Black Churches Become Reconstruction's Social Infrastructure

Freed Black Southerners built or established thousands of independent churches in 1865-1877, withdrawing from white-controlled congregations. The African Methodist Episcopal Church grew from roughly 20,000 members in 1856 to over 400,000 by 1876. Black churches served simultaneously as schools, political organizing centers, community mutual aid societies, and repositories of cultural memory. Their leaders — ministers like Henry McNeal Turner — were among the most prominent political figures of R