Jackson, Tennessee: Publishing House C.M.E.
Church, 1949. 7½” x 5¼”. Brown cloth over boards, title gilt. Pp. 176 + correction slip tipped in. Very good: cloth frayed at spine tips and lightly spotted; inked owner name to front pastedown and a handful of other numerical and brief notations; a few pages with a tiny tear at edge, faint crease or spot of adhesion, not affecting any content.

This is a scarce history of an African American religious denomination, the Colored (now Christian) Methodist Episcopal Church (CME). Filled with photographic images, particularly of female leaders, the book was written by two women who played major roles in the church and was issued by the CME's own publishing house.

The work's introduction set the stage:

“This little book is about a Negro church . . . It is the story of Negroes who directly after the Civil War, dissatisfied with their surrounding in the white mother church, asked to be set apart into a church of their own. It is the story of how those unlearned and untrained Negroes in spite of opposition and abuse and poverty, kept their church going and growing through the long years until it had become one of the leading Negro churches in the land.”

The book includes a brief history of Methodism overall, noting its formation in England and move to America, “in 1766. Barbara Heck, a woman, was one of the leaders and Methodism since has always used women in the work of the church.” It goes on to detail the “discontent” that grew among African American congregants, disputes and separations, and the CME's official formation in 1870 in Jackson, Tennessee. There is background on early conferences and leaders, “the organizational set up,” schools founded by the church and a list of further reading.

Of note is the section on the women's Connectional Council, organized in 1918. While it shared that women had been “assisting in every way” since the “birth” of the church, it took the Council's formation to earn the “slight recognition and authority to assist in building churches, educate the youth and to extend the boundaries of Colored Methodism.” It listed the 18 founding Council members, reported on meetings and achievements such as the magazine The Messenger, edited by Eula Wallace Harris, one of the authors of this book. Harris served as Council vice president from 1939 to 1943, yielding that role to her co-author, Maxie Harris Craig. Of the 130 images in this book, 66 depict women, and most include biographies as well. The remainder of the work concerns CME schools, with images of buildings, college presidents and faculty, as well as shots of members at conferences and workshops, a hospital and a “ground breaking scene for [the] new publishing house.”

An uncommon, thorough and highly visual history of an important African American religious group, heavy on women's history and published by their own means. OCLC shows eight holdings. Very good. Item #8658