Between 1788 and 1834 black Baptists formed their first distinctively black congregations and organized regional associations. By 1831, when an enslaved Baptist preacher named Nat Turner inspired an insurrection against slave-holders in Virginia, black Baptists had acquired "a peculiar and precarious religious freedom." Turner's rebellion and the black Baptist role in ending slavery in Jamaica brought restrictions on the movements of black preachers, but black Baptists continued to preach and to claim the freedom to worship as communities of believers. As James Melvin Washington demonstrates...