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ethnic community.

There were some organizational forms among Black Protestants that
countered the decentralization of Baltimore's community-based Black Protestant
churches. The most successful of these appear to have been denominationally-
based associations of ministers* such as the African Methodist Episcopal Ministers
Conference and the Baptist Ministers Conference. There were also
interdenominational organizations of some strength. (Predictably, the white
Baltimore Federation of Churches, whose leadership was officially anti-Jim Crow
and willing to cooperate with Black churches on an ad hoc basis, was itself
segregated.) One of the important interdenominational undertakings of Black
Protestants was the Cooperative Council, founded in 1929 in an effort to improve
the quality of religious education for the young. Another was the
Interdenominational Ministers Alliance (IMA). The IMA was important because
of its long history of intervention in controversies around social justice for Blacks.
As early as 1902, the IMA led a delegation to Annapolis to protest segregation on
railroads and steamships, and its frequent intervention in social struggle continued
through the 1920s. Indeed, several of the denominational ministers conference also
had a history of political intervention. ^

Black Protestantism in Baltimore was, then, a complex phenomena.
Underlying many of the distinctions and differences of size, age, leadership,
denomination, and social orientation among Baltimore's Protestant churches, of
course, were differences of class and origin - especially urban or rural origin —
amongst the Black parishioners. Schematically, the larger AME and Methodist
Episcopal churches, located in the less depressed neighborhoods of northwest
Baltimore, tended to include larger numbers of upper-working class, middle-, and
upper-class Blacks with longer urban backgrounds. The smaller Baptist and less
mainstream denominations, located in the more depressed areas, especially in east