Family, Church, Community

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl Janifer LaRoche
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Family Relations ◽  
Black Churches ◽  
Black Families ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Underground Railroad ◽  
Church And Community ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
American Churches ◽  
Church Organizations

This chapter explores the roles played by family, church, and community in the Black Underground Railroad movement. By mapping Black settlements, it clarifies and exposes the relationship between African American churches, settlements, and historic Underground Railroad routes. It shows how Black families sustained an important family organizational structure that drove the Underground Railroad. It explains how African American communities connected through family relations and intermarriage, church organizations, benevolent societies, and the fraternal structure of the Prince Hall Masons. It considers how maintaining family connections motivated escape from slavery, particularly when imminent sale threatened to break up the family. Finally, it highlights the ways that Black churches and their ministers helped free Blacks, or self-liberated men and women, to succeed in winning freedom for themselves and their loved ones.

Destination Freedom

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl Janifer LaRoche
Keyword(s):  
Black Churches ◽  
Black Families ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Underground Railroad ◽  
Research Strategies ◽  
Resistance Movements ◽  
Southern States ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
Black Abolitionists ◽  
History Of

By focusing on the geography of resistance and its landscape features in four different Black settlements, this book has cast a different light on the nature of Black escape from slavery and the history of Underground Railroad activities. It has shown that free Blacks carried out much of the clandestine work of the Underground Railroad as they sought freedom in pre-Civil War America, thus contributing in a significant way to the efforts inside one of the world's most successful resistance movements. Whether urban or rural, Black settlements positioned at the borders between northern and southern states or at other critical junctures acted as the first line of freedom while simultaneously offering sanctuary to escaping captives. The book has also highlighted migration as a means of escape for fleeing slaves, as well as the crucial roles played by Black churches, Black families, and Black abolitionists in the success of the Black underground. This concluding chapter summaries the book's research strategies and the future implications of its findings for reshaping modern interpretation of the Underground Railroad.

Rethinking African American Migration

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl Janifer LaRoche
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Community Formation ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Underground Railroad ◽  
Middle Passage ◽  
Migration Patterns ◽  
Black Experience ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
And Migration ◽  
American Migration

This chapter explores the relationship between migration, displacement, and the Underground Railroad movement. More specifically, it considers the processes of community building and the causes of migration that led Blacks to live where they did and to flee when they had to. It shows how migration became a means of escape from slavery, first by discussing maroon settlements that functioned as the African diaspora's first communities for free Blacks and began the progression to the Underground Railroad. It then explains how Black community formation and the Underground Railroad shifted between constant migration and displacement that began with the Middle Passage, and how emigration and colonization schemes of the pre-Civil War abolitionist era influenced displacement and migration patterns. This analysis looks at African American migration from a new perspective by sifting through the range of ways in which people of color entered into and interacted with their surroundings. It suggests that migration, both voluntary and forced, courses through the Black experience.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl Janifer LaRoche
Keyword(s):  
Black Churches ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Underground Railroad ◽  
Alternative Perspective ◽  
Free Black ◽  
Parallel Connections

This book explores the free Black communities in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio and their associations with the Underground Railroad. Focusing on the Black settlements in Rocky Fork and Miller Grove in Illinois, Lick Creek in Indiana, and Poke Patch in Ohio, it considers how the Underground Railroad movement secretly operated in conjunction with free Blacks and their historic Black churches. The book uses vital elements of what it calls the “geography of resistance” to examine the mechanisms of escape from slavery from an alternative perspective. By drawing on geography in combination with archaeology, community and church histories, and traditional Underground Railroad stories, the book makes visible unrecognized parallel connections between free Black communities and larger better-known abolitionist centers.

Sacramental Shame in Black Churches

2020 ◽  
pp. 141-165
Author(s):  
Theresa W. Tobin ◽  
Dawne Moon
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Black Churches ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
Church Members ◽  
African American Churches ◽  
Gender Minorities ◽  
Conservative Christians ◽  
American Churches

Drawing from a qualitative study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) conservative Christians and their allies, our research names a form of spiritual violence we call sacramental shame that impacts the lives of LGBTQ members. Through this shaming dynamic, homonegative churches make constant displays of endangered belonging a requirement for sexual/gender minorities’ acceptance and even their salvation. This chapter explores how racist discourses impact sacramental shame experiences for African-American LGBTQ church members. African-American churches have long resisted the spiritual violence of white supremacy; however, with the goal of protecting an image of Blackness that defies the sexual stereotypes at the root of white supremacy, they often unwittingly instil in LGBTQ members distinct forms of sacramental shame. At the same time, many in these churches cultivate personal relationships with a liberator God who sides with the oppressed, avenges those who endure injustice, and inspires communal work for justice, promoting a life-enhancing ethos of love.

scholarly journals The Fight is on in Texas

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Black Churches ◽  
Churches Of Christ ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Restoration Movement ◽  
African American Churches ◽  
First Time ◽  
American Churches ◽  
Growing Network

This groundbreaking work draws upon congregational histories and other primary sources to chronicle for the first time the story of African American Churches of Christ in Texas. Emerging out of the nineteenth-century Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement, the African American churches inherited from their white mentors both a Biblicist theology and a feisty spirit. Their “fight” was against religious error and in support of the true church as they understood it. Out of that “fight” emerged a growing network of congregations that by the mid-twentieth century reached throughout Texas. This book lifts out of obscurity the African American Christians who joined Ramsey’s “fight …out West” and who made black Churches of Christ in Texas what they are today.

Lick Creek, Indiana

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl Janifer LaRoche
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Orange County ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Underground Railroad ◽  
Northwest Ordinance ◽  
Northwest Territory ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines the relationship of Quakers and free Blacks in Lick Creek to the Underground Railroad. The Lick Creek settlement once existed in the southeast corner of Paoli Township, Orange County, in southern Indiana. In 1817, freeborn African Americans came to the area and purchased land in what later became the Lick Creek settlement. Blacks also came accompanying Quakers fleeing persecution in North Carolina. With the opening of frontier lands for settlement, free Blacks, encouraged by the antislavery provisions of the Northwest Ordinance, joined the country's westward passage to the Northwest Territory. This chapter first provides a background on Quakers and free Blacks at Lick Creek before focusing on William Paul Quinn's arrival in Indiana, where he built AME churches that became an important focal point of the Lick Creek community. It then considers the antislavery efforts of free Blacks, Quakers, and citizens of conscience working on the Underground Railroad on behalf of escaped slaves. It also discusses the participation of Indiana's Blacks in the Civil War.

scholarly journals The Difference Denominations Made: Identifying the Black Church(es) and Black Religious Choices of the Early Republic

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-290
Author(s):  
Kyle T. Bulthuis
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Black Church ◽  
Early Republic ◽  
Black Churches ◽  
American Religious History ◽  
Black Religion ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Black Clergy ◽  
The Difference ◽  
American Churches

ABSTRACTScholars of African-American religious history have recently debated the significance of the black church in American history. Those that have, pro and con, have often considered the black church as a singular entity, despite the fact that African Americans affiliated with a number of different religious traditions under the umbrella of the black church. This article posits that it is useful to consider denominational and theological developments within different African-American churches. Doing so acknowledges plural creations and developments of black churches, rather than a singular black church, which better accounts for the historical experience of black religion. In this piece, I analyze four different denominational and theological traditions that blacks followed in the early Republic: the Anglican–Episcopalian, the Calvinist (Congregational–Presbyterian), the Methodist, and the Baptist. Each offered a unique ecclesiastical structure and set of theological assumptions within which black clergy and laity operated. Each required different levels of interaction with white coreligionists, and, although some tended to offer more direct opportunities for reform and resistance, all groups suffered differing constraints that limited such action. I argue that the two bodies connected to formalist traditions, the Episcopalian and Calvinist, were initially better developed despite their smaller size, and thus disproportionately shaped black community and reform efforts in the antebellum United States.

Poke Patch, Ohio

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl Janifer LaRoche
Keyword(s):  
Black Community ◽  
The State ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Underground Railroad ◽  
Escape Strategy ◽  
Free Black ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Black Baptist

This chapter examines the relationship between the Underground Railroad and Poke Patch's free Black community, arguing that routes connecting iron furnace regions surrounding the community reveal an overlooked escape strategy for those fleeing slavery. After providing an overview of Ohio's multiple highly developed routes along the Underground Railroad, the chapter discusses the role of Poke Patch as an Underground Railroad site in the state. It then considers the Black Baptist Church's involvement in the Underground Railroad, along with the AME Church's role in helping escapees fleeing slavery. It also describes several escape routes leading into and out of Poke Patch, including one that converged at Berlin Crossroads, and those running toward Ohio's iron furnaces in Lawrence and Gallia Counties. The chapter explains how routes connecting these iron furnaces served as major pathways to freedom, with free Blacks silently operating in the background.

Miller Grove, Illinois

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl Janifer LaRoche
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Community Formation ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Underground Railroad ◽  
American Missionary Association ◽  
White Families ◽  
Missionary Work ◽  
South Central ◽  
History Of ◽  
Archaeological Excavations

This chapter examines the connections between the Miller Grove community of free Blacks and the Underground Railroad. Established in 1844, Miller Grove is a cluster of rural farmsteads named for Bedford Miller, whose family stood among the sixty-eight people who received their freedom from one of four White families in south-central Tennessee. Primary archaeological excavations at Miller Grove took place at the farmstead of William Riley Williams, a free-born African American from Tennessee. Among the original migrants, former slaveholder Henry Sides and his wife lived among the freemen and freewomen at Miller Grove. This chapter begins with a discussion of how the American Missionary Association, through its missionary work, linked known Underground Railroad participants across the country. It then considers abolitionist strategies, particularly the dissemination of antislavery literature among African Americans. By tracing the history of Miller Grove, the chapter reveals distinct details of community formation and interracial cooperation within regional Underground Railroad operations.

The Brand’s PREACH Model: Predicting Readiness to Engage African American Churches in Health

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (5) ◽  
pp. 763-771 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dorine J. Brand ◽  
Reginald J. Alston
Keyword(s):  
Health Promotion ◽  
African American ◽  
Physical Structure ◽  
African American Churches ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Key Informant ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Health Model ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
American Churches

Despite many attempts to reduce health disparities, health professionals face obstacles in improving poor health outcomes within the African American (AA) community. To promote change for improved health measures, it is important to implement culturally tailored programming through a trusted institution, such as the AA church. While churches have the potential to play an important role in positively impacting health among AAs, it is unclear what attributes are necessary to predict success or failure for health promotion within these institutions. The purpose of this study was to create a model, the Brand’s PREACH ( Predicting Readiness to Engage African American Churches in Health) Model, to predict the readiness of AA churches to engage in health promotion programming. Thirty-six semistructured key informant interviews were conducted with 12 pastors, 12 health leaders, and 12 congregants to gain information on the relationship between church infrastructure (physical structure, personnel, funding, and social/cultural support), readiness, and health promotion programming. The findings revealed that church infrastructure has an association with and will predict the readiness of a church to engage in health promotion programming. The ability to identify readiness early on will be useful for developing, implementing, and evaluating faith-based interventions, in partnership with churches, which is a key factor for sustainable and effective programs.

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