The Minutes of the Middle Ground Union Meetings of the Roanoke Missionary Baptist Association from 1883-1904

These early sainted ministers of the Roanoke Missionary Baptist Association and its Middle Ground Union Meeting put on their long dusters, black beaver hats and satchels containing a Bible, and a hymn book, and traveled fifity-one miles down the long winding roads and muddy streams preaching the gospel from Edenton, N. C., to Nansemond County, Virginia via-the Edenton-Suffolk Highway, and to all points along the way.

Upon arriving at their religious duty stations they preached to men who had been previously robbed by slavery of himself and made the property of another. In this position these preachers awaken the minds of their congregations to the fact that God had commissioned the Negro to a higher status in God's eye than those who oppressed him. This book records the quaterly 5th weekend sessions of those meetings.

This book provides clear examples of the purposes of the Middle Ground Union Meeting: preaching, evangelization, education and general race uplift to include the power to believe in themselves as people with intrinsic values. Pulpit preaching with the church as the center for black caring, mobilized the black community in obtaining indemnity for the past, and security for the future. The Middle Ground Union Meeting Ministers used the pulpit as great preaching station to address the social ills of the era.