From Vanessa Julye, in her pamphlet entitled The Seed Cracked Open (2005) on p. 10: Henry Cadbury writes that the first African-American Quaker was permitted to join Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in 1784. He noted that Quakers of European descent took up the subject of African-American membership in their meetings after freeing the enslaved in 1785. But ten years later, Joseph Drinker, a Philadelphia Friend, wrote with regret that prominent Friends objected to admitting African-Americans: “Preferring that they ‘fold by themselves,’ as though Christ had said ‘there should be one fold for black sheep and another fold for white sheep.’ He declares that Friends, in spite of their broad principles, ‘are the only People I know who make any objections to the Blacks or People of Color joining them in church Fellowship.’” – Henry Cadbury, “Negro Membership in the Society of Friends,” Journal of Negro History, 1936, pp. 170-72. This is very hard to swallow about our past. It must not be our present or future.
– Kate Hood Seel ([email protected])