Black Church as Civil and Political Space Under Repression

As Reconstruction institutions collapsed and political participation was criminalized, Black churches became the primary site of community organization, political education, and resistance in the South. The African Methodist Episcopal Church, with 400,000 members by 1880, and the National Baptist Convention, founded in 1895, provided meeting spaces, mutual aid networks, schools, and communication infrastructure beyond white control. Ministers like Henry McNeal Turner became explicit political vo