Making a Negro Christian: The Religious Instruction of The Negroes in the United States

The Reverend Charles C Jones Sr (1804-1863) was a plantation owner, slave master and a Minister of the Presbyterian Church. In his book The Religious Instruction of the Negroes in the United States, he maps out various strategies and religious tools to be used to control free blacks and slaves.

He describes in scathing terms what he perceives as the general lack of character and prevailing vices of the negro, and their dependence on white men to overcome these problems. He regarded their reasoning at the level of brutes.

The book serves as a manual of how to use a belief system to make the negro docile and subservient to the benefit of the ’white master’. He justifies and reconciles Christianity with slavery.

Re-titled and re-printed as Making a Negro Christian, it is a deeply insightful book with a lasting legacy.