14 - Formation and Consolidation of African American Religious Communities, 1865–1945

Summary

The persistence of racial inequality and cultural derision toward black religion within white denominations, whether based in the North or South, convinced African Americans to maintain and establish their own separate and autonomous religious communities. Whether these entities existed outside of white religious structures or within white majority organizations, African Americans declared their right to govern their own institutional affairs and to define the content of black belief, ritual, and practice. Though these activities mainly occurred in innumerable Afro-Christian communities, significant segments of the black population developed faith identities through Judaism, Islam, and African religious retentions. Within these black religious bodies, gender, class, and culture played major roles in shaping their institutional identities. Moreover, there was vigorous discourse among religious leaders and grassroots constituencies about their relationship to Africa, initiatives for overcoming racial barriers, and whether belief and practice should emphasize interracial interactions and black nationalist objectives. Major developments in the American and African American experience between 1865 and 1945 – namely, legalized segregation, urbanization, industrialization, migration, depression, two world wars, and the flowering of the arts and music – were reflected and debated in black religious communities. Hence, African religious history became a microcosm of the black experience and an arena in which broad currents in American history were confronted and challenged.