In many ways, the experience of Black members in the MEC was not that different from other Black Churches. At the congregational level, there was never a great deal of racial mixing, and for the most part, both races were fine with that. A distinction was drawn, however, between voluntary separation and enforced segregation, which Blacks and their white allies decried as racial caste. A national controversy erupted when the Freedmen’s Aid Society bowed to pressure from their southern white members and established Chattanooga University as a school “for whites.” The MEC’s 1884 General Conference enacted contradictory policies in response to the outcry. On the one hand, local administrators were given considerable leeway in their admissions policy, while at the same time it was decreed that “no student shall be excluded from instruction … because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” In effect, Church policy offered support to schools for whites as long as they were kept white by means other than excluding Blacks.
The aspirations of Blacks in the MEC came to rest largely on the hope that fellowship with whites within the Church’s institutional hierarchy would enable them to gain respect and recognition. Yet they were constantly reminded that they lacked the institutional autonomy enjoyed by the African Methodist denominations and thus dependent on white patronage and denied opportunities for advancement. That dilemma was at the heart of the issue of separate annual conferences. Annual conferences were typically responsible for managing affairs in a particular region, but as soon as the MEC began expanding southward, they moved to separate Blacks into their own conferences. When this policy was initially implemented in the border states, it was widely accepted because Blacks were heavily outnumbered and overshadowed by whites, so separate conferences offered an opportunity to find their own voice and raise up their own leaders. Farther south, however, in places like Louisiana and Mississippi, separate conferences were more controversial and struck many as a capitulation to racial caste.