It was a “sunny, balmy and bracing” day in Lynchburg in late February 1883 when about 300 persons gathered for the first Congress of Virginia Baptists. For several days ministers and laypersons listened to lectures on various issues of the day. Following each lecturer, there were opportunities for responses.
The assembly was rapt when Professor John Hart delivered his lecture on “The Negro Problem.” The effects of the Civil War and Reconstruction were in the memories of the audience. The South had been faced with the dilemma of adjusting to a new social order and the huge population of uneducated freedmen had to be considered.
Fred Anderson
Professor Hart was known to many because he was a frequent contributor to the Religious Herald. His writings were “sometimes very trenchant, sometimes very judicial, always forceful.” At 56, Hart also was known as an educator. He had taught in several small private academies and was principal of two leading schools for young women, the Albemarle and Richmond Female Institutes. He even served as acting president of what would become known as Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, but he had been “thrown out, the result of political causes.”
Hart was a lay preacher, and at the Congress, he displayed as much pulpit oratory as academics. After tracing the history of slavery, which he admitted was “liable to great abuses,” he addressed “the Negro problem” for the post-Reconstruction South. He said: “This government is a white man's government. There is no intention on the part of the white people of the country, north, south, east, or west, ever to permit the black man any real part in the management of the affairs of government. It is time the Negroes knew this. It is time that they lay aside the idle dreams that some of them have nursed, and address themselves to work in the only career that is really open to them.
“What career is open to them? I answer, but one, that of laborers … whose labor shall be directed to useful ends by the guiding intelligence of the white man. With rare exceptions, they have never shown themselves capable of anything higher.”
As for education, Hart decried “a wild fanaticism [which] asks that the children of the Negro shall be educated as the children of the white man.” He added: “A wilder fanaticism demands that the children of the Negro shall be educated with the children of the white man. It is utterly impossible for mixed schools ever to exist in the South; and if the Negroes are wise, they will never demand them.”
William B. Hatcher
He argued that basic primary education should aim only for “what is essential to the ordinary needs of life.” He admitted that if schools were to be provided for black children, black educators needed to be trained; yet he cast doubts on the quality of education provided for black adults. He made an unfortunate analogy between the races by referring to two farm animals, a fine race horse and an ox.
Prior to the Civil War, most of the Baptist churches of the South had mixed congregations. In Virginia, the few separate black churches were required by law to have a white pastor. Almost immediately after the war, blacks left and constituted their own churches, called their own pastors and created district and state organizations which were mirror images of white organizations. A veil had dropped between the two worlds of the white and black churches.
Hart contended that the black church had created a new gospel. “It is perhaps natural for the Negro to imagine that the gospel of freedom ought to differ from the gospel of slavery. Further, he is strongly inclined to a religion of sentiment and emotion and hence adverse to a religion that expects him to think; while the white Protestant rather teaches a religion of thought — a religion that expects every man to give a reason for his faith.” He also observed “the child-like docility” with which the black church members followed “their accepted leaders.” He also was critical of the schools for Negro preachers.
Hart concluded with a plea that the Negro's hope lay only in accepting “the position of subordination and to take instruction and guidance at the hands of the white man, and forget forever the wild dreams that unwise friends have taught him to cherish.”
Responses were quick from the Southern progressives. William E. Hatcher, then pastor of Grace Street Baptist Church in Richmond, boldly refuted Hart point by point. “This is indeed a white man's government,” admitted Hatcher, “but not on account of inferiority or unfitness on the part of the colored men. It is rather because white men have more votes, and being anxious to have the offices, they are apt to vote themselves in.”
“I cannot believe that the Negro is so entirely unreliable and worthless, when I remember that five years after the war there were 300 colored men in Petersburg who owned the houses in which they lived and that there are not less than 10,000 colored land holders at this moment in Virginia. The truth is, there are some industrious Negroes, and some very lazy ones, and some just between the two — and the same as among the whites — and we ought to say just this, in justice to them and ourselves.”
As to Hart's analogy about the farm animals, Hatcher exploded: “The white man is not the race horse, nor is the Negro the ox. God has made none of them without brains. Varied talents are found among them and talents which may be cultivated and enlarged. They are not all made to work in the corn and cotton fields.”
As to Hart's assertions about black schools, Hatcher boldly challenged Hart to “a competitive examination” with the black teachers of higher education! Hatcher added: “As Baptists, we ought to say to the Negro, we want to give you a chance to do anything and everything you are able to do. We want to draw out whatever is in you, to cultivate and develop every talent you may possess, and thus make you as useful and as happy as you can be made.”
At that, an unidentified voice in the gallery said: “Thank you, sir.” Hatcher replied: “No, I do not want your thanks. I am not speaking for admiration and applause. I am pleading for the highest possible culture of the Negro whom I hail as my fellow-man and to whom I reach out my hand to help him up into a higher plane of life.”
He concluded by commending the black preachers. “I give them my hand and heart and bid them God speed in their work.”
Fred Anderson may be contacted at fred.anderson@ vbmb.org.