{"id":720,"date":"2021-05-20T17:04:41","date_gmt":"2021-05-20T17:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/antislavery\/?page_id=720"},"modified":"2021-05-20T17:32:03","modified_gmt":"2021-05-20T17:32:03","slug":"baptist-sunday-school-class","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/antislavery\/antislavery-in-small-things-project\/2020-21-projects\/baptist-sunday-school-class\/","title":{"rendered":"Baptist Sunday School Class"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Reece Gordon<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Figure 1: Baptist Sunday School group in Amherstburg, Ontario, c.1910<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My research focuses on Black Sunday schools in late-nineteenth century Ontario. This was inspired by a photograph of a Black Baptist Sunday school class in Amherstburg, found in the Alvin D. McCurdy fonds at the Archives of Ontario. The photograph, dated 1910, depicts a group of Black children sitting outside on a lawn, surrounded by their Sunday school teachers. The children and their instructors wear their Sunday best, consisting of fine white dresses, shoes, and neatly arranged hairdos. The photograph was likely preserved by the members of First Baptist Church in Amherstburg and passed to Alvin McCurdy for his personal collection on Black social organizations in early Ontario. This photograph inspired several themes for investigation, including barriers to Black education, the growth of the Black Baptist church, and the role of Black educators and community organizers in nineteenth-century Ontario.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The First Baptist Church of Amherstburg, Ontario, is a living monument to Black resilience. Established in the 1840s, alongside the Amherstburg Regular Missionary Baptist Association (ARMBA), it provided escaped and freed slaves with a religious community, a proper education, and a basis for social organization. Without doubt, its most successful and enduring activity was its Sunday school – sometimes called a Sabbath school – which gave Black children the biblical and literaracy training they were denied in white institutions. Since most of Canadian society was segregated, the Black church became \u201cthe fugitives\u2019 school, college, and municipal government.\u201d[1]<\/a> On any given Sunday, \u201c[blacks] could participate with dignity, pride, and freedom\u201d as pastors, deacons, members of the choir, or teachers in Sunday school classes.[2]<\/a> Black churches also served as welfare institutions, providing food, clothing, housing, and job opportunities.[3]<\/a> Hence, for Black children and adults in nineteenth-century Amherstburg, the First Baptist Church and its Sabbath school were sources of empowerment, welfare, and identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black Sunday schools have a long and turbulent history. In eighteenth-century Britain, Sunday school societies promoted classes for needy children and slaves. Still, they banned Black students from learning to write, creating \u201can unsurmountable barrier against their approaching to anything like an equality with their masters.\u201d[4]<\/a> In the United States, Black children in the 1830s were forbidden from learning to read and write. Nat Turner\u2019s slave rebellion in 1831 influenced these policies, as many Southerners feared another uprising by literate and biblically informed slaves.[5]<\/a> For that reason, well into the 1850s, preachers and missionaries serving enslaved populations distanced themselves from the terms \u201cSunday school\u201d or \u201cSabbath school\u201d because those phrases were perceived as dangerous by white society.[6]<\/a> Even in the border states where Black Sunday schools were legal, teachers feared that violent mobs would still destroy their buildings and drive away their students.[7]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Escaped and freed slaves migrating to Canada in the 1850s hoped that they could freely educate their children. While the threat of violence was less present in Canada, segregation in the Province of Ontario meant that Black families were often excluded from white churches and schools. Although British law provided a standard education for all Canadian youth, many towns built separate schools to keep the races apart. In extreme cases, district schools preferred to be closed rather than allow Black children to attend classes.[8]<\/a> During a meeting of the Amherstburg Public School Trustees in 1851, the board even appealed to the public, including teachers, to exclude Black children. While the board appointed a schoolteacher to oversee Black schools, it was \u201cnot over[ly] generous in giving aid to the coloured school at this time.\u201d[9]<\/a> Consequentially, the children had to meet in a small low building with no chalkboard or chairs, described by one observer as \u201ccomfortless and repulsive.\u201d[10]<\/a> Indeed, Ontario\u2019s Black schools struggled to keep the doors open. Attendance was poor and unpredictable, and the teaching material was often outdated. In Amherstburg, a Black teacher reported being \u201cmuch troubled by the frequent absences of the pupils, and the miserable tattered and worn-out condition of the books.\u201d[11]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Missionaries also played a role in promoting and preserving black learning institutions. In January 1846, a white Baptist missionary, Isaac J. Rice, wrote to the superintendent of schools for Canada West. He complained about the local trustees, who would, rather than send their children to school with Black students, \u201ccut their children\u2019s heads off and throw them into the roadside ditch.\u201d[12]<\/a> A few months later, Lewis Hayden, an escaped slave and activist in Canada, wrote to the abolitionist Mary Weston Chapman: \u201cI wish to note that by letter and correspondence with the missionary of Amherstburg, Isaac J. Rice, who has long suffered there on behalf of my people, I learn of the great struggles about schools and all kinds of rights. That officers of government [\u2026] drive from schools the colored and hinder amalgamation as they may.\u201d[13]<\/a> Rice had been aiding escaped slaves and the poor of Amherstburg since 1838 from his missionary home. Amherstburg was, in his own words, \u201cthe principal terminus of the Underground Railroad of the West,\u201d yet Rice found it challenging to secure funding.[14]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Black church, Black Sunday school began as an \u201cinstitution within an institution.\u201d[15]<\/a> Throughout the nineteenth-century, Blacks felt increasingly unwelcome in white congregations. For Black Baptists, one of the chief concerns was the quality of education. As one African-American settler in Ontario complained: \u201cwe must admonish our Baptist and Methodist friends, that they are sadly in fault since they neglected their duty and done nothing for us when they have been earnestly entreated to do something, nor are our \u201cFree Mission Baptist\u201d friends even to be excused in this case.\u201d[16]<\/a> As a result of this neglect, Black Baptists organized their own churches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first Black Baptist church in Ontario was established by Elder William Wilkes. Transported from Africa to Virginia at the age of ten, Wilkes arrived in Amherstburg in 1818 and purchased land in neighbouring Colchester Township. There, Wilkes built a log meeting house and launched his preaching ministry.[17]<\/a> On October 8, 1841, ARMBA was established in the home of John Liberty to amalgamate the black Baptist churches of Michigan and Ontario. Its founding church, Amherstburg First Baptist, invited other Baptist congregations to join the \u201cgreat Celestial cause.\u201d[18]<\/a> By the end of 1841, ARMBA consisted of Amherstburg Baptist, Detroit Baptist, and Sandwich Baptist \u2013 each with less than twenty congregants.[19]<\/a> In 1842, ARMBA dedicated itself to the creation of Sabbath Schools \u201cfor the benefit of the rising generation and for [its] edification.\u201d[20]<\/a> The pastor of Amherstburg First Baptist, Rev. Anthony Binga, declared:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If all our churches would live up to their high privileges and exert a holy influence, it would disarm our enemies, overthrow prejudice and sectarianism and do more good than nice deliberations, or loud contentions against the errors and follies of the world [\u2026] It would rouse an interest in education, for where a people feel a deep interest in spiritual things, there is likely to be an interest in intellectual pursuits.[21]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The resolution passed by ARMBA on the importance of education was determined to let all church members \u201csearch the scriptures for themselves,\u201d for the time had come to \u201cget out of the dark and in to the light.\u201d[22]<\/a> ARMBA also expanded to include the Baptist Sunday School Committee and the Women\u2019s Home Missionary Society. Female members often hosted community fundraisers, such as in 1876, when the organization funded a Sabbath school library for the Shrewsbury Baptist Church.[23]<\/a> Women also had the chance to become religious leaders in their communities. In 1885, Rev. Jennie Johnson preached as the minister of Dresden First Baptist Church, and taught in its schoolhouse. Although not instituted as a pastor, Mamie Branton of the Amherstburg Women\u2019s Home Mission made visits to Baptist congregations across Canada West. In 1893, Branton took to the pulpit in North Buxton where she \u201cgave a very able discourse from the 37 chap. of Ezekiel, to a very attentive congregation.\u201d[24]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 1860, almost every church in the association had organized a Sunday school.[25]<\/a> When Rev. William Mitchell visited Chatham in 1857, he commented that he had \u201cthe pleasure of addressing three hundred children in School,\u201d and judged it was \u201cprobably […] the largest, if not the best conducted Sunday School in Canada.\u201d[26]<\/a> The common desire for black education also allowed ARMBA to associate with churches across denominations. In Sandwich, the Baptist and Methodist Sabbath schools joined together for church picnics.[27]<\/a> Delegates from the African Methodist Episcopalian Church (AME) addressed members of the ARMBA Sabbath School Convention, stating their common purpose: \u201calthough working under different names and methods our aims are the same. We are striving to make men and women of our children, we are striving to lay the foundation for the future church, and last, but not least, we are striving to show our children the path which leads to eternal glory.\u201d[28]<\/a> By the turn of the nineteenth-century, ARBMA openly welcomed AME and BME members to preach in their churches and teach in their classrooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1910, eighteen-year-old Jessie Walls spoke to the Baptist Sunday School Convention in Buxton. Her speech, titled \u201cOpportunity,\u201d praised Sunday schools as one of the many vehicles for Black self-improvement:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the church and Sunday School, in our homes, and at our work whatever our occupation may be, we should learn the lessons of life thoroughly, and train ourselves into a habit of readiness and skillfulness in putting our knowledge into use. [\u2026] If we endeavor to obtain useful knowledge of the things that we encounter, and train ourselves to apply that knowledge quickly and readily, we cannot fail to take advantage of our opportunities whenever they present themselves.[29]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within the walls of Sunday schools, Black Ontarians learned \u201cthe importance of self-help, [\u2026] literary skills, proper behaviour, and a political awareness,\u201d empowering them with \u201cthe opportunity to demand respect and fair laws.\u201d[30]<\/a> The children photographed in my primary source had a secure Black institution that cared for their physical, spiritual, and intellectual needs. The Black Church and its partner institutions would continue to champion the cause of Black Ontarians throughout the twentieth century, and until last segregated school in Ontario was closed in 1965. Today, ARMBA continues to operate and raise funds for its Sunday schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bibliography<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBaptist Sunday School group in Amherstburg, Ontario, [ca. 1910].\u201d Alvin D. McCurdy Fonds, F 2076-16-5-1-38. Archives of Ontario<\/em>. http:\/\/www.archives.gov.on.ca\/en\/explore\/online\/black_history\/big\/big_20_baptist_school.aspx<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boylan, Ann M. Sunday School: The Formation of an American Institution, 1790-1880<\/em>. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1988.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brigden, Lorene. \u201cLifting as we Climb\u201d: The Emergence of African-Canadian Civil Society in Southern Ontario (1840-1901),\u201d PhD. diss., University of Waterloo, 2016. <\/a>UWSpace<\/em>, http:\/\/hdl.handle.net\/10012\/11002<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

–. \u201cTaylor Family.\u201d Amherstburg Freedom Museum<\/em>, amherstburgfreedom.org\/taylor-family\/.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cornelius, Janet Duitsman. Slave Missions and the Black Church in the Antebellum South<\/em>. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Este, David. \u201cBlack Churches in Canada: Vehicles for Fostering Community Development in African-Canadian Communities \u2013 a Historical Analysis\u201d in Spirituality and Social Work: Selected Canadian Readings<\/em>, ed. John Coates et al., 299-321. Toronto: Canadian Scholars\u2019 Press Inc., 2007.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenson, Carole. \u201cHistory of the Negro Community in Essex County 1850-1860.\u201d Master\u2019s Thesis, University of Windsor, 1966. https:\/\/scholar.uwindsor.ca\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=7431&context=etd<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLetter from Lewis Hayden, Detroit, [Michigan], to Maria Weston Chapman, May 14 \/ [18]46.\u201d Correspondence. May 14, 1846. Digital Commonwealth<\/em>, https:\/\/ark.digitalcommonwealth.org\/ark:\/50959\/qz20vq66m.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lewis, James K. Religious Life of Fugitive Slaves and Rise of Coloured Baptist Churches, 1820-1865, In What is Now Known as Ontario<\/em>. New York: Arno Press, 1980.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Silverman, Jason H. Unwelcome Guests: Canada West\u2019s Response to American Fugitive Slaves, 1800-1865<\/em>. Millwood: Associated Faculty Press Inc., 1985. https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/unwelcomeguestsc00silv\/mode\/2up<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winks, Robin W. \u201cNegro School Segregation in Ontario and Nova Scotia.\u201d Canadian Historical Review<\/em> 50, no. 2 (1969): 164-191. https:\/\/doi.org\/ 10.3138\/CHR-050-02-03<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yee, Shirley J. \u201cGender Ideology and Black Women as Community\u2010Builders in Ontario, 1850-70.\u201d Canadian Historical Review<\/em> 75, no. 1 (1994): 53-73. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3138\/CHR-075-01-03<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> Jason H. Silverman, Unwelcome Guests: Canada West\u2019s Response to American Fugitive Slaves, 1800-1865<\/em> (Millwood: Associated Faculty Press Inc., 1985), 97<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> David Este, \u201cBlack Churches in Canada: Vehicles for Fostering Community Development in African-Canadian Communities \u2013 a Historical Analysis\u201d in Spirituality and Social Work: Selected Canadian Readings<\/em>, ed. John Coates (Toronto: Canadian Scholars\u2019 Press Inc., 2007), 303<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a> Este, \u201cBlack Churches in Canada,\u201d 309<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/a> Janet Duitsman Cornelius, Slave Missions and the Black Church in the Antebellum South<\/em> (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999), 132<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5]<\/a> Ann M Boylan, Sunday School: The Formation of an American Institution, 1790-1880<\/em> (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1988), 26<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6]<\/a> Cornelius, Slave Missions<\/em>, 132<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[7]<\/a> Cornelius, 133-134<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[8]<\/a> Shirley J. Yee, \u201cGender Ideology and Black Women as Community\u2010Builders in Ontario, 1850-70.\u201d Canadian Historical Review<\/em> 75, no. 1 (1994): 68<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[9]<\/a> Carole Jenson, \u201cHistory of the Negro Community in Essex County 1850-1860.\u201d (Master\u2019s Thesis, University of Windsor, 1966), 24<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[10]<\/a> Jenson, \u201cHistory of the Negro Community in Essex County,\u201d 24<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[11]<\/a> Yee, \u201cGender Ideology,\u201d 67-68<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[12]<\/a> Robin W. Winks, \u201cNegro School Segregation in Ontario and Nova Scotia.\u201d Canadian Historical Review<\/em> 50, no. 2 (1969): 172<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[13]<\/a> \u201cLetter from Lewis Hayden, Detroit, [Michigan], to Maria Weston Chapman, May 14 \/ [18]46.\u201d Correspondence. May 14, 1846. Digital Commonwealth. <\/em>https:\/\/ark.digitalcommonwealth.org\/ark:\/50959\/qz20vq66m<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[14]<\/a> Jenson, \u201cHistory of the Negro Community in Essex County,\u201d 12-13<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[15]<\/a> Cornelius, Slave Missions<\/em>, 133<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[16]<\/a> Este, \u201cBlack Churches in Canada,\u201d 309<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[17]<\/a> Jenson, \u201cHistory of the Negro Community in Essex County,\u201d 11<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[18]<\/a> Lorene Brigden, \u201cLifting as we Climb\u201d: The Emergence of African-Canadian Civil Society in Southern Ontario (1840-1901),\u201d (PhD. diss., University of Waterloo, 2016), 141<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[19]<\/a> Jenson, \u201cHistory of the Negro Community in Essex County,\u201d 25-26<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[20]<\/a> Silverman, Unwelcome Guests<\/em>,93<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[21]<\/a> Silverman, 94<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[22]<\/a> Este, \u201cBlack Churches in Canada,\u201d 311<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[23]<\/a> Yee, \u201cGender Ideology,\u201d 64<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[24]<\/a> Brigden, \u201cLifting as we Climb,\u201d 154<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[25]<\/a> Silverman, Unwelcome Guests<\/em>, 93<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[26]<\/a> James K. Lewis, Religious Life of Fugitive Slaves and Rise of Coloured Baptist Churches, 1820-1865, In What is Now Known as Ontario<\/em> (New York: Arno Press, 1980), 105<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[27]<\/a> Brigden, \u201cLifting as we Climb,\u201d 163<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[28]<\/a> Brigden, 164<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[29]<\/a> Lorene Brigden, \u201cTaylor Family.\u201d Amherstburg Freedom Museum<\/em>, amherstburgfreedom.org\/taylor-family\/.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[30]<\/a> Brigden, \u201cLifting as we Climb,\u201d 43<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reece Gordon My research focuses on Black Sunday schools in late-nineteenth century Ontario. This was inspired by a photograph of a Black Baptist Sunday school class in Amherstburg, found in the Alvin D. McCurdy fonds at the Archives of Ontario. The photograph, dated 1910, depicts a group of Black children sitting outside on a lawn, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"parent":709,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_mc_calendar":[],"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-720","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/antislavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/antislavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/antislavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/antislavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/antislavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/antislavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/720\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/antislavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.huronresearch.ca\/antislavery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}