ABSTRACT

Black churches in Boston, with one exception, were started long before blacks in the city began to establish exclusive institutions; more significantly, the sense of community identity that made the protests against caste and race possible was itself powerfully nurtured in these same black churches. In the opening half of the nineteenth century, between 1805 and 1848, blacks in Boston established four separate churches—two with Baptist affiliations, two associated with African Methodists. The church, organized on the 8th of August in Master Vinal's schoolhouse in the city, consisted of some twenty-four members, nine males and fifteen females. In a very real sense the existence of two Baptist churches in the 1840's is evidence of the increasing maturity of the black community and of its need to be served by more diversified social institutions. In 1842—43, Boston was, without doubt, the most potentially violent city in America, and black Bostonians were in the center of the expectant maelstrom.