At the 1895 annual meeting of The National Baptist Convention (held in St Louis, Missouri) a Black gentleman by the name of Richard Henry Boyd approached Elias C. Morris, who was the president of The National Baptist Convention at the time, with the idea of starting a publishing board for the Black Baptist Organization.
Rev. Morris agreed to support Richard’s idea but told him that the National Baptist Convention was in no position to fund the project. Therefore, Richard decided he would come up with the money himself!
Using real estate that he owned in Texas for collateral, Richard was able to acquire the necessary funds to begin the project. In 1896, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and with assistance from the White Southern Baptist Convention, he was able to get the ball rolling!
He started National Baptist Publishing Board, under a Tennessee state charter which was owned by Richard Henry Boyd and governed by a regular board of trustees.
Wow, who knew that by 1906, the National Baptist Publishing Board would become the principal source of religious publications for Black Baptists worldwide and be the largest Negro Publishing Company in the United States at the time.
The National Baptist Publishing Board business employed approximately 110 workers it also issued more than 128 million periodicals and is credited with being the first publisher of the old songs of Negro slaves.
Richard Henry Boyd was born on March 15, 1843, in Noxubee County, Mississippi (reminder: since he was born into slavery at the B.A. Plantation, as customary in those times, he took the surname of his master, which was Gray).
His mother was a Negro female named Indiana Dixon. She had originally named her son Dick Gray. Rumor had it that one of the three Gray brothers was Richard’s father (his mother never told him which brother).
Several interesting things about Richard were: he didn’t learn how to read and write until he was 22, he changed his name to Richard Henry Boyd when he was 24, he was baptized when he was 26, and he was ordained as a minister when he was 28 years old. Also, Richard served as pastor of a host of churches in the state of Texas.
To his credit, he helped organize the first Black Baptist Association in Texas and The One-Cent Savings and Trust Company Bank; the bank is currently operating as Citizens Savings Bank and Trust Company.
The One-Cent Bank was originally started, and expressly intended to serve the financial needs of Negro depositors! Furthermore, the founders believed that White-owned banks looked down on their small deposits.
Between 1888 and 1934, there were 134 “BLACK-OWNED” Banks to help the “BLACK COMMUNITY.” Today, there are only 20 Black-owned banks that qualify as Minority Depository Institutions, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
