About Us

The General Baptist Association of Mississippi was organized in October 1872, at Columbus, Mississippi when Reverend Jesse Freeman Boulden of Columbus resisted efforts of others to bring his associational work into the General Convention. The General Baptist Association was what the writer would call an “Association of Associations”. The influence of this association was felt from Jackson in the south to Winona in the north, and east to Columbus. The work of this body continued until 1890.

Despite personality differences, the General Association and the General Convention were unified in 1890 to form the General Missionary Baptist State Convention of Mississippi (GMBSC) under the leadership of the Reverend Randle Pollard, an old ex-slave preacher who hailed as the “Father of Negro Baptists in Mississippi”. The convention, at that time, was made up of 400 churches representing over 70,000 Black Baptists. It is this group that founded and continued to operate Natchez College. Natchez College was founded with the hopes of providing schooling beyond the limited levels provided by the State of Mississippi for Black children. Also founded and sponsored were high schools and seminaries for the training of ministers. After 1954, those privately operated, church supported schools had to reevaluate their mission and seek wider support for their programs.

The role of the president of a Black Baptist Convention on the national and state levels has been to define the mission and defend the integrity of a Black Convention. From a historical perspective in Mississippi, State convention agendas were and are articulated by their respective presidents. Each man had his own vision and he provided both that vision and proposed solutions to the problems. The organizations then attempted more or less to stabilize those visions and implement them in order to meet the perceived problems.

The chart to the right lists the men who served as president of the General Missionary Baptist State Convention of Mississippi.

In 1998, Reverend Dr. Jerry Young was elected by the State Convention as its 14th president. Dr. Young’s theme for the convention is “Envisioning the Future, Exceptionally,” a theme which he prays will challenge the convention to have a plan, a purpose, and a projection for real people who encounter real problems.