opal Church of
Philadelphia, which had a Negro rector. The Boston African Baptist
church had for its pastor a Negro, the Rev. Thomas Paul, a man of such
intelligence and piety, such commanding presence and pleasing address,
that pulpits everywhere in Massachusetts and in his native State of
New Hampshire, were open to him, both before and after he became a
minister in that city.

In the course of time Negro Baptist churches tended to associate among
themselves, as they developed power independently of the white
churches. There were in the South during the Negro's enslavement,
however, no Negro Baptist associations which embraced their churches
in any State or in any considerable part of a State; for all Negro
Baptist churches were associated with white Baptist churches in the
South. The "Richmond African Baptist Missionary Society," which was
constituted at Richmond, Virginia, in 1815, was no exception to the
rule. Lott Cary,[6] the chief spirit in that organization, and Mr.
William Crane, a white merchant, its corresponding secretary, were
members of the same church--not a Negro Baptist church, for there was
no organization of the kind in Richmond at the time. Lott Cary was
converted under the preaching of a white pastor. At the hands of that
white pastor he was baptized, into the fellowship of the white church
of which that pastor was the spiritual leader Lott Cary was received,
and from that white church, the First Baptist Church of Richmond,
Virginia, Lott Cary went to plant the standard of Christ on the shores
of Africa.

Negro Baptist associations in this country were the achievements of
free men on free soil. The Providence Association of Ohio, organized
in 1833, and the Wood River Association of Illinois, organized in
1838, led the way. The colored Baptist churches of the North and East
organized in 1840, and the abolition of slavery as an American
institution resulted in the nation-wide formation of Negro churches,
local associations, State conventions, and larger groups. In 1866 a
national convention which merged the forces of the North and South,
the East and West, under the significant name, "The Consolidated
American Baptist Missionary Convention," was organized. Its chief work
was in the South and confined to the period of Reconstruction. In 1873
the West revived its organization under the name, "The Baptist General
Association of the Western States and Territories," and the Northern
churches did likewi