Methodist Episcopal Church, general secretaries of the church department, and leading laymen, met in session in Lincoln, Nebraska. Inasmuch as the purpose of this body was to devise and discuss means of improving the educational opportunities of the Southern Negroes, the churchmen of that race were present in good numbers. Some of the hotels in the city gave notice that they could not allow the colored delegates to eat in the main dining rooms, but that they could furnish them sleeping accommodations and serve them meals in their apartments.[87] It is along this line that the difficulty usually comes.
The Baptist denomination recently organized the General Baptist Convention of America, which held its first meeting in St. Louis in 1905. The next meeting was to have been in Louisville, Kentucky, May 5 and 16, 1906. The executive committee of the convention postponed the meeting for a year, assigning as their reason, or one of their reasons, the fact that they experienced difficulty in securing a church in which to hold the convention, the white Baptists being averse to having the colored members of the denomination assemble with them. It was arranged later that the whites and Negroes should meet in the same edifice, but that the Negroes should be restricted to the use of the balconies. This, however, was resented by the Negroes.[88]
The Presbyterian Church also has had to face the race problem. In its general assembly at Des Moines, Iowa, in 1906, the committee on church policies recommended the erection of a synod in Alabama to include the presbyteries of Birmingham, Levere, and Rogersville, which are composed of colored churches. They had hitherto been included in the synod of Tennessee. The report provoked
