Annual Conference became all—Negro with the transfer of white members

32

to the Blue Ridge Annual Conference,

The Freedmen"s Aid Society and Its Work in North Carolina. The

actual educational work of the Methodist Episcopal Church was carried on by the Freedmen's Aid Society, organized August 8, l866,33 with the

explicit purpose “to labor for the relief and education of‘the Freed-

men."34 The General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church com-

mended its work in l868 and adopted it as an official conference society in l872, apportioning 5100,000000 to the annual conferences for the work of the Freedmen's Aid Societyo35 In 1880 the Freedmen's Aid Society officially sanctioned educational work for not only Negroes but also whites in the Southern states, by the inclusion of the words 1'and others““ in its constitution,36 Eight years later the Methodist Episco- pal Church placed the responsibility for education of blacks and whites on the Freedmen's Aid Society, and changed its name to the Freedmen's

Aid and Southern Education Societyo37

32General Conference, M. Eo-C., Journal, I880, ppc 382, 388.

33Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Report, 1867, p. ll.

341bido, p. 12°

a 35Freedmen's Aid and Southern Education Society of The Method- lSt Episcopal Church, TWenty=Sixth Annual Report, l892, p0 17°

Ibido

‘—

37Ibid.