Читать книгу The Cyclopedia of the Colored Baptists of Alabama: Their Leaders and Their Work онлайн

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Perhaps I cannot close this notice of Madison county more profitably than by directing the attention of the reader to the vast consequences, in the form of false views and false practices, which came of one man’s decisions. Rev. William Harris decided to follow Mr. Crutcher, and now thousands of people walk in his track as anti-Missionaries.

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At Salem Church, near Greensboro, the Alabama State Convention (white) was organized October, 1823, not quite forty-five years before the organization of the Colored Baptist Convention in 1868, and its first anniversary was held at Marion, in Perry county.

Reference is made to these facts in order to introduce other facts bearing a closer relation to ourselves. Within a circle of twenty-five miles of Marion—and Greensboro, is near this point—some of the mightiest influences in support of Baptist views have risen up and gone forth upon the colored Baptists of Alabama. The colored people of Marion, and throughout the country around, are hardly less noted for their refinement than they are for their Baptistic opinions. In this section arose those colored men of power and of pioneer fame—Revs. James Childs, the first pastor of the Marion Church (colored); Henry Stevens, first pastor of the Greensboro Church, and John Dosier, so long pastor of the church in Uniontown. This point, till right recently, has been the educational center of our white brethren, and here in Marion, the first colored State Normal school began, as the result of the influence of the late Hon. A. H. Curtis, of Baptist fame.