Black Protest against Dwight L. Moody, Part 4: “A Dividing Fence Was Put Up”

(Photo by Daniel Janzen on Unsplash)

Note: this is part 4 of a series giving context for an 1886 article by Francis Grimké; see:

• Francis Grimke, “Mr. Moody and the Color Question in the South” (1886)
• “Caste Prejudice”: Black Protest against Dwight L. Moody, Part 1: 1885
• “The whole colored clergy was ignored”: Black Protest against Dwight L. Moody, Part 2: 1886)
• “DO NOT WANT MOODY”: Black Protest against Dwight L. Moody, Part 3: 1887–1894

Two Decades of “The Middle Wall of Separation”

In May 1876, Moody conducted a revival in Augusta, Georgia. An observer felt that “Perhaps there was never a time before now where religious feeling was stronger, deeper, or more general in Augusta… Mr. Moody thinks the cause of Christ ten-fold stronger upon earth than ever before, and that the great interest that is manifested in Augusta is but a type of the general spread of the gospel among the nations that is going on.” Of course, that “religious feeling” related to “piety” and “fervor” but had nothing to do with conviction over racism or white-supremacy. Apparently, at these meetings, whites literally put up a “wall of separation” to keep Black people in their place: 

“When he first began holding his open-air meetings here, negroes mingled so indiscriminately with the audience that it became disagreeable to the whites, and a dividing fence was put up. Mr. Moody did not like this, and spoke of it, when one of our pastors informed him that it was impossible for the blacks and whites to mingle even in a religious audience. Mr. Moody then said, “I see you have not gotten over your rebellious feelings yet.” “No,” said the minister, “I am proud of my rebellious feelings and will be a rebel until I die.” The conversation was designably interrupted by others, and the matter was dropped.”

“Our Augusta Letter,” The Atlanta Constitution, May 4, 1876.

The matter was dropped, but the fence was not, and this “dividing fence” would remain a fixture at Moody’s meetings in the south for over two decades. This account of the “dividing fence” was reprinted across the country, in the New York Times, in the Chicago Tribune, in Boston, in Nashville, in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Iowa, and even across the Atlantic in England and in Scotland. (newspapers.com search).

Moody may have been personally opposed to segregation, but at his own meetings, he actually practiced it for nearly twenty years.

“DO NOT WANT MOODY”: Black Protest against Dwight L. Moody, Part 3: 1887–1894

Note: this is part 3 of a series giving context for an 1886 article by Francis Grimké; see: 

• Francis Grimke, “Mr. Moody and the Color Question in the South” (1886)
• “Caste Prejudice”: Black Protest against Dwight L. Moody, Part 1: 1885
• “The whole colored clergy was ignored”: Black Protest against Dwight L. Moody, Part 2: 1886
• Black Protest against Dwight L. Moody, Part 4: “A Dividing Fence Was Put Up”

In 1885 and 1886, Black leaders, both within and outside the church, protested Dwight L. Moody’s segregated revivals. Did their protest have any effect? How was the memory of Moody’s racist practice and the Black response to it passed on over the years? Did Moody himself take any notice of these Black voices? This post examines these questions, with a particular interest in the way Francis Grimké’s experience and his published protest was referenced by other Black pastors in subsequent years.

A. M. E. Church in New York: “Mr. Moody Could Not Preach in a Barn” (1887)

William B. Derrick (source)

One year after Moody’s segregated tour of the south, and Francis Grimké’s published protest, the New York Annual Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church was held in June 1887 at the Bridge Street A. M. E. Church in Brooklyn. In their discussion on “the state of the country,” Dr. Benjamin T. Tanner (1845–1913) said this:

“The whole colored clergy was ignored”: Black Protest against Dwight L. Moody, Part 2: 1886

(image: Dwight L. Moody; Francis Grimké; Joseph Simeon Flipper)

(Note: this is part 2 of a series giving context for an 1886 article by Francis Grimké; see: 

• Francis Grimke, “Mr. Moody and the Color Question in the South” (1886)
• “Caste Prejudice”: Black Protest against Dwight L. Moody, Part 1: 1885
• “DO NOT WANT MOODY”: Black Protest against Dwight L. Moody, Part 3: 1887–1894
• Black Protest against Dwight L. Moody, Part 4: “A Dividing Fence Was Put Up”

In November 1885, Francis Grimké accepted a call to Laura Street Presbyterian Church in Jacksonville Florida. On January 1, 1886, Dwight L. Moody kicked off a tour that would last until April, and carry him throughout the breadth of the South. After stopping in Cleveland and Chicago, Moody’s itinerary would take him to Knoxville, Chattanooga, Nashville, and Memphis; then on to New Orleans, then Houston and Galveston, then back through Mobile, Oxford, and Selma, to Atlanta and Savannah, Jacksonville, then up to Charleston, Columbia, before finishing in Norfolk, Lynchburg, and Charlotte (“Revivalists on the Wing,” Savannah Morning News, January 1886). As had become his practice, every one of the meetings in the South was planned and conducted according to Jim Crow segregation.

Moody’s 1886 Southern Campaign (original map (1881) from the Library of Congress)

“Caste Prejudice”: Black Protest against Dwight L. Moody, Part 1: 1885

(image: D. L. Moody; Frederick Douglass; Robert Ingersoll; Francis Grimké)

Note: this is part 1 of a series giving context for an 1886 article by Francis Grimké; see: 

• Francis Grimke, “Mr. Moody and the Color Question in the South” (1886)
• “The whole colored clergy was ignored”: Black Protest against Dwight L. Moody, Part 2: 1886
• “DO NOT WANT MOODY”: Black Protest against Dwight L. Moody, Part 3: 1887–1894
• Black Protest against Dwight L. Moody, Part 4: “A Dividing Fence Was Put Up”

Francis Grimké very likely encountered Dwight L. Moody’s segregationist revival system for the first time in January 1885, when the evangelist was scheduled to hold a series of meetings in Washington, D. C. the weekend of January 16th to the 19th. Arguably the most famous evangelist in the world, Moody frequently attracted thousands of attendees to his meetings, and advance planning was necessary to coordinate all the logistics. The “Moody Machine” consisted of his own management team, which coordinated with local committees in each city where he visited, arranging the venues, the schedules, and the tickets to these meetings. In Washington, they decided to issue an invitation “to all ministers within a radius of fifty miles of the city, who are pastors in any evangelical church, to attend this convention… Admission will be by tickets, to be distributed by the city pastors to their membership” (“The Moody Meetings,” The National Republican, January 2, 1885).

Francis Grimke, “Mr. Moody and the Color Question in the South” (1886)

In early 1886, Dwight L. Moody conducted an evangelistic tour of the South, including cities in Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina and Virginia. Moody’s “revivals” were conducted with strict adherence to Jim Crow–all the planning committees in various cities were made up of white men, and separate services were planned for Black people. Among the cities that Moody visited was Jacksonville, Florida, where Francis Grimké was pastoring (from 1885 to 1889). Among the scheduled revival meetings in the city was one “for colored people only” (“Moody and Sankey,” Savannah Morning News, March 23, 1886).

A few months later, in July 1886, Francis Grimké wrote an article in the New York Independent excoriating Moody: “It is impossible to contemplate this man … without mingled feelings of pity and disgust”; Moody’s actions “call for only the severest condemnation.” Grimké quoted from an article published in the Savannah Morning News (“Mr. Moody’s Wise Course“), which was mistakenly cited as the “Laura Morning News” (Grimké was past of the Laura Street Presbyterian Church, which may explain the editor or typesetter’s mistake).

What happened to draw forth such a blistering critique against the most famous Christian in America? For the full story of Moody’s “Jim Crow Revivals” and Francis Grimké’s interaction with them, see:

• “Caste Prejudice”: Black Protest against Dwight L. Moody, Part 1: 1885
• “The whole colored clergy was ignored”: Black Protest against Dwight L. Moody, Part 2: 1886
• “DO NOT WANT MOODY”: Black Protest against Dwight L. Moody, Part 3: 1887–1894
• Black Protest against Dwight L. Moody, Part 4: “A Dividing Fence Was Put Up”

Here is a transcription of Grimké’s article (original available here):

Francis Grimké, “Mr. Moody and the Color Question in the South” (1886)Download

“The Color Question”: Two editions of Frederick Douglass’s 5th of July Speech at Hillsdale (1875)

On July 5, 1875, Frederick Douglass delivered a speech at Hillsdale (a part of Anacostia), in Washington, D. C. which he later titled “The Color Question.” David Blight describes it as a “withering jeremiad,” “one of the most controversial and compelling efforts of his postwar life”; “a remarkable address that was at once angry, historical, antiracist, and a confrontational appeal to black community self-reliance” (David Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, 556, 557).