worship. As yet there was no genuine basis of racial self-respect. In
one way or another, however, in the eighteenth century the idea of
association developed, and especially in Boston about the time of the
Revolution Negroes began definitely to work together; thus they assisted
individuals in test cases in the courts, and when James Swan in his
_Dissuasion from the Slave Trade_ made such a statement as that "no
country can be called free where there is one slave," it was "at the
earnest desire of the Negroes in Boston" that the revised edition of the
pamphlet was published.

From the very beginning the Christian Church was the race's foremost
form of social organization. It was but natural that the first
distinctively Negro churches should belong to the democratic Baptist
denomination. There has been much discussion as to which was the very
first Negro Baptist church, and good claims have been put forth by the
Harrison Street Baptist Church of Petersburg, Va., and for a church
in Williamsburg, Va., organization in each case going back to 1776.
A student of the subject, however, has shown that there was a Negro
Baptist church at Silver Bluff, "on the South Carolina side of the
Savannah River, in Aiken County, just twelve miles from Augusta, Ga.,"
founded not earlier than 1773, not later than 1775.[1] In any case
special interest attaches to the First Bryan Baptist Church, of
Savannah, founded in January, 1788. The origin of this body goes back to
George Liele, a Negro born in Virginia, who might justly lay claim to
being America's first foreign missionary. Converted by a Georgia Baptist
minister, he was licensed as a probationer and was known to preach soon
afterwards at a white quarterly meeting.[2] In 1783 he preached in the
vicinity of Savannah, and one of those who came to hear him was Andrew
Bryan, a slave of Jonathan Bryan. Liele then went to Jamaica and in 1784
began to preach in Kingston, where with four brethren from America he