Arkansas and Oklahoma presently constitute the 12th Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Between 1868 and the present, however, these two areas have been at times in separate Episcopal Districts and differently numbered. The current configuration of this jurisdiction has been the 12th, without major variation, only since 1936. Additionally, Arkansas and Oklahoma has contributed to A.M.E. connectional leadership and to the denomination’s liberationist legacy.
Bishop James A. Shorter, elected and consecrated in 1868, immediately started his assignment in the American South by organizing several southern annual conferences including Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas. In Little Rock the Arkansas Annual Conference was established on November 19, 1868 and was placed in Bishop John M. Brown’s 6th Episcopal District at the 1872 General Conference in Nashville, Tennessee. Other early annual conferences included the West Arkansas Annual Conference began at Arkadelphia, Arkansas on November 25, 1885 with Bishop Thomas Myers Decatur Ward presiding. Also, Bishop William B. Derrick organized the East Arkansas Annual Conference at Marianna, Arkansas on November 22, 1899. Two annual conferences were organized years before Oklahoma became a state in 1907. Hence, Bishop Ward started the Indian Mission Annual Conference in 1879 in Yellow Springs in the Choctaw Nation and Bishop Wesley J. Gaines organized the Oklahoma Annual Conference on October 25, 1896 at Perry in the Oklahoma Territory. According to the U. S. Census of 1890 A.M.E. churches in Arkansas numbered 333 and 27,956 members. The Indian Territory included 22 churches and 489 members.