Resolution to establish a mission to people of colour

Resolution to establish a “mission to people of colour within the bounds of the [Harrison] Circuit,” Lake Soda District, October 21, 1843. 

Littleton Fowler made one of the few attempts during the antebellum era to establish a separate Methodist ministry to African American slaves in Texas. At the 1843 Quarterly Meeting Conference of the Harrison Circuit of the Lake Soda District, Fowler asked Rev. John C. Woolam to obtain local slave owners’ “hearty cooperation and learn the amount they are willing to give” to support preaching to their slaves. According to Fowler, it would make the slaves “honest, industrious and more obedient to those who controlled them.” Although several slave owners contributed to the cause, no one was ever appointed to the position.