hist. 21 Research Journal entry #5
our meeting to discuss our research topics is tomorrow, so this is a little last minute. i now know that i will be combining a specific topic- the racial division of Southern Protestant churches, with the broader question of religion's role in society. i came across the specific topic directly from our timeline discussion of the Civil War era in class, where we touched upon this division. i just found it fascinating that initially there was an effort to integrate blacks into white churches, before their differences caused them to segregate- something that exists on Sundays to this day. Anyways, the first place i went was to see what Carl Guarneri had to say on the subject. he touched upon this on page 163, when he said that after 1870 “the federal government backed away from protecting freed people’s civil rights and left them to fend for themselves.” it was a brief but relevant reference to my topic that i will reference to in the future. then, i decided to use specific wording to look up related books in the Alcuin search engine, using keywords like race, division, religion, and Reconstruction. i eventually came across Ward M. McAfee's "Religion, Race, and Reconstruction (1998)", and even looked up its location so i could check it out. from what i've read so far, it talks more about whether or not religion should be taught in schools than any racial division of churches. But in the next chapter, i came across discussion of a "Bible war" that was occurring between Catholics and Protestants, and this quote: “assisting black civil rights furthered the more important Protestant cause against a growing Catholic international conspiracy” (McAfee 51). All of a sudden, it was relevant, and even something that i haven't previously considered as relating to my topic. finally, i found Eric Foner and Olivia Mahoney's "America’s Reconstruction" (1997) in from the Alcuin search. I checked this book out from the library as well, and while it seems to be more for younger audiences with numerous pictures and larger text, i did find talk of something similar to my topic: “The church played a central role in the black community… inevitably, black ministers came to play a major role in politics” (Foner/Mahoney 41). Yet another aspect that i haven't previously considered as influencing this racial division, no matter how brief this discussion was in the book.