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But, as in other urban African American communities, the institutional and
cultural cornerstone of Black Baltimore was the Black church - or, rather, the
legion of Black churches in the city.
One unusual feature of Black Christianity in Baltimore was that it included a
significant number of Black Catholics, estimated to number over 12,000 in the early
1930s. The Baltimore Catholic Church's large Black following did not, however,
indicate that this church provided an effective bridge across the color bar between
African American and European ethnic Catholics. Most Black Catholics in
Baltimore, like almost all Black Protestants, attended non-integrated, all-Black
churches. There were four large all-Black Catholic Churches with a combined
membership of 9,000 in the early 1930s, including the oldest Black parish in the
United States dating from 1864. Those 3,000 or so African Americans who
attended predominantly white Catholic churches sat in segregated pews.
Significantly, none of the 14 priests working with Black Catholics in Baltimore were
African American, though 50 of 161 nuns were. "
The unusual prominence of Black Catholics notwithstanding. Black
Protestants were four- to five-times as numerous as Black Catholics during the
period and were the mainstream of Black Christianity in Baltimore. Given the
importance of African American Protestantism in the community, it is important to
emphasize how diverse it was. Of 216 Black Protestant churches (approximately
one for every 425 Black adults), nine had regular memberships of over 1,000, and,
on the other end of the spectrum, several times that number had memberships of
less than 50. The rest were in between. A few were long established (5 were over
100 years old); a few had large, impressive houses of worship like the Sharp Street
Methodist Episcopal Church, with the oldest Black-built sanctuary in the city, or
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Bethel African Methodist Episcopal. But over 100 were of recent origin and held
meetings in store fronts or houses. As many as two score of the Black pastors in the
city claimed college and seminary degrees; many more lacked any formal
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