Or, A Colored Man's Reply to Bishop Foster. 83
Among the 250,000 Negro members of the Methodists Episcopal
■Church, I do not know one that has any desire to leave the grand
old Church, but there is a deep rooted and growing dissatisfaction,
It began from the day that the first colored and white Conference
was set up in the South. E. M. Collett.
For me to affirm that the 250,000 Negro communicants of the
Methodist Episcopal Church are satisfied with their present status
in the Church, would be to knowingly disregard the potency of ex¬
isting facts and conditions which would remain. They are not
satisfied. The Negro of to day is not the Negro in every particular
of a quarter of a century ago. True he is still a Negro in his racial
identity, but the changed conditions of things, have transformed
him into the fuller manhood with all of its possibilities active
Notwithstanding that considerable dissatisfaction exist along the
line mentioned J. Will Jackson.
There has been and still exists some dissatisfaction among some
of our colored members in the South. The book recently written.
by one of our bishops on the "Union of Episcopal Methodisms"
has the most part caused it. M. C. B. Mason.
discouragement.
There are some who have been led to believe that their presence
in the Church is not desired; that their presence become more and
more a hinderance and source of evil if not positive manace as they
become more intelligent^ that leadership from among their own
number of their own choice, will not be tolerated, and that aspira¬
tion on their part to positions (no matter if their moral, intellecual
and spiritual qualifications merit them) other than those already
granted them is to be met with unpleasant criticism if not insinua¬
tions of disloyalty. L. M. Hagood.
Some despair of overcoming race barriers and are ready to act
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