,
wrote the editor of the African Methodist Magazine as follows:[3] "As
to the name of your periodical, act as we did with the name of our
schools--away with Africa. There are no Africans in your connection.
Substitute colored for African and it will be, in my opinion, as it
should be." The earnestness of the writer shows that the matter of
parting with African was then a live question. The cool reply of the
editor indicates how strong was the conservative element among the
African people of '43. He says: "We are unable to see the
reasonableness of the remarks. It is true we are not Africans, or
natives born upon the soil of Africa, yet, as the descendants of that
race, how can we better manifest that respect due to our fathers who
begat us, than by the adoption of the term in our institutions, and
inscribing it upon our public places of resort?" To this Mr. Loveridge
rejoins in the following explanatory paragraph: "We who are engaged in
the Public Schools in this city found upon examination of about 1500
children who attend our schools from year to year, not one African
child among them. A suggestion was made that we petition the Public
School Society to change the name African to Colored Schools. The
gentlemen of that honorable body, perceiving our petition to be a
logical one, acquiesced with us. Hence the adjective African (which
does not apply to us) was blotted out and Colored substituted in its
place. It is 'Public Schools for Colored Children.' We are Americans
and expect American sympathies."

In 1816 the colored Methodists conceived the idea of organizing and
evangelizing their race, and to this end a convention was called and
assembled in Philadelphia of that year, composed of sixteen delegates,
coming from Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey. The
convention adopted a resolution that the people of Philadelphia,
Baltimore and all other places who should unite with them, should
become one body under the name and style of the African Methodist
Episcopal Church. Similar action was taken by two other bodies of
colored Methodists, one in New York, the other in Wilmington,
Delaware, about the same time. The people were coming together and
beginning to understand the value of organization. This was manifested
in their religious, beneficial and educational associations that were
springing up among them. In 1841 the African Methodist Magazine
appeared, the first organ of religious communication and thought