# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1902_S58
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

58 Proceedings of the nineteenth convention

God has opened a great door for us here precisely for the Negro Mission, and that the Honorable Synodical Conference [*Synodalconferenz*] entered through this open door 25 years ago was entirely in accord with the Word and will of God. What God lays before our door, that we are to do first. God has laid the Negroes here before our door like a poor Lazarus, so that we should have mercy on their spiritual need, and has promised us that in this mission work too he will be and remain with us with his grace, his protection and his help. The Lord's word is true, and what he promises, that he surely keeps. The 25-year history of our Negro Mission confirms this truth. "Hitherto hath God brought us by his great goodness" (the quotation is not further identified), and the same God who has helped hitherto in the Negro Mission will go on helping.

Among the Negroes here we have a large, wide and as yet very little cultivated mission field. "Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest," John 4:35. The Negro population of our country had risen in the year 1900 to 8,840,789, and of these almost nine million, 6,108,788 live in the so-called "Black Belt," distributed over eight states as follows: in Virginia 660,722, in North Carolina 624,469, in South Carolina 782,321, in Georgia 1,034,813, in Alabama 827,307, in Mississippi 907,630, in Louisiana 650,804, in Texas 620,722; total: 6,108,788. The increase from 1890 to 1900 in the eight states named above was as follows: in Virginia 25,284, in North Carolina 63,450, in South Carolina 93,387, in Georgia 175,998, in Alabama 148,818, in Mississippi 165,071, in Louisiana 91,611, in Texas 132,551; total: 896,170.

From 1790 to 1860, that is, until the outbreak of the Civil War, the number of Negroes here had risen from 757,208 to 4,441,830; in other words, in a period of 70 years their number multiplied six times. But in the 35 years after the war, from 1865 to 1900, the number of our Negro population has risen to 8,840,789; in other words, in the last 40 years the Negro population of our country has doubled.

The real home of our Negroes is, as is well known, in the South of our country and will probably remain so. Ninety-two percent of the Negroes here are still to be found in the sixteen original slave states.

Most Negroes live in the country, "on the plantations," in the "hamlets and villages"; yet one also finds them in the cities. Thus in the year 1900 there lived in Washington, D. C., 86,702 Negroes, in Baltimore 79,259, in New Orleans 77,714, in Philadelphia 62,613, in New York City 60,666.

What do all these figures prove? They prove, among other things, that our Negro population is not decreasing but increasing. They prove further