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than a few hundred in 1930 and dwindled as the decade proceeded. By all
indications non-Christian forms of religion were not a major force among African
Americans in Baltimore. "
It is important to emphasize that Black Protestant churches in Baltimore,
with their tendencies toward neighborhood-based autonomy, functioned far more
as community centers than white Protestant churches did. The Black church
sponsored a far wider range of activities, both religious and semi-secular, than the
white church, and far more activities were specifically targeted young people, men,
women, or families as a whole. In addition to the Sunday schools, the choirs, and
the choral groups, youth societies were ubiquitous, men's and women's
organizations extremely common (often there were several of each at a given
church), regular Sunday dinners for the entire family were widespread. Produced
in cooperation with the Board of Education, dramatic presentations at churches
became popular throughout Black Baltimore on the eve of the Depression.
Moreover, a great many Black churches became, to varying degrees, social welfare
agencies for their own congregations, providing numerous forms of relief to
members in need and sometimes helping them to find jobs. Some churches even
organized their own sickness and death benefits societies.
The fact that Black Protestant churches often had broader social roles did
not mean that they were necessarily centers of social struggle, or that their
ministers invariably tended to be explicitly political. Some churches and pastors, of
course, were open advocates of social change (proportionally more than among
white Protestants), and there was a real tradition of overt political activism among
a section of the clergy and the laity. Others churches and pastors were more
accomodationalist or apparently apolitical. Explicit attitudes aside, though, Black
Protestant churches, because of their intimate and organic ties with Baltimore's
African American community, did as a whole represent a reserve, a potential
infrastructure, for community-based struggle that was unmatched in any other
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