Equally convincing as to the educational progress of the colored race were the high attainments of those Negroes who, despite the fact that they had little opportunity, surpassed in intellect a large number of white men of their time.  Negroes were serving as salesmen, keeping accounts, managing plantations, teaching and preaching, and had intellectually advanced to the extent that fifteen or twenty per cent. of their adults could then at least read.  Most of this talented class became preachers, as this was the only calling even conditionally open to persons of African blood.  Among these clergymen was George Leile,[1] who won distinction as a preacher in Georgia in 1782, and then went to Jamaica where he founded the first Baptist church of that colony.  The competent and indefatigable Andrew Bryan[2] proved to be a worthy successor of George Leile in Georgia.  From 1770 to 1790 Negro preachers were in charge of congregations in Charles City, Petersburg, and Allen’s Creek in Lunenburg County, Virginia.[3] In 1801 Gowan Pamphlet of that State was the pastor of a progressive Baptist church, some members of which could read, write, and keep accounts.[4] Lemuel Haynes was then widely known as a well-educated minister of the Protestant Episcopal Church.  John Gloucester, who had been trained under Gideon Blackburn of Tennessee, distinguished himself in Philadelphia where he founded the African Presbyterian Church.[5] One of the most interesting of these preachers was Josiah Bishop.  By 1791 he had made such a record in his profession that he was called to the pastorate of the First Baptist Church (white) of Portsmouth, Virginia.[6] After serving his white brethren a number of years he preached some time in Baltimore and then went to New York to take charge of the Abyssinian Baptist Church.[7] This favorable condition of affairs could not long exist after the aristocratic element in the country began to recover some of the ground it had lost during the social upheaval of the revolutionary era.  It was the objection to treating Negroes as members on a plane of equality with all, that led to the establishment of colored Baptist churches and to the secession of the Negro Methodists under the leadership of Richard Allen in 1794.  The importance of this movement to the student of education lies in the fact that a larger number of Negroes had to be educated to carry on the work of the new churches.

[Footnote 1:  He was sometimes called George Sharp.  See Benedict, History of the Baptists, etc., p. 189.]

[Footnote 2:  Ibid., p. 189.]

[Footnote 3:  Semple, History of the Baptists, etc., p. 112.]

[Footnote 4:  Ibid., p. 114.]

[Footnote 5:  Baird, A Collection, etc., p. 817.]

[Footnote 6:  Semple, History of the Baptists, etc., p. 355.]

[Footnote 7:  Ibid., p. 356.]