ation upon the
Colored race in America was excellent. It brought the people together,
not only in religious sympathy, but by the ties of a common interest
in all affairs of their race and condition. The men in the
organization who possessed the power of speech, who had talents to
develop, and an ambition to serve their race, found this church a wide
field of usefulness.

The Colored Baptists were organized before the Methodists, [in
Virginia,] but their organization has always lacked strength. The form
of government, being purely Democratic, was adapted to a people of
larger intelligence and possessed of greater capacity for
self-government. But, notwithstanding this fact, the "independent"
order of Colored Baptists gave the members and clergymen of the
denomination exalted ideas of government, and abiding confidence in
the capacity of the Negro for self-government. No organization of
Colored people in America has produced such able men as the Colored
Baptist Church.

In Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan, Colored men distinguished
themselves in the pulpit, in the forum, in business, and letters.
William Howard Day, of Cleveland, during this period [1850-1860]
Librarian of the Cleveland Library and editor of a newspaper; John
Mercer Langston, of Oberlin; John Liverpool and John I. Gaines, of
Cincinnati, Ohio, were good men and true. What they did for their race
was done worthily and well. At the Ohio Anti-Slavery Convention, held
at Putnam on the 22d, 23d, and 24th of April, 1835, the committee on
the condition of the "people of Color," made the following report from
Cincinnati:

The number of Colored people in Cincinnati is about 2,500. As
illustrating their general condition, we will give the statistics
of one or two small districts. The families in each were visited
from house to house, taking them all as far as we went:

Number of families in one of these districts 26
" of individuals 125
" of heads of families 49
" of heads of families who are professors of religion 19
" of children at school 20
" of _heads of families_ who have been slaves 39
" of individuals who have been slaves 95
Time since they obtained their freedom, from 1 to 15 years;