The History of the Negro Church

Carter Godwin Woodson, the historian who would later found Black History Month, wrote this foundational account of how the Black church became the most vital institution in African American life. The book traces an extraordinary journey: from the era when white colonists considered enslaved Africans unworthy of Christian conversion, through the painful contradictions of missionaries who preached salvation while accepting slavery, to the bold establishment of independent Black denominations that offered not just spiritual refuge but organizational power for an oppressed people. Woodson documents how enslaved men and women transformed a religion forced upon them into one of resistance, using the Bible's language of liberation to sustain their humanity. The Negro Church emerged as school, courtroom, political headquarters, and sanctuary all at once. This 1916 work remains essential for understanding how faith became inseparable from the fight for Black freedom and dignity in America, and why the church still occupies a unique place in the nation's cultural and political landscape.