“This Week Black Paul Preach’d”: Fragment and Method in Early African American Studies

Documents concerning Thomas Paul (c. 1773–1831), Nathaniel Paul (1770s–1839), and their siblings, dating from their early lives, before they became involved in the abolitionist movement, are examined. The documents suggest that by 1805 the Paul family was committed to defending the Calvinist theology of Baptist Isaac Backus (1724–1806), to critiquing Universalist Christianity, and to soliciting charitable donations for semi-independent black Baptist churches. In Boston, in 1806, Thomas Paul opened the First African Baptist Church. This essay argues that documents from the early history of black Baptists should be interpreted with a method different from that used for early black Congregationalists, Methodists, and Anglicans. With little access to print culture, early black Baptists are more likely to have left brief fragments as manuscripts than to have published full-length tracts, sermons, poems, and memoirs. The method recommended is comparative, taking into account both contemporary black authors and white co-religionists. Utilization of this method reveals a set of black Baptist concerns that predate the organized, immediatist abolitionist movement by several decades. This method may be extended to other fragmentary documents.