R. H. Boyd

At 79 years old, R. H. Boyd physical status not available right now. We will update R. H. Boyd's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

In 1869 Boyd was baptized in Hopewell Baptist Church in Navasota, Texas. Shortly thereafter, he felt called to the ministry and was ordained as a minister in 1871. Subsequently, he served as a pastor to several Texas churches, including the Nineveh Baptist Church in Grimes City, the Union Baptist Church in Palestine, and the Mount Zion Baptist Church in San Antonio, and helped to organize other churches in Palestine (including South Union Missionary Baptist Church), Waverly, Old Danville, Navasota, and Crockett. In 1870 he helped organize the first black Baptist association in Texas, the Texas Negro Baptist Convention, and served as its missionary and educational secretary from 1870 to 1874. In 1876 he represented black Texas Baptists at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.

While in Texas, Boyd became concerned that the Sunday school materials and other publications of the Southern Baptist Convention and American Baptist Publication Society, which were produced by white people, did not meet the needs of African American Baptists. He became interested in publishing black-authored materials for use in churches and Sunday schools. Because this view was not shared by all members of the Texas Negro Baptist Convention, in 1893 Boyd left that association to form the General Missionary Baptist Convention of Texas. In 1894 and 1895 he produced his first pamphlets for use in black Baptist Sunday schools. At the 1895 annual meeting of National Baptist Convention in St. Louis, Missouri, he pressed for the creation of a publishing board for the black Baptists and received the support of Elias C. Morris, president of the National Baptist Convention. In 1896 he resigned from his church positions in Texas and moved to Nashville to establish the National Baptist Publishing Board, arriving there on November 7, 1896.

Boyd did not have National Baptist Convention financial support to start the Publishing Board, so he financed its establishment himself, using real estate in Texas that he owned as collateral, and received assistance with printing from the white Southern Baptist Convention, which had its main publishing operations in Nashville.

The National Baptist Publishing Board fulfilled Boyd's goal of providing black Baptists with religious materials written by other black Baptists, primarily periodicals and Sunday School materials, but also including some books. At the beginning, the Publishing Board took over responsibility for publishing the National Baptist Magazine and it launched the new Teacher's Monthly in 1897. The Publishing Board started making a profit as early as the first quarter of 1897, when it distributed more than 180,000 copies of published materials, and it grew increasingly profitable over time.

In 1898, in collaboration with nine other men, Boyd incorporated the National Baptist Publishing Board under a Tennessee state charter. Under the charter, the Publishing Board was owned by Boyd and governed by a self-perpetuating board of trustees.

The National Baptist Publishing Board became the principal source of religious publications for black Baptists worldwide. By 1906, it was the largest African American publishing company in the United States. The business employed as many as 110 workers. In its first 18 years, it issued more than 128 million periodicals. It is credited with being the first publisher of the old songs of Negro slaves, and it produced more than 25 songbooks and hymnals by 1921, including Golden Gems: A Song Book for the Church Choir, the Pew, and Sunday School (1901) and The National Baptist Hymnal (1903). The board's publications are considered to have played a key role in establishing an African American Baptist religious and racial identity in the United States.

In 1915 the success of the Publishing Board under Boyd's leadership led to a split within the National Baptist Convention. Pastors and other leaders within the convention were suspicious of the Publishing Board and sought greater control, while Boyd asserted that the Publishing Board was independent. Boyd, who served as the National Baptist Convention secretary of missions from 1896 to 1914 while also leading the Publishing Board, claimed that the Publishing Board regularly contributed some of its profits to the missionary work of the National Baptist Convention, but this was disputed.

Following confrontations at the annual meeting of the National Baptist Convention in Chicago in 1915, Boyd and his supporters formed the National Baptist Convention of America, which became known informally as "National Baptist Convention, Unincorporated," and was sometimes derisively called the "Boyd National Convention." The leaders remaining in the original convention incorporated in 1916, adopting the name National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. The National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. sued unsuccessfully to obtain ownership of the Publishing Board and subsequently created its own Sunday School publishing board.

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