Bayou St. John
Bayou St. John is a bayou within the city of New Orleans, Louisiana; the Bayou as a natural feature drained the swampy land of a good portion of what was to become New Orleans, into Lake Pontchartrain. In its natural state, it extended much farther than today; the portion still in existence today was navigable by canoes and similar small vessels, used by Native Americans since pre-Columbian times. The natives knew the waterway as Bayouk Choupic. There was a portage between the Bayou and the Mississippi River due to the difference in water level between the bayou and the level of the sea, which attracted early French explorers and trappers, some of whom established a small community there by the late 17th century. In 1701 a small fort was established by the French beside the Lake Pontchartrain end of the Bayou to protect this important route; the Bayou and portage were key factors in the selection of the site where the city was founded in 1718, at the River end of the portage route. The portage trail along the bayou became the "Grand Route St. John", replaced by the wide, straight Esplanade Avenue.
After the destructive hurricanes of 1778 and 1779, the charitable Bayou plantation owner, Don Andres Almonester, rebuilt the Charity Hospital. Earlier Almonester had founded a leper's hospital near the portage road prior to the construction of the important Carondelet waterway. After the Louisiana purchase in 1803, the Carondelet Canal was dug to connect the back of the city with the Bayou, the Bayou was dredged to accommodate larger vessels. In the 19th century, an area along Bayou St. John was reputedly the location of many voodoo rituals by Marie Laveau; the Magnolia Bridge over the Bayou continues to serve as a site for such rituals every St. John's Eve. During the first half of the 20th century, commercial use of the Bayou declined and the Carondelet Canal was filled in; some New Orleanians began living in houseboats on the Bayou. Complaints from residents of nearby neighborhoods and sanitation concerns led to this practice being outlawed in the 1930s. A Works Progress Administration project beautified the area.
A lock was installed near the Lake Pontchartrain end. In the summer of 1955, the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board temporarily drained the Bayou, to clean out debris and material, causing foul odors. Since the Bayou has been a picturesque body of water with small earthen levees on either side, forming a narrow park space in the city. From the mid-20th century on, the banks of the Bayou across from City Park became a favorite destination for young couples seeking privacy; the banks of Bayou St. John are an important meeting place for the downtown Mardi Gras Indian tribes for their "Super Sunday" parade after Carnival. Opened in 2015, the Lafitte Greenway now runs along the corridor occupied by the Carondelet Canal, with a prominent roundabout at the foot of the Bayou. In conjunction with the Lafitte Greenway, the Bayou has been recognized as part of the EPA's Urban Waters Partnership. Bayou St. John submarine Demourelles Island Media related to Bayou St. John at Wikimedia Commons
Kenner, Louisiana
Kenner is the seventh-largest city in the U. S. State of Louisiana following New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Lake Charles and Bossier City, it is the largest city in Jefferson Parish and the largest incorporated suburban city of New Orleans. The population was 66,702 at the 2010 census. Inhabited by the Tchoupitoulas Indians, the area along the Mississippi River was the first land in the New Orleans Metropolitan Area on which Europeans set foot. René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle landed there in 1682. In 1855, Kenner was founded by Minor Kenner on land that consisted of three plantation properties, purchased by the Kenner family. At the time, all land north of what is now Airline Highway was swampland. In Kenner on May 10, 1870, "Gypsy" Jem Mace defeated Tom Allen for the heavyweight championship of the bare-knuckle boxing era. During 1915 -- 1931, a New Orleans streetcar line operated between New Kenner; the line ran between the intersection of Rampart and Canal in New Orleans and the intersection of Williams Blvd and Jefferson Hwy in Kenner.
Kenner's growth began in the late 1950s when developers began subdividing and filling the swampland in the northern half of the city. During the 1960s, the construction of Interstate 10 and improvements to Veterans Memorial Highway aided the rapid development of Kenner as a suburb of New Orleans. In 1982, Pan Am Flight 759 crashed in a residential area of Kenner. Eight people on the ground were killed. Six houses were destroyed and five more damaged. On September 5, 2018, Mayor E. Ben Zahn III circulated a memo banning the use of Nike products or the Nike logo "for use or delivery to any City of Kenner Recreating facility" ostensibly as a reaction to the decision by Nike to feature Colin Kaepernick in its advertising after his decision to kneel during the playing of the US national anthem at NFL games to protest inequality and police brutality. On September 12, Mayor Zahn reversed the ban after political and legal criticism, stating that it "placed Kenner in a false and unflattering light on the national stage."
Kenner's coordinates are 30°0′35″N 90°15′2″W and has an elevation of 0 ft. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 15.2 square miles, of which 15.1 square miles is land and 0.1 square miles is water. Kenner is located on the west side of the New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner metro area, in Jefferson Parish, its boundaries are Lake Pontchartrain to the north, the Mississippi River to the south, the unincorporated areas of Metairie and River Ridge to the east, St. Charles Parish to the west; as of 2013 there were 66,975 living in Kenner, down from 70,517 people in 2000. The population density was 4,486.0 people per square mile. There were 28,076 housing units; the racial makeup of the city was 48.8% White, 24.0% African American, 22.4% Hispanic or Latino, 0.4% Native American, 3.7% Asian, 3.80% from other races, 2.24% from two or more races. As of the 2000 United States Census, there are 70,517 people, 25,652 households, 18,469 families residing in the city; the population density is 1,798.3/km².
There are 27,378 housing units at an average density of 698.2/km². The racial makeup of the city is 68.12% White, 22.55% African American, 0.40% Native American, 2.84% Asian, 0.06% Pacific Islander, 3.80% from other races, 2.24% from two or more races. 13.62% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race. There are 25,652 households out of which 36.3% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 50.9% are married couples living together, 16.3% have a female householder with no husband present, 28.0% are non-families. 23.2% of all households are made up of individuals and 6.1% have someone living alone, 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 2.72 and the average family size is 3.23. In the city the population is spread out with 27.3% under the age of 18, 9.4% from 18 to 24, 30.5% from 25 to 44, 23.9% from 45 to 64, 8.9% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 34 years. For every 100 females there are 92.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 88.4 males.
The median income for a household in the city is $39,946, the median income for a family is $45,866. Males have a median income of $34,964 versus $24,051 for females; the per capita income for the city is $19,615. 13.6% of the population and 11.0% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 18.7% of those under the age of 18 and 12.0% of those 65 and older are living below the poverty line. As of 2010, Hispanics and Latinos made up 22% of Kenner's population. Of the 20 U. S. Census Bureau tracts in Kenner, 12 of them have Hispanic populations of 15% or more. One of those census tracts has the highest number of Latino people in all of Louisiana. By 2011, many business catering to Hispanics and Latinos had opened in Kenner; as of 2000, Hispanics were 14% of Kenner's population and six census tracts had greater than 15% Hispanic populations. A portion of north Kenner is called "Little Honduras." Kenner's Hispanic Resource Center offers English as a second language classes and after school programs.
Kenner is home to the following: Louis Armstrong International Airport – New Orleans' international airport. Pontchartrain Center – Opened in 1991, it is the second-largest convention center in the New Orleans metro area. Ochsner Medical Center - Kenner – one of the major hospitals in the New Orleans metro area; the Esplanade Mall – Opened in 1983, it is one of the two largest mall
Hospital
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment with specialized medical and nursing staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which has an emergency department to treat urgent health problems ranging from fire and accident victims to a sudden illness. A district hospital is the major health care facility in its region, with a large number of beds for intensive care and additional beds for patients who need long-term care. Specialized hospitals include trauma centers, rehabilitation hospitals, children's hospitals, seniors' hospitals, hospitals for dealing with specific medical needs such as psychiatric treatment and certain disease categories. Specialized hospitals can help reduce health care costs compared to general hospitals. Hospitals are classified as general, specialty, or government depending on the sources of income received. A teaching hospital combines assistance to people with teaching to medical nurses; the medical facility smaller than a hospital is called a clinic.
Hospitals have a range of departments and specialist units such as cardiology. Some hospitals have outpatient departments and some have chronic treatment units. Common support units include a pharmacy and radiology. Hospitals are funded by the public sector, health organisations, health insurance companies, or charities, including direct charitable donations. Hospitals were founded and funded by religious orders, or by charitable individuals and leaders. Hospitals are staffed by professional physicians, surgeons and allied health practitioners, whereas in the past, this work was performed by the members of founding religious orders or by volunteers. However, there are various Catholic religious orders, such as the Alexians and the Bon Secours Sisters that still focus on hospital ministry in the late 1990s, as well as several other Christian denominations, including the Methodists and Lutherans, which run hospitals. In accordance with the original meaning of the word, hospitals were "places of hospitality", this meaning is still preserved in the names of some institutions such as the Royal Hospital Chelsea, established in 1681 as a retirement and nursing home for veteran soldiers.
During the Middle Ages, hospitals served different functions from modern institutions. Middle Ages hospitals were hostels for pilgrims, or hospital schools; the word "hospital" comes from the Latin hospes, signifying a foreigner, hence a guest. Another noun derived from this, hospitium came to signify hospitality, the relation between guest and shelterer, hospitality and hospitable reception. By metonymy the Latin word came to mean a guest-chamber, guest's lodging, an inn. Hospes is thus the root for the English words host hospitality, hospice and hotel; the latter modern word derives from Latin via the ancient French romance word hostel, which developed a silent s, which letter was removed from the word, the loss of, signified by a circumflex in the modern French word hôtel. The German word'Spital' shares similar roots; the grammar of the word differs depending on the dialect. In the United States, hospital requires an article; some patients go to a hospital just for diagnosis, treatment, or therapy and leave without staying overnight.
Hospitals are distinguished from other types of medical facilities by their ability to admit and care for inpatients whilst the others, which are smaller, are described as clinics. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital known as an acute-care hospital; these facilities handle many kinds of disease and injury, have an emergency department or trauma center to deal with immediate and urgent threats to health. Larger cities may have several hospitals of facilities; some hospitals in the United States and Canada, have their own ambulance service. A district hospital is the major health care facility in its region, with large numbers of beds for intensive care, critical care, long-term care. In California, "district hospital" refers to a class of healthcare facility created shortly after World War II to address a shortage of hospital beds in many local communities. Today, district hospitals are the sole public hospitals in 19 of California's counties, are the sole locally-accessible hospital within nine additional counties in which one or more other hospitals are present at substantial distance from a local community.
Twenty-eight of California's rural hospitals and 20 of its critical-access hospitals are district hospitals. They are formed by local municipalities, have boards that are individually elected by their local communities, exist to serve local needs, they are a important provider of healthcare to uninsured patients and patients with Medi-Cal. In 2012, district hospitals provided $54 million in uncompensated care in California. Types of specialised hospitals incl
Uptown New Orleans
Uptown is a section of New Orleans, United States, on the east bank of the Mississippi River, encompassing a number of neighborhoods between the French Quarter and the Jefferson Parish line. It remains an area of mixed residential and small commercial properties, with a wealth of 19th-century architecture, it includes part or all of Uptown New Orleans Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Uptown was a direction, meaning movement in the direction against the flow of the Mississippi. After the Louisiana Purchase, many settlers from other parts of the United States developed their homes and businesses in the area upriver from the older Creole city. During the 19th century Canal Street was known as the dividing line between uptown and downtown New Orleans, the boundary between the predominantly Francophone area downriver and the predominantly Anglophone area upriver; the broadest definition of Uptown included everything upriver from Canal Street, which would encompass about one-third of the city.
In the narrowest usage, as a New Orleans City Planning neighborhood, Uptown refers to an area of only some dozen blocks centering on the intersection of Jefferson and St. Charles Avenues. Neither of these is what most New Orleanians of recent generations mean by uptown. While some may quibble about the exact boundaries, Uptown broadly refers to the areas of the city closer to the River and upriver from the Pontchartrain Expressway and the modern CBD/Warehouse District neighborhood; the boundaries of the federal Uptown New Orleans Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, are the River to S. Claiborne Avenue and Jackson Avenue to Broadway. Adjacent areas, which are colloquially referred to as parts of Uptown are other federal historic districts: Carrollton, the Garden District, the Irish Channel, Central City, the Lower Garden District. Uptown was developed during the 19th century from land, plantations in the Colonial era. Several sections were developed as separate towns, like Lafayette, Jefferson City and Carrollton.
For much of the 19th century most of what is now Uptown belonged to Jefferson Parish. New Orleans and Orleans Parish annexed Lafayette and other communities from the neighboring Parish; this newly-absorbed area became known as uptown New OrleansPeople from other parts of the United States settled uptown in the 19th century, joined by immigrants, notably from Italy and Germany. Uptown has always had a sizable African American population. Census data shows that ethnically and racially mixed city blocks were common in the 19th and early 20th centuries, which continues to be the case with much of Uptown. Several small settlements grew up at steamboat landings a few miles upstream of New Orleans; the original Lafayette began as one of these. The sugar plantation once owned by François Livaudais, situated in Jefferson Parish along the Mississippi River between the present Philip, LaSalle streets, was sold to developers in 1832, it was subdivided and incorporated in April 1833 as the City of Lafayette and included the land which would become known as the Garden District.
The center of town was around Jackson Avenue. Lafayette was the site of the original Jefferson Parish court house; the New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad incorporated in 1833, constructed a spur from the main line along Nyades Street down Jackson Avenue. Lafayette annexed Faubourg Delassize in 1844, bringing that city's boundary with New Orleans to Toledano Street. In 1852, New Orleans annexed Lafayette, moving the New Orleans city limit upriver to Toledano Street; the seat of Jefferson Parish moved to the City of Carrollton. However, the boundary between Jefferson Parish and Orleans Parish remained at Felicity Street until 1870, when it was moved to Lowerline Street. Cornelius Hurst, developer of Faubourg Hurstville, sold a square block to the City of Lafayette for a cemetery in 1833. Now known as Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, the land is bounded by 6th Street, Coliseum Street and Prytania Street. In 1972, this cemetery was added to the National Register of Historical Places, but in 1996 it was listed in the 1996 World Monuments Watch by the World Monuments Fund.
The Fund helped in the creation of a preservation plan with assistance from American Express. In 2010, the Louisiana Landmarks Society rated Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 as one of the nine most endangered New Orleans landmarks. It said; the society cited inadequate grounds keeping, improper maintenance, damage by movie film crews as contributing to this decline. Greenville was a city in Jefferson Parish bounded by the present-day Audubon Park and Lowerline Street, extended from the river to St. Charles Avenue; the city became part of Orleans Parish. Although the name of Greenville is sometimes used in referring to a neighborhood in Uptown New Orleans, it should not be confused with the community of the same name in Catahoula Parish, Louisiana. By 1850, seven other faubourgs had been created: Plaisance, Delachaise, St. Joseph and West Bouligny and Rickerville; these combined to form Jefferson City, which extended between Joseph Streets. Note that this is not the same location as the present day Jefferson, Louisiana.
In 1870, New Orleans annexed Jefferson City, Bloomingdale and Greenville. It annexed the undeveloped area between Greenville and Burtheville that would become Audubon Park. Faubourg Hurstville was the fi
Lindy Boggs Medical Center
Lindy Boggs Medical Center known as Mercy Hospital and known as Lindy Boggs Hospital or Lindy Boggs, is a now-abandoned 187-bed acute care hospital operated by Tenet Healthcare located in Mid-City New Orleans, Louisiana. The hospital provided many services, including emergency care, critical care, organ transplantation services. Mercy Hospital was founded in the 1920s. In the 1990s, Mercy Hospital merged with Southern Baptist Hospital, the two hospitals operated together as Mercy-Baptist Medical Center; the hospital was subsequently acquired by Tenet Healthcare and renamed Lindy Boggs Medical Center in honor of Democratic Congresswoman and Ambassador Lindy Boggs. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the hospital was at full census. Many employees' and patients' families decided to take shelter at the facility as well, thinking that they would be safer and more comfortable; when the levee system failed, many persons found themselves trapped in the facility with no way out. Many patients those recovering from risky organ transplantation procedures, were not able to be given the medicines they needed most and, since both the power and the generators had failed, were without vital services such as mechanical ventilation and cardiac monitoring.
A major evacuation effort took place and, thanks to the initiative and hard work of both the hospital staff and the rescue workers everyone was able to be rescued. Since Hurricane Katrina forced the facility to close, Mid-City New Orleans has been without vital health care services, including an emergency department. After the storm, Tenet Healthcare sold the facility to Georgia-based Victory Real Estate Investments; the same real estate group purchased neighboring properties with plans for a retail development along Bienville Street but the project never moved forward. In 2010, the entire Lindy Boggs complex of buildings and a portion of the surface parking was purchased by St. Margaret's Daughters for $4.2 million. St. Margaret's, a Catholic non-profit organization, spent $37 million to renovate more than 100,000 square feet in a former medical office building on the site. A 112-bed nursing facility named "St. Margaret's at Mercy" opened in the renovated space in 2013. St. Margaret's planned to open a cardiovascular hospital in the remaining portion of the medical center.
However, a partnership with the State of Louisiana fell through, which made the project financially unfeasible. Work crews are cleaning asbestos and removing underground storage tanks, with grants from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality paying for the work, according to the report. MCC Real Estate, which has a development agreement for the property at 301 N. Jefferson Davis Parkway, hasn't finalized a renovation plan but is considering an elderly assisted living facility, the report says. In August 2017, work began to clean up the undeveloped portions of the property. A grant from the Environmental Protection Agency paid for asbestos removal and the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality paid for removal of underground storage tanks. Workers pumped stagnant water out of the building, sitting stagnant since Hurricane Katrina. There is no plan for the hospital's future use, but the idea of an assisted living facility for patients with memory care needs has been discussed.
Http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4200/is_20070514/ai_n19114016/ http://www.humana.com/corporatecomm/newsroom/releases/PR-News-20050302-142944-NR.html http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14516700/ http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2010/05/catholic_non-profit_buys_lindy.html
CNN
Cable News Network is an American news-based pay television channel owned by WarnerMedia News & Sports, a division of AT&T's WarnerMedia. CNN was founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner as a 24-hour cable news channel. Upon its launch, CNN was the first television channel to provide 24-hour news coverage, was the first all-news television channel in the United States. While the news channel has numerous affiliates, CNN broadcasts from the Time Warner Center in New York City, studios in Washington, D. C. and Los Angeles. Its headquarters at the CNN Center in Atlanta is only used for weekend programming. CNN is sometimes referred to as CNN/U. S. to distinguish the American channel from CNN International. As of August 2010, CNN is available in over 100 million U. S. households. Broadcast coverage of the U. S. channel extends to over 890,000 American hotel rooms, as well as carriage on subscription providers throughout Canada. As of July 2015, CNN is available to about 96,374,000 pay-television households in the United States.
Globally, CNN programming airs through CNN International, which can be seen by viewers in over 212 countries and territories. The Cable News Network was launched at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on June 1, 1980. After an introduction by Ted Turner, the husband and wife team of David Walker and Lois Hart anchored the channel's first newscast. Burt Reinhardt, the executive vice president of CNN at its launch, hired most of the channel's first 200 employees, including the network's first news anchor, Bernard Shaw. Since its debut, CNN has expanded its reach to a number of cable and satellite television providers, several websites, specialized closed-circuit channels; the company has 42 bureaus, more than 900 affiliated local stations, several regional and foreign-language networks around the world. The channel's success made a bona-fide mogul of founder Ted Turner and set the stage for conglomerate Time Warner's eventual acquisition of the Turner Broadcasting System in 1996. A companion channel, CNN2, was launched on January 1, 1982 and featured a continuous 24-hour cycle of 30-minute news broadcasts.
The channel, which became known as CNN Headline News and is now known as HLN focused on live news coverage supplemented by personality-based programs during the evening and primetime hours. The first Persian Gulf War in 1991 was a watershed event for CNN that catapulted the channel past the "Big Three" American networks for the first time in its history due to an unprecedented, historical scoop: CNN was the only news outlet with the ability to communicate from inside Iraq during the initial hours of the Coalition bombing campaign, with live reports from the al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad by reporters Bernard Shaw, John Holliman and Peter Arnett; the moment when bombing began was announced on CNN by Shaw on January 16, 1991, as follows: This is Bernie Shaw. Something is happening outside.... Peter Arnett, join me here. Let's describe to our viewers what we're seeing... The skies over Baghdad have been illuminated.... We're seeing bright flashes going off all over the sky. Unable to broadcast live pictures from Baghdad, CNN's coverage of the initial hours of the Gulf War had the dramatic feel of a radio broadcast – and was compared to legendary CBS news anchor Edward R. Murrow's gripping live radio reports of the German bombing of London during World War II.
Despite the lack of live pictures, CNN's coverage was carried by television stations and networks around the world, resulting in CNN being watched by over a billion viewers worldwide. The Gulf War experience brought CNN some much sought-after legitimacy and made household names of obscure reporters. In 2000, media scholar and director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, Robert Thompson, stated that having turned 20, CNN was now the "old guard." Shaw, known for his live-from-Bagdhad reporting during the Gulf War, became CNN's chief anchor until his retirement in 2001. Others include then-Pentagon correspondent Wolf Blitzer and international correspondent Christiane Amanpour. Amanpour's presence in Iraq was caricatured by actress Nora Dunn as ruthless reporter Adriana Cruz in the 1999 film Three Kings. Time Warner-owned sister network HBO produced a television movie, Live from Baghdad, about CNN's coverage of the first Gulf War. Coverage of the first Gulf War and other crises of the early 1990s led officials at the Pentagon to coin the term "the CNN effect" to describe the perceived impact of real time, 24-hour news coverage on the decision-making processes of the American government.
CNN was the first cable news channel. Anchor Carol Lin was on the air to deliver the first public report of the event, she broke into a commercial at 8:49 a.m. Eastern Time that morning and said:This just in. You are looking at a disturbing live shot there; that is the World Trade Center, we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. CNN Center right now is just beginning to work on this story calling our sources and trying to figure out what happened, but something devastating happening this morning there on the south end of the island of Manhattan; that is once again, a picture of one of the towers of the World Trade Center. Sean Murtagh, CNN vice president of finance and administration, was the first network employe
Southern Baptist Convention
The Southern Baptist Convention is a Christian denomination based in the United States. With more than 15 million members as of 2015, it is the world's largest Baptist denomination, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, the second-largest Christian denomination in the United States, smaller only than the Catholic Church; the word Southern in Southern Baptist Convention stems from it having been organized in 1845 at Augusta, Georgia, by Baptists in the Southern United States who split with northern Baptists over the issue of slavery whether Southern slave owners could serve as missionaries. After the American Civil War, another split occurred when most freedmen set up independent black congregations, regional associations, state and national conventions, such as the National Baptist Convention, which became the second-largest Baptist convention by the end of the 19th century. Others joined new African-American denominations, chiefly the African Methodist Episcopal Church, established in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the early 19th century, as the first independent black denomination in the United States.
Since the 1940s, the Southern Baptist Convention has shifted from some of its regional and historical identification. Since the late 20th century, the SBC has sought new members among minority groups and to become much more diverse. In addition, while still concentrated in the Southern United States, the Southern Baptist Convention has member churches across the United States and 41 affiliated state conventions. Southern Baptist churches are evangelical in practice; as they emphasize the significance of the individual conversion experience, affirmed by the person having complete immersion in water for a believer's baptism, they reject the practice of infant baptism. Other specific beliefs based on biblical interpretation can vary somewhat due to their congregational polity, which allows local autonomy; the average weekly attendance is 5,200,716. Most early Baptists in the British colonies came from England in the 17th century, after the established Church of England persecuted them for their dissenting religious views.
The oldest Baptist church in the South, First Baptist Church of Charleston, South Carolina, was organized in 1682 under the leadership of William Screven. A Baptist church was formed in Virginia in 1715 through the preaching of Robert Norden and another in North Carolina in 1727 through the ministry of Paul Palmer; the Baptists adhered to a congregationalist polity and operated independently of the state-established Anglican churches in the South, at a time when non-Anglicans were prohibited from holding political office. By 1740, about eight Baptist churches existed in the colonies of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, with an estimated 300 to 400 members. New members, both black and white, were converted chiefly by Baptist preachers who traveled throughout the South during the 18th and 19th centuries, in the eras of the First Great Awakening and Second Great Awakening. Baptists welcomed African Americans, both slave and free, allowing them to have more active roles in ministry than did other denominations by licensing them as preachers, in some cases, allowing them to be treated as equals to white members.
As a result, black congregations and churches were founded in Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia before the American Revolution. Some black congregations kept their independence after whites tried to exercise more authority after the Nat Turner slave rebellion of 1831. Before the Revolution and Methodist evangelicals in the South had promoted the view of the common man's equality before God, which embraced slaves and free blacks, they urged planters to abolish slavery. They accepted them as preachers. Isaac analyzes the rise of the Baptist Church in Virginia, with emphasis on evangelicalism and social life. A sharp division existed between the austerity of the plain-living Baptists, attracted from yeomen and common planters, the opulence of the Anglican planters, the slaveholding elite who controlled local and colonial government in what had become a slave society by the late 18th century; the gentry interpreted Baptist church discipline as political radicalism, but it served to ameliorate disorder.
The Baptists intensely monitored each other's moral conduct, watching for sexual transgressions and excessive drinking. In Virginia and in most southern colonies before the Revolution, the Church of England was the established church and supported by general taxes, as it was in England, it opposed the rapid spread of Baptists in the South. In Virginia, many Baptist preachers were prosecuted for "disturbing the peace" by preaching without licenses from the Anglican church. Both Patrick Henry and the young attorney James Madison defended Baptist preachers prior to the American Revolution in cases considered significant to the history of religious freedom. In 1779, Thomas Jefferson wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, enacted in 1786 by the Virginia General Assembly. Madison applied his own ideas and those of the Virginia document related to religious freedom during the Constitutional Convention, when he ensured that they were incorporated into the national constitution; the struggle for religious toleration erupted and was played out during the American Revolution, as the Baptists worked to disestablish the Anglican church in the South.
Beeman explores the conflict in one Virginia locality, showing that as its population became more dense, the county court and the Anglican Church were able to increase their authority. The Baptists protested vigorously
