irst mixed
Baptist church and of being the pastor of that church--that a Negro
was the first moderator of Louisiana's first white Baptist
association,[4] and rendered the denomination fifty years of service,
causes us greatly to marvel in these days of race division and race
antipathy.

The Negro members of white Baptist churches of this country were, as a
rule, permitted to worship with their white brethren within certain
fixed limits. The gap between them, however, tended to widen. Later
they were allowed another hour for worship, with large bounds and
privileges. Still later they were provided with all the privileges of
the Baptist meeting house under the restrictions of the white
churches to which they belonged. The master class gradually reached
the position of separating the races in worship, but for the security
of slavery they deemed it wise to hold the Negroes as members of the
white churches.

It was argued that, in all nature, living creatures move instinctively
in groups after their kind, and that the Negro and the white man, left
to themselves, do the same thing, as is evidenced by the fact that the
black slave was ever offending against the institution of slavery by
holding religious services after his own liking where only his own
people were present and shared in the devotion. In this manner the
master justified himself in segregating his slave in the house of God
and pointed to the Court of the Gentiles, in the Temple of Jehovah, in
confirmation of the righteousness of his act. But for some reason the
untutored black slave was never entirely at home in the white man's
church, with its special place for Negroes. He knew that the master
could be at ease in any part of his church edifice. It was all his and
he moved about through its aisles as a free man, but the slave was
limited in his privileges, and was counted a good man only as he kept
within the limits assigned him.

When the Negroes in the white Baptist churches of the South became
very numerous, services for their special benefit were held in the
church edifices, usually in the afternoon, by the pastor and other
persons who felt a deep interest in them. In these meetings the
colored members of the church not only enjoyed the freedom of the
place for the time being, but often listened with great satisfaction
to the exhortations of one or more of their own brethren who spoke by
permission from the floor and not from the pulpit platform. These
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