ds. Great has been the progress of Negro Baptists in America, but
that progress was due in very great measure to Northern philanthropy
during a quarter of a century after the Civil War and is promoted also
to-day by the good will of Southern Baptists who have put at the
disposal of Negro Baptists in the South thousands of dollars. But the
greatest glory of Negro Baptists is the spirit of self-help and heroic
sacrifice in the endeavor to help others, and that spirit is now
everywhere prevalent.

WALTER H. BROOKS

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The resolution was: "The association is sensibly affected by the
death of the Rev. Andrew Bryan, a man of color, and pastor of the
first colored Church in Savannah. This son of Africa, after suffering
inexpressible persecutions in the cause of his Divine Master, was at
length permitted to discharge the duties of the ministry among his
colored friends in peace and quiet, hundreds of whom, through his
instrumentality, were brought to the knowledge of the truth as it is
in Jesus. He closed his extensively useful, and amazingly luminous
course, in the lively exercise of faith, and in the joyful hope of a
happy immortality." See Benedict's _History of the Baptists_.

[2] Semple, _History of the Baptists in Virginia_, p. 355.

[3] Semple, _History of the Baptists in Virginia_, p. 356.

[4] _The Negro Year Book_, 1918-1919, p. 236; Benedict, _History of
the Baptists_, 376.

[5] By way of comparison, be it further remembered, that the founder
of the African Methodist Episcopal Church was originally a member of
the St. George Society, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and he and
others withdrew from that body of white persons in 1787; but it was
not until 1794, that Bishop Francis Asbury constituted the Bethel A.
M. E. Church at Philadelphia, which claims to be the oldest Negro
Methodist church in the country. The Zion Church, of the African
Methodist Episcopal Zion connection, New York City, was founded in
1796, while the first church of Negro Episcopalians, the St. Thomas
Church, Philadelphia, was planted by Bishop William White in 1794. The
Lombard Street Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, the oldest
organization of Negro Presbyterians in America, was constituted
in 1807, and not until 1829 was the first church of Negro
Congregationalists, the Dixwell Avenue of New Haven, Conn.,
constituted.

[6] Richard Kennard's _History of the Gillfield Baptist Church