The General Conference of 1852, that met in the city of Boston, was called upon to consider the expediency of separate conferences for colored members. The custom of the Church had usually been to leave all colored congregations, in the appointments, “to be supplied.” But as the work progressed and the colored membership found the braggadocio of those “who went out from us” was invading the rank and file of their work; that each year it increased with telling and disheartening effect, and the more ambitious members among us were becoming restless and wavering in their opinions, threatening with dissolution the work of the colored members within the Church, the members within the bounds of the Philadelphia and New Jersey Conferences—at any rate from members of our Church in Pennsylvania and New Jersey—sent up, not only memorials to this General Conference, but representative men of the more intelligent class, to represent them and see, at the same time, the way the great Methodist Episcopal Church would treat colored memorialists. When the memorials were presented, asking again for separate conferences, they were promptly referred to the Committee on Missions. After careful examination of the memorials, they called before them the representatives. “An open and free discussion of the interests at stake and the benefits anticipated therefrom, was had.” The committee then submitted to the General Conference the following:
“The Committee on Missions, to whom was referred the petition of our colored brethren from Philadelphia, asking that the pastors within the Philadelphia and New Jersey Annual Conferences may be formed into an annual conference, under the supervision of the bishops and of the presiding elders of said conference within whose bounds their (the colored pastors’) work may lie, beg leave to report that the committee have given due consideration to the petition, and have heard the bearers of it in person, and have obtained all the information within their reach, and have come to the following conclusions:
“1. That it is very desirable that the colored pastors mentioned in the petition aforesaid should have an opportunity to meet together once a year, in the presence, or under the supervision, of the bishop or bishops, in order to confer together with respect to the best means of promoting their work, and to receive the assignment of their work from the bishops to the Churches usually left in the Minutes ‘to be supplied.’