Christianity for Negroes: The establishment and communal support of the 1st Colored churches in South Bend during the 19th & 20th centuries

Danisha L Marable, Purdue University

Abstract

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth 20 th century, many African Americans in search of lives with less discrimination, racial prejudice, and no Jim Crow laws, relocated to northern states. Upon their immediate settlement in South Bend, Indiana, African Americans were refused religious solace, in most, if not all, the local white churches. Since 1871, local African Americans, and their compassionate white Christian brethren, established the first Negro churches in South Bend: the Olivet African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church, the Saint Augustine Catholic Church and the Laymen Chapel Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. These churches and parishes, from the nineteenth through the twenty-first century, provided to members of their congregations and the local African American community, educational and social uplift programs that consistently sustained and constantly supported African Americans in South Bend, Indiana.

Degree

M.A.

Advisors

Lerner, Purdue University.

Subject Area

African American Studies|Religious history|Black history

COinS