The 1895 National Baptist Convention marked the peak of race-conscious institutional organizing.

Evidence

Race consciousness reached its apogee with the creation of the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A. in 1895. Determined to create a forum through which black people could voice their spiritual, economic, political, and social concerns, the convention’s leaders equated racial self-determination with black denominational hegemony. These ideas were not unique to the black Baptist church. The African Methodist Episcopal Church had emerged as a separate denomination during the dawning years of the nineteenth century.’* By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries all the black denominations had established community institutions and advanced the philosophy of racial self-help. But it was in the black Baptist church where this philosophy found its largest following. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 56

Categorization

• XREF: The National Baptist Convention formation in 1895 and its equation of self-determination with denominational hegemony informs why Higginbotham’s subject — black Baptist women — matured inside this precise institutional vehicle. — connects to: The National Baptist Convention asserted autonomous control of black racial life — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 327; White Baptist exclusion over slavery drove black Baptists to form their own national convention — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 44; The National Baptist Convention claimed over sixty percent of black church members by 1906. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 57 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Black Baptists formed a racially bounded imagined community claiming sovereign autonomy from white control #expands (0.85) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 1076
• The National Baptist Convention asserted autonomous control of black racial life #expands (0.82) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 327
• The National Baptist Convention claimed over sixty percent of black church members by 1906. #corroborates (0.78) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 57
• Black Baptists were the largest black institution countering American racial exclusion. #corroborates (0.76) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 57
• White Baptist exclusion over slavery drove black Baptists to form their own national convention #qualifies (0.75) — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 44