The Haitian Revolution (1791-1803) and the accompanying slave revolt transplanted many refugees from the revolution into North America. Both former slaves and free people of color began to arrive in cities like Baltimore and New Orleans in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. The Maryland Gazette published an announcement of “six ships [one a Guineaman, with negroes] four brigs, and four schooners, being part of the fleet which sailed from Cape Francois on the 23d ultimo. The passengers and crews amount to 619 persons…” The blacks on board the Guineaman would become the center of the black religious community that was established in the “chapelle basse” or lower chapel of St. Mary’s Seminary. It was this black community that would later become the first black Catholic parish in the United States when St. Francis Xavier Church was established by the Jesuits, in 1864, as the parish for all black Catholics in Baltimore. Evidence shows that almost a decade before this ship arrived there were three thousand Catholic slaves in Maryland. By the year 1800 there were communities of black Catholics in southern Maryland, southern Louisiana, southern Missouri and western Kentucky.
Theologian Jaime Phelps believes that the “spiritual traditions of the Catholic Church were transmitted to the sons and daughter of Africa without any conciseness of the cultural specific ways- Spanish, Irish, German, English, French or Italian- in which they were being transmitted” The intentions of the church and the crown were implied in the second article of the Code Noir, which required slaveholders to baptize all slaves and instruct them in the Catholic faith. It was believed that this was the only way “true faith” would be brought to...
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...storian, Vol. 12, No. 1, African American Catholics and Their Church. (Winter 1994) pp. 31-48
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In a culture where even white women were generally looked down upon within the male dominated society in which they lived, the unique story of one “mulatto” women’s journey through slavery and religious faith in America in the eighteenth century stands out, and provides a look into the origins of the black church itself. Rebecca’s Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World by Jon F. Sensbach aims to tell the story of Rebecca Protten, a freed slave turned evangelist, whom being neither illiterate nor invisible as many free slaves were thought to have been, traveled around sharing the love of Jesus and converting slaves from all over St. Thomas, ultimately assisting in the establishment of the
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Anna Julia Cooper’s, Womanhood a Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress, an excerpt from A Voice from the South, discusses the state of race and gender in America with an emphasis on African American women of the south. She contributes a number of things to the destitute state African American woman became accustom to and believe education and elevation of the black woman would change not only the state of the African American community but the nation as well. Cooper’s analysis is based around three concepts, the merging of the Barbaric with Christianity, the Feudal system, and the regeneration of the black woman.
The African Methodist Episcopal Church also known as the AME Church, represents a long history of people going from struggles to success, from embarrassment to pride, from slaves to free. It is my intention to prove that the name African Methodist Episcopal represents equality and freedom to worship God, no matter what color skin a person was blessed to be born with. The thesis is this: While both Whites and Africans believed in the worship of God, whites believed in the oppression of the Africans’ freedom to serve God in their own way, blacks defended their own right to worship by the development of their own church. According to Andrew White, a well- known author for the AME denomination, “The word African means that our church was organized by people of African descent Heritage, The word “Methodist” means that our church is a member of the family of Methodist Churches, The word “Episcopal refers to the form of government under which our church operates.”
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