I will add to the note we had last week about the history of black people in early Baptist churches.
On this day in 1867, in its official records, we read: “The Baptist Church of Christ at Kiokee met and proceeded to the ordination of Brother Billy Harriss, colored, to preach the Gospel.” Brother Harriss was not the first black man to be ordained to the ministry in an otherwise white church. But first…
In the Baptist church started by John Clarke in 1639, “Jack a colored man,” was baptized and added to the church in 1652. So one of our first, if not the first Baptist church in this country, was racially integrated. Jack was a free man, but in many places, slaves were as welcome in Baptist churches as free men. Just like their white brethren, they were received, dismissed and even disciplined without any different treatment from other members. In the south, the black members often outnumbered the whites by a six-to-one ratio. The First Baptist Church in Richmond, Virginia, elected colored deacons, whose primary responsibility was to their own people, because they knew them best. And early on in our history, blacks were educated and trained, preparing them for ordination to the ministry. At least fifteen years prior to William Carey’s sailing for India, George Lisle went to Jamaica as a Baptist missionary from this country. Then in 1821, Lott Carey took his family, and another brother, Collin Teague, from the First Baptist Church in Richmond, to begin missionary efforts in Liberia, Monrovia, Africa.
It shouldn’t be surprising that before the middle of the 20th century, there were a great many, doctrinally sound Black Baptist Churches in this country.
