In this short history written for the Journal of Negro History in 1932, Hartzell documents the role of African Americans in the Methodist Church in the United States. Hartzell begins his history with John Wesley's baptism of two slaves in 1758, and ends with an overview of African Methodism in 1923. In between, he offers a concise, largely statistical report of the steady rise of African Methodism in the United States through slavery, emancipation, reconstruction, and the first decades of the 20^th century.

Brent Kinser