Blacks at White Camp Meetings

Topic: Early Versions
African-American participation in post-Civil War white camp meetings varied by region.  At Ocean Grove, New Jersey, Charles Parker said Blacks had “free access” to the auditorium. [1]  During communion services, “they often drank from a common cup with the whites.” [2]

He believed most were “servants from the many hotels and boarding houses in Ocean Grove and from surrounding resorts.” [3]  Parker noted African Americans “did not occupy cottages or tents on the some basis as the Whites, or mingle with them on a social basis.” [4]

Ocean Grove scheduled the two-week camp meeting, but allowed others to use its facilities at other times in the summer.  In 1886, the groups included the National School of Oratory for a month and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union for two week-days. [5]  Attendees for both events could sleep over on the grounds.

That summer, the AME church held a one-day Jubilee on Thursday, July 22. [6]  This became an annual affair. [7]  By 1897, the AME Zion church was holding two services on a Thursday in September. [8]  These events would have been open to anyone on the grounds, but the African Americans who attended would have been visiting for just the day.

In the South, segregation prevailed, especially after the imposition of Jim Crow laws in the 1890s.  As mentioned in the post for 29 March 2020, Billy Sunday was forced to hold separate meetings for African Americans in Atlanta in 1917.  In response, he went to great lengths to exclude whites from those services. [9]

Marengo County, Alabama, was no different.  Harry Harrison Kroll remembered the featured evangelist “preached to the colored people one day” [10] at the Dixon’s Mills camp meeting in 1918.  Unlike Atlanta, he was able to hear Pat Smith tell them “why Christ is not a white man’s Jesus alone.” [11]

Many more people attended the special service, than the usual ones for whites.  Kroll said “their buggies and wagons and a car or two filled the parking space.  Because the church would not begin to hold the tremendous congregation, they came out on the grass or sat on benches under the trees.” [12]

This was at a time when Blacks were fleeing the county.  The African-American population dropped 27.8% from 36,152 in 1910 [13] to 26,111 in 1920. [14]  They still represented 72.5% of Marengo’s total population in 1920, down from 79.9% in 1910, 78.5% in 1860, [15] and 75.2% in 1870. [16]

The culture contrast in Dixon’s Mills was less between the races, than between regions.  Kroll remembered the Scots-born Smith “scandalized our country congregations by asking them, instead of saying ‘Amen’ to something good he said, to applaud instead.  A few thought this sin and sacrilege.” [17]

Even such applause “was severely frowned upon” [18] at Ocean Grove, and when it did occur the president “took immediate steps to silence it.”  Instead, waving a handkerchief was encouraged at the beginning or end of a sermon.  This “sea of cambric” was called the “Ocean  Grove salute” or the “Chautauqua salute.” [19]

From the beginnings at Vineland, Holiness camp meetings strove to maintain decorum.  At the 1876 National Meeting held in Landisburg, Pennsylvania, this meant days were closely scheduled so “there is no time allowed for either a lazy siesta or the vapid tattle of unoccupied loungers in tents or shady spots where social pleasantries undo all the serious impressions which song and sermon may have produced.” [20]

Likewise, rules were reinforced in the camping area.  “If excited companies retire to their tents and begin to pray and sing, as they are generally prompted to do, until half-a-dozen are so blessed that they must shout, an officer is detailed to stop the untimely disturbance.” [21]

Camp meeting attendees only were allowed to participate during the annual love feast when individuals could stand and bear witness.  Because the tabernacles were large, several people stood at once and addressed those nearest them.  A local newspaper reporter observed in 1888 that, at Ocean Grove,

“Parliamentary rules were unobserved and more and more people were seen speaking at the same time.  They could not be heard, and did not see the other speakers.  Just when the confusion became very great a song would be given and the good speakers would be sang [sic] down.” [22]

Since Ocean Grove didn’t allocate a part of its camp meeting time to African Americans, this was the only time they were allowed to express themselves.  The reporter added “the colored people were out in force and felt very happy . . . and had no difficulty in making themselves heard.” [23]

Kroll was more a participant observer in Dixon’s Mills than a local who had grown up in the deep south.  His parents were German Baptist Brethren, popularly known as Dunkards, who moved south from Indiana.  His mother was the stronger Anabaptist, while his father played fiddle. [24]

Reflecting back twenty-five years later, Kroll had his autobiographical character muse:

“As he [Smith] spoke I knew the beginning of a feeling that has grown in me ever since, that in some way that does not submit to definition the Negro is closer to God than his more knowing and wiser white brother.  Nor is it because he is simply a primitive man.  I have gone to preaching where the most primitive and uneducated hell-fire-brimstone white preachers pounded the pulpit, and instead of being moved by something deep and strong and good, I’ve rather wanted to chuckle at the absurdity of it.  I was left with the conviction that the black man walks hand in hand with God, and maybe knows things that white folks do not attain.  A black man has a simple dignity in his God-ritual that, for me at least, the white Christians often lack.” [25]

End Notes
1.  Charles A. Parker.  “A Study of the Preaching at the Ocean Grove, New Jersey, Camp Meeting, 1870-1900.”  PhD dissertation.  Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, August 1959.  95.  He distinguished between “American Negroes” and others Blacks, like African leaders, who were treated differently.

2.  Parker.  96.

3.  Parker.  96.  Adam Wallace made the same observation at the 1873 National Camp Meeting where a special meeting was held for the “colored people, quite a number of whom were in attendance as waiters” [26]

4.  Parker.  95–96.
5.  The Ocean Grove [New Jersey] Record.   19 June 1886.  Quoted by Parker.  50.
6.  Parker.  50.
7.  Parker.  95.
8.  The Asbury Park [New Jersey] Journal.   22 June 1897.  Quoted by Parker.  54.

9.  There may have been good reason for this.  At the evening allocated for African Americans at the 1873 National Camp Meeting mentioned in #3, “the singing was so full of power, that it soon attracted a large crowd of white spectators and participants.” [27]  In other words, in an otherwise tightly scheduled daily program, this served as a form of minstrel show entertainment where the audience could experience vicariously the camp meeting emotions that were suppressed by the leadership.

10.  Harry Harrison Kroll.  Waters over the Dam.  Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1944.  179.  This was brought to my attention by Glenn Sisk. [28]  Karen Marie Elmore sent me a copy of two of the chapters set during the camp meeting from a copy of the book in the Kroll Collection held by the Paul Meek Library of the University of Tennessee at Martin.

The novel contained autobiographical elements.  The differences between Kroll’s life and the camp meeting setting in the novel are discussed in the post for 24 January 2021.

11.  Kroll.  179.
12.  Kroll.  179.

13.  1910 Census: Volume 2. Population, Reports by States, with Statistics for Counties, Cities, and Other Civil Divisions.  1913, reprinted April 1915.  Section on Alabama posted on United States Census website.

14.  1920 Census: Volume 3. Population, Composition and Characteristics of the Population by States.  1922.  Section on Alabama posted on United States Census website.

15.  Classified Population of the States and Territories by Counties on the First Day of June, 1860.  Section on Alabama posted on United States Census website.

16.  Population of Civil Divisions Less than Counties.  United States Census, 1870, Table III.  Section including Alabama posted on United States Census website.  As mentioned in the post for 6 September 2020, the decade immediately following the Civil War was the first time Blacks voluntarily moved away from the places where they had been born.

17.  Kroll.  166.
18.  Parker.  117.

19.  Parker.  118.  Chautauqua was a Methodist resort in New York state that opened in 1874 as a specialized camp meeting that mixed educational programs with its sermons.  Chautauqua became a generic term when others imitated its format. [29]

Jesus-music artist Larry Norman was uncomfortable with applause during his rock concerts, and began point his finger to the sky instead of bowing.  “Soon, the kids in the audience stopped clapping and raised their fingers aloft” as well. [30]  The One-Way sign became as much a mark of the Jesus Movement as the Chautauqua Salute introduced in Dixon’s Mills by Smith in 1918. [31]   

20.  Adam Wallace.  A Modern Pentecost.  Philadelphia: Methodist Home Journal Publishing House, 1873.  29.  This was brought to my attention by Melvin E. Dieter.  The Holiness Revival of the Nineteenth Century.  Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, 1996 edition.  96–97.

21.  Wallace.  31.

22.  The Asbury Park [New Jersey] Press.  27 August 1888.  Quoted by Parker.  113.  “Sic” in Parker.

23.  Asbury Park Press.  Quoted by Parker.  113.  Ellipsis in Parker.

24.  Richard L. Saunders.  Never Been Rich.  Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2001.  2–3.

25.  Kroll.  179.
26.  Wallace.  203.
27.  Wallace.  203.

28.  Glenn N. Sisk.  “Churches in the Alabama Black Belt 1875-1917.”  Church History 23:153–174:1954.  165.

29.  Wikipedia.  “Chautauqua.”

30.  Gregory Alan Thornbury.  Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?  New York: Convergent Books, 2018.  70.  Norman is discussed in the post for 4 October 2020.

31.  Smith’s use of a handkerchief is discussed in the post for 24 January 2021.

Camp Meetings in Marengo County, Alabama

Topic: Early Versions
Joe Pearson organized the first Union Camp Meeting at Dixon’s Mills, Alabama, in the summer of 1912 using rented tents, and probably leased land.  He expected people to come from southern Marengo County and neighboring Wilcox and Clarke counties [1] that were south of the antebellum cotton-plantation belt in northern Marengo and Dallas Counties. [2]

The term “union” then was used to refer to revivals that used clergymen from more than one denomination.  In 1911, one of the first speakers at Dixon’s Mills, A. A. Walker, had “launched a simultaneous soul-winning campaign for the month of June” in Birmingham, Alabama, “where all evangelical denominations are expected to participate.” [3]  The other speakers were Methodists.  I. W. Chalker was from Montgomery, Alabama, [4] while W. W. McCord came from Georgia. [5]

The second year Pearson rented a larger tent and set up a restaurant.  This time he brought in an evangelist associated with Wilbur Chapman, the former head of the Presbyterian’s Committee on Evangelism. [6]  In 1908, it had promised “to provide well trained evangelistic singers who can assist pastors in their own evangelistic work.” [7]  Daniel Toy was the speaker in 1913 and O. C. Steevers led the singing. [8]

By then, Harry Harrison Kroll and his wife were boarding with Alexander Jackson Dixon. [9]  He remembered “as the meeting got into full swing people who might otherwise never have found occasion for making visits came to stay with all the families in the neighborhood.” [10]  He added “Miss Lucretia cooked and cooked and cooked.” [11]

Pearson added a covered wooden stage in 1915. [12]  Kroll recalled he “worked on the tabernacle several days, along with almost every other man and boy in the neighborhood and adjoining communities—[Pearson] was a master when it came to organization and getting labor donated.” [13]

The next year, Pearson took the next step common to successful camp meetings.  He incorporated. [14]  Charles Parker noted many camp meeting associations organized as joint stock companies, which were able to own and lease land under their state charters. [15] 

The Association probably bought the land it had been using, and had it platted. [16]  Among those who camped on the grounds were Sheppards and Shruptrines, who were related to Madelyn Sheppard. [17]

Ben Windham’s mother recalled “they had big preachers there, too.  We just did miss getting Billy Sunday.” [18]  The most famous of those who did appear was Gypsy Pat Smith.  Kroll recalled “We were all stricken with awe that so noted a man would condescend to come down into the Alabama sticks, badly as our souls might need saving.” [19]

Kroll said he recalled “no idea Gypsy Smith ever advanced, no thought-provoking sermon he ever preached; but I never forgot the man.” [20]  Smith returned to England and worked for the YMCA in Dublin in 1923 where a Y executive recorded his “message is simple and there is not much teaching, but he puts Jesus well in the front, and tells of His power to save and keep in an attractive way.” [21]

A choir was organized to support Smith.  Kroll’s wife and Dixon’s daughters left their seats to sing, then returned.  Smith sang a solo before he began preaching the first night. [22]  Another evening

“when he worked up a great fervor for no reason at all I could tell.  Instead of preaching he fell to walking around on the rostrum and waving his handkerchief and singing ‘We’re marching upward to Zion,’ and everybody got to milling and singing and weeping and praying, and asking one another if they were saved.” [23]

The March around Jerusalem had become a closing ritual at the Methodists’ Ocean Grove Camp Meeting mentioned in the post for 17 January 2021.  Morris Daniels thought it had come from some college tradition. [24]

The Dixon’s Mills camp meeting prospered in the 1920s.  More cabins were built in 1921 when Walker returned to preach.  A small hotel was added in 1922. [25]

Music changed with the war.  Sheppard began writing music with Annelu Burns of Selma in 1918, which they sold to W. C. Handy’s publishing company.  In 1922, she wrote music for a Broadway play by Helen Smith Woodruff. [26]  One of the tunes from Just Because was “Oh, Those Jazzing Toes.”  [27]

One can be sure that when Sheppard began playing piano for the camp meetings, she wasn’t simply doing four-note chords that matched the text.  Windham’s mother said “she was the draw at the camp meeting.” [28]

Years later, when Joel Jones was asked “was the camp meeting a success spiritually?” he answered “to some it was, to others it was not.  The preaching was as good as could be had and the singing could not be excelled.” [29]

Graphics
Base map from Walter L. Fleming.  Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama.  New York: The Macmillan Company, 1905.  494.  The left red dot is Dixon’s Mills; the right is Central Mills where Madelyn Sheppard lived.

End Notes
1.  Charles Miller.  “Union Camp Meetings.”  33–34 in The Heritage of Marengo County, Alabama.  Edited by Ruth S. Allen and Becky A. Willis.  Clanton, Alabama: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000.  33.

2.  Selma was in Dallas County.

3.  “Simultaneous Soul-Winning Campaign in Birmingham, Ala.”  The Christian Workers Magazine 11:890:June 1911.

4.  “I. W. Chalker Memorial Methodist Church To Formally Open, Honor Former Pastor.”  The Montgomery [Alabama] Advertiser.  8 July 1961.  5.  Posted by charles_pearce on 14 April 2018.  His full name was Isaac Watts Chalker.

5.  Robert Thompson.  “Rev Worthy Walstein McCord.”  Find a Grave website.  11 May 2014.  Obituary contributed by Susan Potts McDonald.

6.  “Collection 077 Papers of J. Wilbur Chapman.”  Wheaton College archives website.  John Wilbur Chapman was the link between Dwight W. Moody and Billy Sunday.  He began working for the one, and trained the other.  He was the one who introduced simultaneous campaigns where all the clergymen in a city held revivals at the same time in their own churches.

7.  “The Assembly’s Evangelists.”  The Westminster 33:24:7 November 1908.
8.  Miller.  33.

9.  Richard L. Saunders.  Never Been Rich.  Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2001.  137, photograph of Kroll with Dixon’s family from 1911.  Kroll boarded with William A. Dixon in 1910, [30] while he was working as an itinerant photographer with his brother and working to earn his first state teaching certificate. [31]  He spent his winters wherever he could find work teaching, but returned to Dixon’s Mills most summers, where he bought land in 1913. [32]  He sold everything in 1919 to go to college in Nashville, [33] and never officially returned. [34]  His 1944 novel, Waters over the Dam, was based on his life in 1910, but devoted several chapters to a camp meeting than included elements from other years.  Alexander Jackson Dixon, called Paw Jack in the novel, was the son of Joel B. Dixon, who built the grist mill in the 1820s.  William could have been one of Joel’s grandsons by his first wife. [35]

10.  Harry Harrison Kroll.  Waters over the Dam.  Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1944.  166.  This was brought to my attention by Glenn Sisk. [36]  Karen Marie Elmore sent me a copy of two of the chapters set during the camp meeting from a copy of the book in the Kroll Collection held by the Paul Meek Library of the University of Tennessee at Martin.

11.  Kroll.  166.  Alexander Jackson Dixon was married to Lucretia Callahan. [37]  Saunders said the novel was “idealistically nostalgic, standing as a romanticized statement of what he wished life would have been, but its setting is also the most genuinely autobiographical and unquestionably the most factual use of real characters among his works.” [38]  One resident told him that “HHK did use so many of the real names, their personality traits, as well as actual places and events, some folks were very put out.  The ne’re-do-well characters in the novel were barely disguised.  For years before I saw the book, I though the title was WATERS OVER THE DAMN!” [39]

12.  Miller.  33.

13.  Kroll.  163.  J. K. Pearson was the character Joe Frierson in the novel.  I could find nothing more on him.

14.  “The Marengo County Camp Meeting Grounds.”  Biz Standing website.

15.  Charles A. Parker.  “A Study of the Preaching at the Ocean Grove, New Jersey, Camp Meeting, 1870-1900.”  PhD dissertation.  Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, August 1959.  16.

16.  Miller reproduced a copy of the plat on page 33.

17.  Joel T. Jones.  “Joe Pearson Was the Man Who Made the Camp Meetings Successful.”  20 January 1937.  Reprinted by The [Linden, Alabama] Democrat-Reporter on 1 August 2013.  2.

18.  Kathryn Tucker Windham.  Quoted by Ben Windham.  “1920s Songwriting Duo in Danger of Being Forgotten.”  The Tuscaloosa [Alabama] News.  22 January 2006.

19.  Kroll.  163.  At the time there was another man also known as Gypsy Smith who was more famous.  When Pat Smith came over to this country in 1918, [40] he probably benefitted from being confused with Rodney Smith. [42]

20.  Kroll.  167.

21.  David Fowler.  Youth Culture in Modern Britain.  Bassingstroke, Hampshire, United Kingdom: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008.  82.

22.  Kroll.  165.
23.  Kroll.  166–167.

24.  Morris S. Daniels.  The Story of Ocean Grove.  New York: The Methodist Book Concern, 1919.  53–55.

25.  Miller.  33.

26.  Anna Wynne O’Ryan and Helen S. Woodruff.  Just Because.  Earl Carroll Theatre.  22 March 1922 to 29 April 1922.

27.  Ben Windham
28.  Kathryn Tucker Windham.
29.  Jones.
30.  Saunders.  17–18.
31.  Saunders.  22.
32.  Saunders.  26.
33.  Saunders.  28.

34.  Saunders.  32–33.  He worked in Columbia, Alabama, in 1919, then moved to Nashville in 1921.  Saunders believed the only time Kroll could have visited Dixon’s Mills again was in 1927 when he was driving his family from eastern Tennessee, where he was teaching at Lincoln Memorial University, to visit his family in Birmingham and his wife’s family in Mobile. [page 80]

35.  Evelyn McVoy Sisley.  “Joel B. Dixon’s Families.”  177–178 in Heritage.

36.  Glenn N. Sisk.  “Churches in the Alabama Black Belt 1875-1917.”  Church History 23:153–174:1954.  165.

37.  Sisley.  178.
38.  Saunders. 136.
39.  Joy Nored.  10 June 2008.  Quoted by Saunders.  136.

40.  “Gypsy Pat Smith to Evangelize in U. S.”  Los Angeles Herald.  6 January 1920.  It said Smith had been in the United States in 1918.  This was the only year when Kroll could have seen Smith.  He told readers of The [Linden, Alabama] Democrat-Reporter in 1918 that he was back writing after a bout with malaria. [41]

41.  “Dixon’s Mill News.”  The [Linden, Alabama] Democrat-Reporter.  21 November 1918.  3.  Posted by C0113c70r on 16 July 2017.

42.  Wikipedia.  “Rodney ‘Gipsy’ Smith.”  He was converted by Ira D. Sankey in 1876 and worked with the Salvation Army before becoming a traveling evangelist.  Pat Smith told Canadians in 1920 he had been asked “if I were any relation to the older Gipsy Smith.”  He very skillfully placed himself in his aura, while carefully separating himself: “Of course, a man who is a Gipsy and has lived in a tent, his people call him Gipsy So-and-so.  They never call him by another name.  For instance, an old man sixty years of age, who comes from a different part to what I do, is called Gipsy Rodney because his name is Rodney Smith.  When he started out his friends called him Gipsy Smith.  He has gone all over the world, is one of the world’s greatest preachers and has been a great blessing to man.” [43]

43.  Pat Smith.  “The Gipsy People.”  268–278 in The Canadian Club.  15 March 1920.  270.

White Camp Meetings

Topic: Early Versions
Madelyn Sheppard published the first commercial version of “Come by Here” in 1926 while she was spending her summers playing piano for Dixon’s Mills’ Union Camp Meeting in southern Marengo County, Alabama.

Marengo County was directly east of Sumter County, where Ruby Pickens Tartt collected a version of “Come by Here” in 1938.  Marengo’s lower boundary extended farther south than Sumter, so it abutted the western side of Wilcox County, where Robert Sonkin collected a version from an isolated African-American community in 1941. [1]

Dixon’s Mills’ camp meeting was a tamer affair than Cane Ridge in 1801.  Then the preaching was continuous, sometimes with several men speaking at the same time in different places. [2] William Capers remembered he attended his first camp meeting in South Carolina the next summer at a place about thirty miles upriver from the coast. [3]

“There were two stands for preaching, at a distance of about two hundred yards apart; and sometimes there was preaching at one, sometimes at the other, and sometimes at both simultaneously.  This was evidently a bad arrangement; for I remember seeing the people running hastily from one place to the other, as some sudden gush of feeling venting itself aloud, and perhaps with strange bodily exercises, called their attention off.  As to the times of preaching, I think there were not any stated hours, but it was left to circumstances; sometimes oftener, sometimes more seldom.” [4]

Things changed by 1806.  More people attended, but the “the strange and unaccountable bodily exercises” no longer appeared. [5]  Still, the sixteen-year old recalled “the suddenness with which sinners of every description were awakened, and the overwhelming force of their convictions; bearing them instantly down to their knees, if not to the ground, crying for mercy.” [6]

Marengo County was settled later; its first Methodist circuit was organized in 1826. [7]  Two years later a Methodist society was formed in Spring Hill, [8] about 12 miles southeast of the port of Demopolis.  A year later it organized the Mount Zion camp meeting, where sessions were held “annually for many years, and they were attended with great religious power and achieved grand results.” [9]

Anson West notes permanent camp grounds became more common in Alabama after 1832, and more rigorous schedules established.  “Preaching, exhorting, praying, singing, and assembling penitents in the altar for prayer and instruction were common to all Camp-meetings,” with preaching four times a day. [10]

Francis Lieber made the same generalization about the camp meeting he visited in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1834 where he “listened to their singing, exhorting, praying and violent preaching.” [11]   A few days previous he had “met a stage-coach full of methodists.  You must know, that when assembled in any number, they are much inclined to sing their hymns, wherever they may be.” [12]

The original purpose of camp meetings was conversion.  However, when members continued to attend, like Capers’ family, they served instead as opportunities for regeneration.  Over time, permanent locations like Zion Hill were procured that evolved into summer outings.

Children of the converted, like Phoebe Palmer, mentioned in the post for 7 December 2017, were placed in anomalous positions where they were, by birth, Methodists but, by experience, were not.  Her answer was an emphasis on the second blessing mentioned by John Wesley that came after initiation.  She used the word “Holiness” to describe this invigorated Methodist life.

Her fame initially came from word-of-mouth in New York City, where she lived, then through her writings like The Way of Holiness. [13]  In 1840, her husband withdrew from his homeopathic practice, and the two began preaching at camp meetings in the northeast. [14]

The nascent Holiness movement was snuffed by the Civil War.  In 1867, Methodist leaders in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York responded to the malaise that followed the end of hostilities with a call for a camp meeting devoted exclusively to promoting Palmer’s Holiness doctrine in Vineland, New Jersey. [15]

The success of the Vineland meeting led to the organization of the National Camp Meeting Association, [16] which held its second conclave in Manheim, Pennsylvania.  Reports of attendees who fell in swoons night after night rivaled those from Cane Ridge and ensured the success of the Holiness movement. [17]  It eventually reached Cuba in southwestern Sumter County with the formation of the white Church of God Holiness Church in 1886. [18]

Receiving the second blessing was, like conversion, a one-time experience.  The next step for Methodists was proving they were worthy of God’s gifts by leading lives as free from sin as possible.  Some of the same men who organized the Vineyard meeting promoted a resort at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, [19] in 1869 where families could spend vacations without worrying that their children would meet undesirable people or be exposed to drinking, dancing, smoking, or gambling. [20]

All summer the resort held religious services, with two weeks devoted to a camp meeting where preaching occurred at 10 am, 2:30 pm, and 7:30 pm. [21]  The Palmers began holding daily meetings in 1878 [22] at 9 am. [23]

Ocean Grove was six miles south of “the famous and palatial summer resort at Long Branch” [24] with a rail stop and turnpike that ran past Ocean Grove. [25]  Association members began lobbying the New York railroad in 1871, and finally got an extension built in 1875. [26]

Railroads were quick to exploit the traffic on excursion trains. [27]  As mentioned in the post for 15 March 2020, trains were supporting African-American camp meetings around New Bern, North Carolina, in 1879.  One may even have been a sponsor of the large meeting in the Eastman, Georgia, lumber camp in 1882. [28]

In 1873, J. D. Adams reported an incident like the one experienced by Lieber.  He recalled:

“Last Monday morning we entered the cars at Long Branch—the people from the two classes of influence, Long Branch and Ocean Grove, met.  In a little while a lady in a forward seat began to sing, ‘Jesus, lover of my soul.’  I was curious; thought perhaps she was a little out of place there—But, to my surprise, first from one, then another, the strain was caught up all through the  coach, and Ocean Grove poured the gospel of song over the gay revelers of Long Branch.” [29]

Music at Ocean Grove was dominated by ministers who sang and wrote gospel songs, [30] the new music form [31] that treated text and tune as a coherent unit. [32]  This allowed the adoption of more complex popular-music elements like the verse-chorus structure and lilting, rhythmic melodies with dotted-notes. [33]

The new gospel songs spread through songbooks [34] and urban revivals led by Dwight L. Moody, and his song leader, Ira D. Sankey. [35]  While he was a Congregationalist, Moody replaced the “God of Wrath and Judgement” with one of “love and mercy.” [36]  He later became involved with the premillennialists [37] and opened an alternative to Holiness resorts with a conference center in his hometown of Northfield, Massachusetts, to encourage Bible study. [38]

Presbyterians still believed people were converted by exposure to the Bible, not by camp meetings.  In 1894, a Presbyterian leader in Chicago bought an existing amusement park in Kosciusko County, Indiana, and turned it into a Bible study center on the renamed Winona Lake.  It attracted Billy Sunday, who moved there in 1911 with his song leader, Homer Rodeheaver. [39]

Indiana Methodists developed their own resort community after World War I in Kosciusko County to the northeast of Winona Lake. [40]  The Epworth Forest organization sold more than 400 lots and built a hotel in 1923 for visitors to its camp meeting. [41]  This is the place where Varner Chance began working in 1946. [42]

End Notes
1.  See the post for 10 February 2019 for more on Rehoboth Oak Grove Church version collected by Robert Sonkin near Gee Bend, Alabama.

2. For more information on Cane Ridge, see the post for 8 November 2020.

3.  Capers said it “was held on McGirt’s branch, below the point where the Statesburg and
Darlington road crosses it.” [43]  McGirt’s Swamp is in Williamsburg County, and a tributary of the Black River. [44]  Statesburg is upriver in Sumter County, in an area drained by the Black River. [45]  The distance between the Williamsburg County seat, Kingstree, and the mouth of the Black River at Georgetown is 36.85 miles. [46]

4. William Capers.  “Recollections of Myself.”  Reprinted by William M. Wrightman.  Life of William Capers, D. D.  Nashville: Publishing House of the M. E. Church, South, 1902.  52–53.  Capers rose to bishop within the Methodist Church, and wrote the church’s Catechism used with slaves in 1833. [47]

5.  Capers.  53.
6.  Capers.  54.

7.  Anson West.  A History of Methodism in Alabama.  Nashville, Tennessee: Methodist Episcopal Church South Publishing House, 1893.  334.

8.  Ruth Allen.  “Old Spring Hill Methodist Church.”  42 in  The Heritage of Marengo County, Alabama.  Edited by Ruth S. Allen and Becky A. Willis.  Clanton, Alabama: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000.

9.  West.  336.
10.  West.  560.

11.  Francis Lieber.  Letters to a Gentleman in Germany, Written after a Trip from Philadelphia to Niagara.  Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and Blanchard, 1834.  315.  This was mentioned in the post for 11 November 2020.

12.  Lieber.  309.
13.  Mrs. P. Palmer.  The Way of Holiness.  New York: Piercy and Reed, 1843.
14.  “Phoebe Palmer.”  Salvation Army Women’s Ministries website.

15.  Melvin E. Dieter.  The Holiness Revival of the Nineteenth Century.  Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1996 edition.  86.

16.  Charles H. Lippy.  “The Camp Meeting in Transition: The Character and Legacy of the Late Nineteenth Century.”  Methodist History 34:1–17:October 1995.  5.

17.  William Kostlevy.  “Christian Perfectionism in Pennsylvania Dutch Country: The 1868 Manheim Camp Meeting of the National Holiness Association.”  1997.  United Methodist Church, Central Pennsylvania Conference Historical Society.  The Chronicle 9:25–35:Spring 1998.  29–30.

18.  The Cuba church is discussed in the post for 15 November 2020.

19.  Charles A. Parker.  “A Study of the Preaching at the Ocean Grove, New Jersey, Camp Meeting, 1870-1900.”  PhD dissertation.  Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, August 1959.  35.  “Numbered among the charter members of the Ocean Grove Association, for instance, were William B. Osborne, John S. Inskip, and Alfred Cookman, all of the National Association.”

20.  Wikipedia.  “Ocean Grove, New Jersey.”
21  Parker.  36.

22. “The National Camp Meeting Association for the Promotion of Christian Holiness.”  Seeing4truth website.

23.  Parker.  51.
24.  Parker.  42.
25.  Parker.  47.

26.  Morris S. Daniels.  The Story of Ocean Grove.  New York: The Methodist Book Concern, 1919.  177–178.

27.  Parker.  47–48.  Daniels suggested the day-trip excursions “accompanied by bands of music, as was then the custom, frequently arrived at times of public worship, greatly disturbing the services; then, besides, they frequently made a picnic ground of the Auditorium, scattering the remnants of their picnic lunches over the seats and straw.  The coming of the mere pleasure-seekers, therefore, impelled only by curiosity, and who did not remain long enough to be impressed by their surroundings, was not encouraged.” [48]

28.  The Eastman camp meeting is discussed in the post for 3 February 2019.

29.  J. D. Adams.  “Solomon by the Sea-Side.”  172 in  E. H. Stokes.  Ocean Grove, Its Origin and Progress.  Philadelphia: Haddock and Son, 1874.  Quoted by Patricia Woodard.  “Musical Life at Ocean Grove, New Jersey: The First Fifty Years, 1869-1919.”  Methodist History 44:67–79:January 2006.  68.

30.  Woodard.

31.  The term “gospel song” was introduced by Philip Bliss in Gospel Songs published by John Church of Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1874. [49]  The songs preceded the label: among the ones included are “Almost Persuaded,” “Let the Lower Lights be Burning,” “Shall We Gather at the River,” “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” and “The Ninety and Nine.”  It still contained some older psalm and hymn tunes with meter indications.

32.  Moody told Sankey that “he could not sing himself, and therefore had to depend upon all kinds of people to lead his service of song, and that sometimes when he had talked to a crowd of people, and was about to ‘pull the net,’ some one would strike up a long meter hymn to a short meter tune, and thereby upset the whole meeting.” [50]  The use of long and short meter with hymn singing is discussed in the post for 23 August 2017.

33.  Wikipedia.  “Gospel Song (19th Century).”

34.  Bliss's Gospel Songs has four-parts printed on two staves with the words between the staves.  It could be used by a pianist.

35.  Wikipedia, Gospel Song.

36.  James Sallee.  A History of Evangelistic Hymnody.  Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1978.  56.

37.  “Dwight L. Moody.”  Encyclopædia Britannica website.   20 July 1998; last updated 1 February 2020.

38.  “Dwight L. Moody.”  Christianity Today website.

39.  “The History of The Village at Winona.”  Its website.  Solomon Dickey was the prime mover behind  the Winona Assembly and Summer School Association.

40.  Epworth Forest is in Tippecanoe Township.  Winona Lake is in Wayne Township.
41.  “Epworth Forest.”  United Methodist Churches of Indiana website.  18 October 2019.

42.  William B. Freeland.  Epworth Forest.  North Indiana Conference of The Methodist Church, 1949.  1--51 in Freeland and Orrin Manifold.  Epworth Forest: The First Fifty Years.  Winona Lake, Indiana: Light and Life Press, 1974.  49.  Chance is discussed in the post for 21 March 2021.

43.  Capers.  53.

44.  “2,253 Acres Added to Pee Dee Land Trust Protection.”  SC Now website.  20 January 2012; last updated 27 December 2012.

45.  Wikipedia.  “Stateburg, South Carolina” and “Sumter County, South Carolina.”
46.  Calculation by Distance-Cities website.

47.  William Capers.  Catechism for the Use of the Methodist Missions.  Charleston: Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1853 edition; first published in 1833.  Margaret Washington Creel brought this to my attention in “A Peculiar People.”  New York: New York University Press, 1988.

48.  Daniels.  178.
49.  Wikipedia, Gospel Song.

50.  Ira D. Sankey.  My Life and the Story of the Gospel Hymns.  New York: Harper and Brothers, 1907.  20.

Mourning Benches in Sumter County, Alabama

Topic: Early Versions
Emancipation instantly terminated plantation communities, and left Freedmen to create their replacement.  While African-American Baptist churches were evolving as an alternative, individuals were stranded between two worlds.

Hester Frye was living with the son of her mother’s owner when Ruby Pickens Tartt met her in the 1930s near Tishabee, across the Tombigbee river in Marengo County, Alabama. [1]  She said her “mammy come out here with Marsa Bob from Charleston, South Carolina, and I was born here, right here in this here yard” [2] around 1870. [3]

Frye lived among whites who “thought religion was a lot of trash” and Robert Hawkins “didn’t allow none of his colored folks to go to church.” [4]  She confessed:

“I used to try to pray sometime when I’d get right lonesome.  I used to shut the door and put my head down in the washpot so it could catch the sound, then pray easy so Mr. Charlie wouldn’t hear me.  I reckon if I had a prayed out loud I might of got religion, but it’s too late now.  Look like I just don’t believe somehow.” [5]

She added she wasn’t going to the barbeque that evening at the local Baptist church [6] because “I ain’t never had no belief and no experience, and you can’t join without you got religion.” [7]

Tom Moore was born the year before Fyre “somewhere in Alabama.”  [8]  While his wife was a member of New Prospect Baptist Church, he told Tartt “I call myself tryin to pray.  I thought once I had religion but I doubted myself; I believe, though, but just ain’t joined.  I just ain’t ’solidated in my mind.” [9]

He shared Frye’s belief that one couldn’t enter a church if one hadn’t had a religious experience.  It was no different than what William Francis Allen heard on Saint Helena Island during the Civil War when a woman told him she wasn’t going to a ring shout because they “wouldn’t let me in—hain’t foun’ dat ting yet—hain’t been on my knees in de swamp.” [10]

As mentioned in the post for 20 March 2019, ring shouts on the South Carolina island were local adaptions of Mende culture to plantation life.  The ritual [11] didn’t transfer with people like Frye’s mother, but the underlying set of values did.

Church revivals developed as the alternative to Mende initiation rites.  Instead of a group of adolescents withdrawing into the wilderness to be prepared for adulthood, individuals withdrew from their routine activities.

Moore’s great-granddaughter, Gwendolyn Moore DeLaine, was born in Bellamy in 1956. [12]  She recalled “In the area of Sumter County where I lived, Revival season usually ran from the first week of August through the last week of September.  During this time, there was no playing, no watching television, no listening to the radio and certainly no dancing.” [13]

The timing coincided with Igbo funereal rituals, which occurred when there was no agricultural activity.  As mentioned in the post for 29 November 2020, a church in nearby Whitfield began its two-week revival at the end of July with a service “for all members who had died during the previous twelve months.” [14]

DeLaine recalled the first week was devoted to “prayer service,” and the second to “preaching.”  She added, “you had to go to your praying ground during the day until it was time to go to church for Revival Services.” [15]

Rosa Little, who was born in 1919, had similar memories of the “old timey revival” near Sumterville.  She said “a mourner or a sinner would have to seek JESUS.  The way you did this was to go to your praying ground or get on the mourners bench at the church.” [16]

Both Allen and Margaret Washington noted “seeking” was the term used in South Carolina to describe the period when individuals were preparing for a religious experience. [17]  Washington said the term was introduced by Methodist preachers. [18]

Calvinism emphasizes single individuals who are preselected by God for salvation, rather than groups.  As such it was at odds with Mende ideas, but was synchronous with Igbo culture that posited spirits bargained with personal gods (chi) to define the conditions under which they would be reborn. [19]  Thus, while Langston Hughes’ church in Joplin, Missouri, mentioned in the post for 3 January 2021, wished to welcome a group, conversion was an individual decision in Sumter County.

In 1967, DeLaine remembered:

“It was during the first week that I had been on the mourner’s bench praying and seeking JESUS.  Finally on that Friday, I made up my mind and went into an earnest and sincere prayer for salvation.  At the end of the prayer, I asked GOD to let me feel his Holy Spirit if he was truly going to save my soul.  As soon as I finished praying, the LORD granted my request.  The Holy Spirit showered down upon me and I started running to find my mother to share the good news with her. [20]

Charles Finney used what he called the “anxious seat” to attack individuals until they fell into despair and begged for forgiveness. [21]  Marian Wright Edelman, mentioned in the post for 3 January 2021, attributed conversions to sermons that “scared us to death about the wages of sin” [22] in a church in the cotton-growing region of South Carolina.

Eldridge Taylor said he “got religion at Mary’s Chapel under Reverend Johnson from Union Town, Alabama.  And buddy when that old preacher started preaching, the Holy Spirit got on me and I felt like I got as wide as my front door, I tell you I couldn’t stay on that bench, I had to get up from there.” [23]

Taylor was raised as a Baptist in Coatopa, [24] but Mary’s Chapel is affiliated with the AME Zion church. [25]  The ones who attended the Christian Valley Baptist Church did not mention the mourner’s bench as a place of mortification, but as a means for contacting the world of the spirits.

Alma Edwards Towns, who was born in “1919 on the Patton Place in Coatopa,” [26] recalled she was the one who was making the effort at her praying ground:

“Well, I just kept on praying and praying cause I wanted to be sure.  So I asked GOD to let me see a spot of cloud melt and it did and then seem like something got on me and I had to run and tell it.  Well I ran upon my Grandma Rachel and I started telling her about how I met JESUS and she said this here is a GOD sent child.” [27]

Everyone’s first response was to tell someone: DeLaine went to her mother, Towns to her grandmother.  Washington found that in Africa during their time in isolation, “boys and girls conversed with the spirits and related these conversations to the altar parent, who interpreted them.” [29]

In 1846, a Methodist minister complained a Black “seeker” ignored his preacher and selected a mentor who would “teach him how to conduct himself, and particularly how to pray.  He is also ‘an interpreter of visions’ to whom the seeker relates all his ‘travel’.” [30]

Calvinists have always demanded individuals describe their experiences before their neighbors.  Finney converted this into a form of peer pressure.  African Americans in Sumter County transformed it back into a way of joining the community of saved.

Towns recalled “I just kept on running and telling my religion and all the while the sun was in front of me and it just seemed to shout up and down right in front of me.” [31]  Taylor remembered “the next day I got up and I went every where and all over Dug Hill telling my religion.” [32]

DeLaine wrote “during my childhood days, it was customary that you go from house to house sharing your testimony of salvation.” [33]  She most wanted to tell her great-grandmother, who owned a mule name Mary that jealously guarded her pastures from intruders.  She remembered all the times she had chased her when she went to visit Mama Alice.

“I was determined to share my testimony.  It was at this juncture that I decided no more running!  As Mary charged toward me, I held my right handout in front of me and exclaimed in a loud and commanding voice, “Stop in the name of JESUS!”  And just like that, Old Mary came to an abrupt and complete stop.” [34]

This was so typical of something a teenage girl would have done who had seen The Supremes use the same hand gesture when they sang “Stop!  In the Name of Love.” [35]  What was special was her explanation that “I have always believed that Mary stopped running after me because she recognized the Holy Spirit that was upon me.” [36]

In the 1920s, a man in Columbus, Mississippi, to the northwest of Sumter County, told Newbell Niles Puckett “when a mule balks a ghost is stopping him.” [37]

End Notes
1.  Tishabee and other places mentioned in this post appear on the map posted on 20 September 2020.

2.  Hester Frye.  Quoted by Ruby Pickens Tartt.  “Earthy-Ann.”  Southwest Review 397–405:Spring 1944.  87–93 in Virginia Pounds Brown and Laurella Owens.  Toting the Lead Row.  University: The University of Alabama Press, 1981.  90.

3.  Brown and Owens.  160.  They noted Tartt didn’t use Frye’s name when she published her portrait.  They added she was not the Earthy Ann Coleman mentioned in the post for 6 December 2020.

4.  Frye.  Quoted by Tartt, Earthy-Ann.  92.

5.  Frye.  Quoted by Tartt, Earthy-Ann.  92.  Robert’s son was Charles Darwin Hawkins.  Fyre lamented.  “I feels the need to be baptized.  It’ll soon be time for me to ride on the Jordan tide, and I ain’t ready, and what is I goin to do.” [38]

6.  Tartt, Eathy-Ann.  91.
7.  Frye.  Quoted by Tartt, Earthy-Ann.  92.

8.  Gwendolyn Moore DeLaine.  The Moore Place Community.  Gordo, Alabama: Southeast Media, 2015.  8.  She published a photograph of Moore and his family, including Safronia Beville and Jerry, the son mentioned in the post for 6 December 2020.  She also reproduced a photograph of herself.

9.  Tom Moore.  “Tom Moore and His Death Money.”  Transcribed by Tart.  77–79 in Brown and Owens.  77.  Owens modernized Tartt’s transcriptions to make them easier to read. [39]

10.  Bristol.  Quoted by William Francis Allen.  “Introduction.”  The Slave Songs of the United States.  Edited by Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison.  New York: A. Simpson and Company, 1867.  xii.

11.  I’m not sure we know exactly what people were doing with their “iron pots,” so I don’t know what older rituals were being reenacted.  There’s general agreement though that ring shouts like those among Gullah-speakers on the South Carolina coast were limited to that area.

12.  DeLaine, Moore Place.  i.
13.  DeLaine, Moore Place.  28.

14.  Ida Gayle.  “Black Bluff Missionary Baptist Church.”  1982.  Jud K. Arrington collection, Julia Tutwiler Library, University of West Alabama.  44 in The Heritage of Sumter County, Alabama.  Edited by Charles Walker.  Clayton, Alabama: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2005.

15.  DeLaine, Moore Place.  28.  Emphasis added.

16.  Rosa Little.  Interviewed by Gwendolyn Moore DeLaine in Hamner, Alabama, on 29 October 2011.  13–15 in  Back Then.  Edited by Tammy Jackson Montgomery and DeLaine.  University of Western Alabama website. 14.  Emphasis added.  It includes her photograph.

17.  See the post for 20 March 2019 for more details.

18.  Margaret Washington Creel.  “A Peculiar People.”  New York: New York University Press, 1988.  285.

19.  Richard N. Henderson.  The King in Every Man.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972
2003 edition.  110.

20.  DeLaine, Moore Place.  28–29.  Emphasis added.  Kurt Carr used the expression “shower down on me” in his version of “Kumbaya” discussed in the post for 26 August 2017.

21.  Finney was discussed in the post for 12 August 2017.

22.  Marian Wright Edelman.  “Give Children the Richness of Their Heritage.”  U. S. Catholic.  February 1997.  The post for 3 January 2020 has a more complete excerpt.

23.  Eldridge Taylor.  Interviewed by Gwendolyn Moore DeLaine in Lilita, Alabama, on  6 June 62011. 19–22 in Back Then.  20.  Emphasis added.  It includes his photograph.

24.  Taylor.  20.

25.  James Pate identified the church in his “Survey of Black Churches in Sumter County Alabama 1980-1981.”  University of Western Alabama website.

26.  Alma Edwards Towns.  Interviewed by Gwendolyn Moore DeLaine in Demopolis, Alabama, on 22 July 2011.  23–25 in Back Then.  23.  It includes her photograph.

27.  Towns.  24.  Emphasis added.

29.  Washington Creel.  288–289.  The post for 20 March 2019 has a more complete quotation.

30.  Southern Christian Advocate.  30 October 1846 and 30 October 1847.  Quoted by Washington.  286.  Emphasis in original.  The post for 20 March 2019 has a more complete quotation.

31.  Towns.  24.
32.  Taylor.  20.
33.  DeLaine, Moore Place.  29.
34.  DeLaine, Moore Place.  29.

35.  The Supremes.  “Stop!  In The Name Of Love.”  Motown MT 1074.  8 February 1965.  45 rpm. [Discogs entry]  “They performed the song on an episode of the ABC variety program Shindig!” in 1965. [40]

36.  DeLaine, Moore Place.  30.

37.  Ben Rice.  Quoted by Newbell Niles Puckett.  Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro.  Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1926.  114.

38.  Frye.  Quoted by Tartt, Earthy-Ann.  92.
39.  Laurella Owens.  “Introduction.”  59–60 in Brown and Owens.  60.
40.  Wikipedia.  “Stop! In the Name of Love.”

Sumter County, Alabama, Religious Experiences

Topic: Early Versions
Ruby Pickens Tartt had a strong preference for older religious songs.  When she stopped by the African-American’s Dug Hill Church in Sumter County, Alabama, she was upset when they sang “a hymn learned from a hymnbook.”  She told the preacher she would “get them a new stove if they would promise to sing only the old songs, not the printed ones from books.” [1]

In 2011, Gwendolyn Moore DeLaine talked to a man who would have been a child when Tartt visited the Primitive Baptist church.  Eldridge Taylor remembered it had a mourner’s bench. [2]  This was not part of the ritual when the songs valued by Tartt were being created, but an innovation that came with gospel song collections after the Civil War.

As mentioned in the post for 12 August 2017, mourner’s benches were introduced by Presbyterian Charles Finney as a technique to coerce potential converts into acknowledging their depravity in front of their neighbors.  It spread through camp meetings where Francis Lieber observed a Methodist one in Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1834.

“We entered one of the tents where a ‘class’ was assembled.  These tents, destined for class meetings, are divided lengthwise by a bench about a foot high, and called the mourners’ bench.  On one side are the men, on the other the women; they lie or sit in disorder on the straw, which is strewn on the ground.  Along both sides of the mourners’ bench kneel ‘the sinners in a repenting state’ who wish to join the faithful; or, overpowered by their feelings or by exhaustion, they lie on the ground, or in the arms of others, quiet, half faint, exclaiming, groaning or weeping, while, from time to time, the minister or any other ‘brother’ speaks into their ears of impending everlasting damnation, or the bright hope of salvation.” [3]

When mourner’s benches were used in churches, they were placed at the front between the pulpit and pews.  The use of the word “come” in altar calls was not a call for the Holy Spirit to appear, but a call to would be converts to come forward.

Mourner’s benches in African-American churches probably were adopted as the various local Baptists conventions, mentioned in the post for 22 November 2020, organized at higher levels.  One group, with representatives from eleven states, met in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1880.  Six hundred formed a second group in Saint Louis, Missouri, in 1886, and a third organized in 1893.  They merged in 1895 in Atlanta into the National Baptist Convention. [4]

Ideas no doubt spread through the African-American seminaries, like the one in Selma, Alabama, mentioned in the post for 22 November 2020, and through education efforts by the national groups.  More important, methods spread when clergymen met at local meetings or spoke in one another’s churches during revivals.

By the time Langston Hughes was an adolescent in 1915, the pattern was set.  He recalled a revival in Joplin, Missouri, where “every night for weeks there had been much preaching, singing, praying, and shouting, and some very hardened sinners had been brought to Christ, and the membership of the church had grown by leaps and bounds.” [5]

The last night was devoted to people his age who needed to be initiated into church membership.  He said they all were led to the front and “placed on the mourners’ bench.” [6]  Then

“the preacher preached a wonderful rhythmical sermon, all moans and shouts and lonely cries and dire pictures of hell, and then he sang a song about the ninety and nine safe in the fold, but one little lamb was left out in the cold.  Then he said: ‘Won’t you come?  Won’t you come to Jesus?  Young lambs, won’t you come?’  And he held out his arms to all us young sinners there on the mourners’ bench.  And the little girls cried.  And some of them jumped up and went to Jesus right away.  But most of us just sat there.” [7]

Older members of the church gathered around the teens and prayed over them.  “The church sang a song about the lower lights are burning, some poor sinners to be saved.  And the whole building rocked with prayer and song” [8] until all left the bench and went to the altar except Hughes.

Marian Wright Edelman was born a generation later in 1939.  She recalled the same ritual in her father’s Baptist church in Bennettsville, South Carolina:

“After the hour or so of singing warmed our spirits and after the visiting preachers’ sermons scared us to death about the wages of sin, unsaved young people (and a few desperate older sinners) went to the mourners’ bench, dropped to their knees panting and praying, and fervently begged God for salvation, while congregation members clapped and sang over them, urging Jesus to come and save their souls.” [9]

The problem with the mourner’s bench is that Finney assumed salvation resulted from a preacher creating an environment where people were so demoralized by hearing about their damnation that they accepted Christ as a release.

The leader-driven ritual didn’t recognize the older view that individuals had to work by themselves on being converted, often through days or weeks of misery.  Peter Cartwright said he

“retired to a cave on my father’s farm to pray in secret.  My soul was in an agony; I wept, I prayed, and said, ‘Now, Lord, if there is any mercy for me, let me find it,’ and it really seemed to me that I could almost lay hold of the Savior, and realize a reconciled God.  All of a sudden, such a fear of the devil fell upon me that it really appeared to me that he was surely personally
there, to seize and drag me down to hell, soul and body, and such a horror fell on me that I sprang to my feet and ran to my mother at the house.  My mother told me this was a device of Satan to prevent me from finding the blessing then.  Three months rolled away, and still I did not find the blessing of the pardon of my sins.” [10]

It was in this state that he attended a meeting held by James McGready.  “On the Saturday evening of said meeting I went, with weeping multitudes, and bowed before the stand, and earnestly prayed for mercy.  In the midst of a solemn struggle of soul, an impression was
made on my mind, as though a voice said to me, ‘Thy sins are all forgiven thee.’  Divine light
flashed all round me, unspeakable joy sprung up in my soul.  I rose to my feet, opened my eyes, and it really seemed as if I was in heaven; the trees, the leaves on them, and every thing seemed, and I really thought were, praising God.” [11]

Hughes had been promised such an experience.  His aunt had said when “you were saved you saw a light, and something happened to you inside!  And Jesus came into your life!  And God was with you from then on!  She said you could see and hear and feel Jesus in your soul.” [12]

Only, nothing happened that night in church.  He was the last on the bench and “began to be ashamed of myself, holding everything up so long.”  Finally, he “decided that maybe to save further trouble, I’d better lie, too, and say that Jesus had come, and get up and be saved.” [13]

That night he cried in bed “because I couldn’t bear to tell” my aunt “that I had lied, that I had deceived everybody in the church, that I hadn’t seen Jesus, and that now I didn’t believe there was a Jesus anymore, since he didn’t come to help me.” [14]

End Notes
1.  Virginia Pounds Brown and Laurella Owens.  Toting the Lead Row.  University: The University of Alabama Press, 1981.  10.

2.  Eldridge Taylor.  Interviewed by Gwendolyn Moore DeLaine in Lilita, Alabama, on  6 June 62011. 19–22 in Back Then.  Edited by Tammy Jackson Montgomery and DeLaine.  University of Western Alabama website.  20.  He was born in 1922.

3.  Francis Lieber.  Letters to a Gentleman in Germany, Written after a Trip from Philadelphia to Niagara.  Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and Blanchard, 1834.  311–312.  Emphasis added.  This is the first known published use of the term.  Classes were introduced by Wesley as a way to instruct converts before accepting them as members.  It became a term for local meetings where members confessed their weaknesses to each other and fortified their resolves as Christians.  The post for 11 November 2020 has more on this camp meeting.

4.  “History of the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.”  Its website.

5.  Langston Hughes.  “Salvation.”  The Big Sea.  New York: Hill and Wang, 1940.  Chapter 3.  Calculated date.

6.  Hughes.

7.  Hughes.  “Ninety and Nine” was used by Dwight L. Moody in his crusades.  Lyrics by Elizabeth Cecilia Clephane in 1868.  Music by Ira D. Sankey in 1874.  First published in Gospel Songs.  Edited by P. P. Bliss.  Cincinnati, Ohio: John Church & Co., Cincinnati, 1874. [15]  This was the type of song disliked by Tartt.

8.  Hughes.  This is similar to the recollections of the Bolton Brothers in Mississippi mentioned in the post for 12 August 2017.  “Let the Lower Lights Be Burning” was written by P. P. Bliss and published by him in The Charm.  Chicago: Root and Cady, 1871. [16]  It was another of the type of gospel songs deplored by Tartt.

9.  Marian Wright Edelman.  “Give Children the Richness of Their Heritage.”  U. S. Catholic.  February 1997.  

10.  Autobiography of Peter Cartwright.  Edited by W. P. Strickland.  Cincinnati, Ohio: L. Swormstedt and A. Poe, 1859.  36.

11.  Cartwright.  37.  McGready was mentioned in the posts for 8 November 2020 and 11 November 2020.

12.  Hughes.

13.  Hughes.  Earlier in the memoir, Hughes remembered the last boy on the bench said “to me in a whisper: ‘God damn!  I’m tired o’ sitting here.  Let’s get up and be saved.’  So he got up and was saved.”  It was after Hughes noticed that “God had not struck Westley dead for taking his name in vain or for lying in the temple” that he made his decision.

14.  Hughes.
15.  “There were ninety and nine that safely lay.”  Hymnary website.
16.  “Let the Lower Lights Be Burning.”  Hymnary website.