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.