ABSTRACT
After the death of the Rev. Peter Williams Jr. in 1840, the members of the vestry of St. Philip’s Church, who, especially in the absence of a rector, served as the lay board of directors of the parish. Jervis Anderson cited two circumstances contributing to the latest northern migra-tion: First, the building of Penn Station, which turned a residential section into an industrial area and led to the purchase and demolition of many tenements that had been occupied by blacks; and second, the attack on Negroes living in the Middle West Side, which included “Hell’s Kitchen” and the “Tenderloin” districts, in the summer of 1900. For some thirty-eight years after the death of the first rector of St. Philip’s Church, the vestry tried very hard “to call” another distinguished African-American Episcopal priest as his successor.
