education in Virginia and reported that 64 of the 100 counties had no public high school for blacks, that Nansemond County with a population that was 67 percent black had no school buses for black children but 20 for whites, that black teachers were paid at a rate of three-fourths the salary of their white counterparts.
In 1942 BGAV messengers approved recommendations to promote “Inter-racial Goodwill Sunday” and to support “equalization of the salaries of white and Negro teachers.” The wartime meeting also recognized contributions made by blacks to the war effort and “opposed to racial discrimination in the national defense program.”
In 1946 Wesley Shrader, pastor of First Baptist Church of Lynchburg and a newcomer to Virginia, was chair of the committee. He studied the committee’s reports over the previous 10 years and made the following bold assertion: “During the past 10 years no other body in the entire United States — civic, political, social or educational — has endorsed such strong, outspoken, specific recommendations for the overcoming of racial discrimination and the equalization of privileges irrespective of race or color as has the Baptist General Association of Virginia.”
The committee’s report for ’46 took the matter of race relations to where the rubber hits the road. Instead of addressing the shortcomings of state and national governments, the committee turned to individuals in the pews. The committee urged that racial attitudes be changed by practicing common courtesy to fellow human beings. On behalf of the committee Wesley Shrader stated, “To the Negro physician, teacher and minister we shall address him as we do others of similar standing and to the Negro maiden we shall say ‘Miss’ and to the Negro lady ‘Mrs.,’ and to both we shall tip our hats.”
It was the above statement — the concluding sentence of the report — which raised the hackles of some messengers. One called for that part of the report to be stricken, but the motion to rescind failed. Immediately after the report, M. Jackson White, pastor of Woodland Heights Baptist Church in Richmond, moved that the BGAV join representatives from black Baptist state associations towards the establishment of an orphanage for blacks. The result was the children’s home at Ettrick, Va., which until recent history was a joint effort of black and white Baptists.
Virginia Baptists — black and white — were finally working together. In the 1970s the Virginia Baptist Mission Board staff gained a professional in campus ministry who was African-American and by the mid-’70s a few black churches had joined the BGAV. The VBMB staff helped integrate programs and facilities.
In 1975, on the eve of the nation’s bicentennial, an unprecedented joint meeting was held between representatives of four state Baptist organizations: the BGAV, the General Convention, the Goodwill Convention and the State Convention. The last three were black Baptist statewide organizations. All four of these Baptist bodies had two words in common somewhere in their full and formal names: Virginia and Baptist.
The joint meeting was held Nov. 11, 1975, in the Robins Center at the University of Richmond. Some 6,000 Baptists attended and the Lord’s Supper was served. The theme of the gathering was “The New Humanity in Christ.”
Since then, churches of various ethnic identities have joined the BGAV and persons of various ethnicities serve on the VBMB and its staff. And this November, 36 years after “The New Humanity” meeting, the BGAV elected Mark Croston, an African-American, as its president. The New Humanity eventually may supplant race as a defining issue.
Fred Anderson ([email protected]) is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies.