Uplifting the People: Three Centuries of Black Baptists in Alabama (review)

Local and regional studies of African American institutions are important and there is nothing more understudied than African American churches. This is especially true of Baptist churches which were indigenously created institutions throughout the Caribbean and the American South beginning in the eighteenth century. Wilson Fallin's book Uplifting the People is therefore a welcome addition to the study of the African American Baptist church at the regional level. What is all the more interesting is that Fallin writes both as a historian and as a black Baptist clergyman from Alabama. Although being an "insider" does not necessarily give one more understanding when interpreting history than being an "outsider," he uses his unique knowledge to convey the story of Black Baptists in Alabama with critical insight about its past and deep care for the existing institution today.

Though the idea of being uplifted has been scoffed at by a younger generation of historians and cultural studies analysis, Fallin interprets the idea of uplifting differently. He truly sees the work in terms of its spiritual component when American slaves reinterpreted Christianity through the lenses of African cultures and radical evangelicalism. The Afro-Baptist faith which slaves created sought to reshape the lives of its people not only politically, but also as persons with transcendent meaning. The uplift that Black Baptists sought was not one-dimensional but for the entire person. One could not be free from physical bonds of oppression without being called to be free to live in community as a brother or a sister in the love of God.

And to this end, Wilson succeeds at narrating a rich history of Black Baptists in Alabama. Out of slavery, though economically impoverished, Black Baptists fostered churches, built associations, created schools, and promoted political and civic awareness. In fact, as Fallin points out it was based on the strength of the Black Baptists that the Civil Rights Movement, under the leadership of Baptist clergymen like the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, Ralph Abernathy, and Martin Luther King Jr. was to have its most successful campaigns in cities like Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma.

There are only two quibbles that I have with this book. The first one is glaring. The central problem of the book are its citations, or should I say, the lack thereof. The key thing missing from this book are more detailed citations, especially about key issues and personalities. Simply put, the source material needed to be better documented. My second quibble is minor. Although Fallin discusses the rise of gospel music within the Baptist churches, he does not discuss the cultural impact that Alabama quartet singing had on America. Among African Americans, black Alabamians were widely known for their religious quartets, and it was black Alabama's northern bound children who urbanized that tradition of singing into legendary Motown acts—the Supremes, the Temptations, the Four Tops, and the Jackson Five.