CHAPTER 7
Racism and Democracy
Fighting Jim Crow
RAYFORD W. LOGAN, in his book The Betrayal of the Negro
described the turn of the century as the low point in
Afro-American history. After Emancipation, he contended, the
hopes of the Negroes were betrayed. Again they were pushed down
into second-class status. It appeared that democracy was for
whites only. Actually, the increasing growth of racism and of
segregation as well, led inevitably to the development of opposition groups
bent on destroying this discrimination. Segregation promoted the
creation of Negro institutions which then became the center for
this counterattack.
The most prominent of these Afro-American institutions was the
Negro church. Like the white church, it was fragmented into many
separate denominations. There was the African Methodist
Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church,
the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, the National Baptists,
and a host of denominational organizations.
However, integrated congregations within the mainly white
church groups were almost nonexistent.
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