[William Lloyd Garrison by Archibald H. Grimke]@TWC D-Link bookWilliam Lloyd Garrison CHAPTER VIII 7/20
"Brimstone Corner" could not stand him another Lord's day, and thereupon promptly expelled him and his family out of its midst.
The good deacons displayed their capacity for shielding their flock from consorting with "niggers," by availing themselves of a technicality to relet the pew to a member who was not cursed with a dark skin.
On another Lord's day, in another stronghold of Boston Christianity, Oliver Johnson ran the battery of "indignant frowns of a large number of the congregation" for daring to take a fellow-Christian with a skin not colored like his own into his pew, to listen to Dr.Beecher.The good people of the old Baptist meeting-house, at Hartford, Conn., had evidently no intention of disturbing the heavenly calm of their religious devotions by so much as a thought of believers with black faces; for by boarding up the "negro pews" in front and leaving only peep-holes for their occupants, they secured themselves from a sight of the obnoxious creatures, while Jehovah, who is no respecter of persons, was in His holy place.
Incredible as it may seem, a church in the town of Stoughton, Mass., to rid itself of even a semblance of Christian fellowship and equality with a colored member, did actually cut the floor from under the colored member's pew! These cruel and anti-Christian distinctions in the churches affected Garrison in the most painful manner.
He says: "I never can look up to these wretched retreats for my colored brethren without feeling my soul overwhelmed with emotions of shame, indignation, and sorrow." He had such an intimate acquaintance with members of this despised caste in Boston and Philadelphia, and other cities, and appreciated so deeply their intrinsic worth and excellence, as men and brethren, that he felt their insults and injuries as if they were done to himself.
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