[35] The more recent record of the West Virginia Teachers' Association
was given by Byrd Prillerman, who served that body nine terms as
president.

THE FIRST NEGRO CHURCHES IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

The early Negro churches in the District of Columbia were Methodist
and Baptist. The rise of numerous churches of these sects in
contradistinction to those of other denominations may be easily
accounted for by the fact that in the beginning the Negroes were
earnestly sought by the Methodists and Baptists because white persons
of high social position at first looked with contempt upon these
evangelical denominations; but when in the course of time the poor
whites who had joined the Methodist church accumulated wealth and some
of them became aristocratic slaveholders themselves, they assumed such
a haughty attitude toward the Negroes that the increasing race hate
made their presence so intolerable that the independent church
movement among the Negro Methodists and Baptists was the only remedy
for their humiliation. The separation of the Negro Methodists was made
possible at a much earlier date in the District of Columbia, when
Richard Allen had set the example by his protest against
discrimination in the Methodist church, of Philadelphia, which
culminated in the establishment of the distinct Negro denomination,
and also when the Zionites in New York City, led by James Varick, had
separated from the Methodists there for similar reasons. It was not
until the time of the critical period of the slavery agitation,
however, that practically all of the Protestant churches provided
separate pews and separate galleries for Negroes and so rigidly
enforced the rules of segregation that there was a general exodus of
the Negroes, in cities of the border States, from the Protestant
churches.[1] The District of Columbia had the same upheaval.

The records show that among the Methodists the alienation developed
sooner than in any of the other churches. "As early as 1820,"
according to an investigator, "the colored members of the Ebenezer
Church on Fourth Street, East, near Virginia Avenue, erected a log
building in that vicinity, not far from the present Odd Fellow's
lodge, for their social, religious meetings and Sabbath school. About
the same time some of the leading members among them, George Bell and
George Hicks, became dissatisfied with their treatment, withdrew, and
organized a church in connection with the African Met