North Carolina was home to a number of Black Lutherans prior to the Civil War due to Lutheran plantation owners taking their slaves to church services where they were baptized, instructed, and confirmed. In 1888, the North Carolina Synod appointed four Black men (J. W. Koonts, W. Philo Phifer, Samuel Holt, and Nathan Clap) to minister to the Black Lutherans in the state. These four men, together with some laymen, established the Alpha Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Freedom in America in 1890, with Koonts as the president. Koonts, however, died the same year. In 1891, Phifer wrote to Heinrich Christian Schwan, the president of the LCMS, for assistance. Schwan forwarded the letter to the Mission Board of the Synodical Conference which, after an investigation, sent Nils J. Bakke as a missionary to oversee the remaining three pastors of the now-defunct Alpha Synod.
