Evergreen Congregational Church and School | |
![]() The church | |
Location | 497 Meridian Rd., Beachton, Georgia |
---|---|
Coordinates | 30°43′42″N84°08′13″W / 30.72837°N 84.137°W |
Area | 2 acres (0.81 ha) |
Built | 1911 |
Built by | Wright, James E. |
NRHP reference No. | 02001260 "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. July 9, 2010. |
Added to NRHP | October 31, 2002 |
The Evergreen Congregational Church and School is a historic church and school at 497 Meridian Road in Beachton, Georgia. It is notable for its architecture, its association with social history of the area, and its association with civil rights movement leader Andrew Young, who served as pastor from 1957 to 1959. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002. [1]
The Evergreen Congregational Church was founded in 1903 by a group of Beachton residents and, in 1904, a frame church was built. In 1925, the original church was demolished, and the concrete-block church was completed in 1928. It is a gable-front church with an entrance porch and cupola. The church is typical of African-American churches, with the simple massing of its gable roofed rectangular-shaped sanctuary and in its use of inexpensive materials, such as concrete block and stucco. The rough finish on the poured-concrete walls indicates the work of congregation members and not skilled laborers. Between 1989 and 1991, the congregation built a 30-foot long annex to the rear of the church. [1]
The Evergreen Congregational Church and School are significant because of their association with Civil Rights leader Andrew Young. In his autobiography, An Easy Burden (1996), Young noted that the lessons he learned at Evergreen served him during the struggle for civil rights. During the 1960s, he joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and served as Executive Director under Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1972, he was elected to Congress. [1]
Reverend William H. Holloway served as the first church pastor, from 1904 until 1910. He was followed by Reverend Henry S. Barnwell (1910-1916), Reverend George W. Hannar (1924-1930), Reverend W. J. Hill (1930-?), Andrew Young (1957-1959). In 1974, Reverend Artis Johnson arrived and remains the current pastor. [1]
It is now known as the Evergreen United Church of Christ. [2]
In 1903, Jerry Walden Jr. led a group of community men in erecting a one-room wood school building on a one-acre site that was donated by Please Hawthorne. This was the first school for black children in the area. Walden (who was born in Grady County, Georgia, in 1869, and attended public school in Thomas County, Georgia, and later Morehouse College in Atlanta) was the first African-American teacher in Beachton. He taught in Beachton until his death in 1935. Please Hawthorne was born in 1854 in rural Grady County, and spent much of his life running a general merchandise store in the Beachton area until his death in 1927. [1]
The one-room school was replaced by the current school in 1911. It was designed by congregation member James E. Wright (1887-1972), one of Georgia’s first African American architects who had an architecture degree from Tuskegee University. [2] The school is a one- and one-half-story cruciform-plan building with classrooms on the first floor and quarters for teachers above. The interior of the school remains largely unchanged since it was built. [1]
From the beginning, the American Missionary Association assumed responsibility for the church and school because of negligence by the public schools in the education of African-American children. In 1916, the school was renamed Grady County Training School when the county assumed partial responsibility for the school. [1]
In 1938, the educational programs at Evergreen were moved by the county to another location. The Evergreen school was then used as a community hall for such activities as voter registration drives, meetings with county commissioners, farm agents, home demonstration agents, 4-H Boys and Girls Clubs, and Boy Scouts. The school is currently known as Evergreen Recreation Center and serves as the fellowship hall for Evergreen church. [1]
Andrew Jackson Young Jr. is an American politician, diplomat, and activist. Beginning his career as a pastor, Young was an early leader in the civil rights movement, serving as executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and a close confidant to Martin Luther King Jr. Young later became active in politics, serving as a U.S. Congressman from Georgia, United States Ambassador to the United Nations in the Carter Administration, and 55th Mayor of Atlanta. He was the first African American elected to Congress from Georgia since Reconstruction, as well as one of the first two African Americans elected to Congress from the former Confederacy since Reconstruction, alongside Barbara Jordan of Texas. Since leaving office, Young has founded or served in many organizations working on issues of public policy and political lobbying.
The Abington Congregational Church is a historic church on Connecticut Route 97 in the Abington village of Pomfret, Connecticut. Built in 1751 and restyled in the 1830s, it is the oldest ecclesiastical building in the State of Connecticut that has been continuously used for religious purposes. In 1977 it was included on the National Register of Historic Places.
Broadway United Church of Christ is a Congregationalist Church located on West 71st Street, between Amsterdam Avenue and Columbus Avenue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
First African Baptist Church, located in Savannah, Georgia, claims to be derived from the first black Baptist congregation in North America. While it was not officially organized until 1788, it grew from members who founded a congregation in 1773. Its claim of "first" is contested by the Silver Bluff Baptist Church, Aiken County, South Carolina (1773), and the First Baptist Church of Petersburg, Virginia, whose congregation officially organized in 1774.
Charles Street African Methodist Episcopal Church is an historic African Methodist Episcopal Church at 551 Warren Street in Boston, Massachusetts. The current church building was built in 1888 by J. Williams Beal and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
Religion in Atlanta, while historically centered on Protestant Christianity, now involves many faiths as a result of the city and metro area's increasingly international population. While Protestant Christianity still maintains a strong presence in the city, in recent decades Catholic Christians have gained a strong foothold due to migration patterns. Atlanta also has a considerable number of ethnic Christian congregations, such as Korean Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian Churches, the Tamil Church Atlanta, Telugu Church, Hindi Church, Malayalam Church, Ethiopian, Chinese, and many more traditional ethnic religious groups. Large non-Christian faiths are present in the form of Buddhism, Judaism and Hinduism. Overall, there are over 1,000 places of worship within Atlanta.
Gillfield Baptist Church is the second-oldest black Baptist congregation in Petersburg, Virginia and one of the oldest in the nation. It has the oldest handwritten record book of any black church. It was organized in 1797 as a separate, integrated congregation. In 1818 it built its first church at its current lot on Perry Street.
Historic First Bryan Baptist Church is an African-American church that was organized in Savannah, Georgia, by Andrew Bryan in 1788. Considered to be the Mother Church of Black Baptists, the site was purchased in 1793 by Bryan, a former slave who had also purchased his freedom. The first structure was erected there in 1794. By 1800 the congregation was large enough to split: those at Bryan Street took the name of First African Baptist Church, and Second and Third African Baptist churches were also established. The current sanctuary of First Bryan Baptist Church was constructed in 1873.
The Green Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church is a historic church at 46 Sheridan Street in Portland, Maine, United States. It is a 2+1⁄2-story structure of textured concrete block masonry built in 1914 to house the congregation founded in 1891. The church is named after founder Moses Samuel Green, who was the city's wealthiest African American at the time. In the middle of the 20th century, the church was the focal point of the Portland's African American community. It hosted social events and was used to organize for civil rights advancements in Maine and across the United States.
Bethany Congregational Church is a United Church of Christ house of worship located in Thomasville, Georgia in south Georgia's Thomas County. It was founded on February 1, 1891, by the American Missionary Association as the chapel and worship center of the Allen Normal and Industrial School, an educational institution for African American students. The school operated from 1885 to 1933, and the church remained after the school property was razed in 1935.
The Second Congregational Church in New York, organized in 1825, was a Unitarian congregation which had three permanent homes in Manhattan, New York City, the second of which became a theater after they left it. In 1919 the congregation joined the Community Church Movement and changed its name to Community Church of New York. The same year, its church building on 34th Street was damaged by fire. From 1948 until 2022, the congregation was housed at 40 East 35th Street. As of 2024, the church offices are located on East 35th Street and services are held at the neighboring Church of the Incarnation. The Community Church of New York is a member of the Unitarian Universalist Association.
The Bethel A.M.E. Church, known in its early years as Indianapolis Station or the Vermont Street Church, is a historic African Methodist Episcopal Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. Organized in 1836, it is the city's oldest African-American congregation. The three-story church on West Vermont Street dates to 1869 and was added to the National Register in 1991. The surrounding neighborhood, once the heart of downtown Indianapolis's African American community, significantly changed with post-World War II urban development that included new hotels, apartments, office space, museums, and the Indiana University–Purdue University at Indianapolis campus. In 2016 the congregation sold their deteriorating church, which was repurposed into part of a new hotel. The congregation built a new worship center at 6417 Zionsville Road in Pike Township in northwest Indianapolis.
First Congregational Church is a United Church of Christ church located in downtown Atlanta at the corner of Courtland Street and John Wesley Dobbs Avenue .The church has had many prominent members over the years including Alonzo Herndon and Andrew Young. First Congregational Church welcomes people from all racial and economic backgrounds and has a prominent music ministry. The current senior minister, Dr. Reverend Dwight Andrews, is also a professor of music at Emory University.
First Presbyterian Church is a historic Presbyterian congregation in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, founded in 1882 by Rev. A. B. Coit. It was the first church in the town and predated Hattiesburg's own incorporation by two years. In 1973 it left the Presbyterian Church in the United States to become a charter member of the more theologically conservative Presbyterian Church in America.
Jeffery Tribble is an ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and a professor of ministry with research interests in Practical Theology, Congregational Studies and Leadership, Ethnography, Evangelism and Church Planting, Black Church Studies, and Urban Church Ministry. Academics and professionals in these fields consider him a renowned thought leader. Tribble's experience in pastoral ministry allows for his work to bridge the gap between academic research and practical church leadership.
Bethel AME Church of Crawfordsville is a historic African Methodist Episcopal church located at Crawfordsville, Montgomery County, Indiana. It was built in 1892, and is a one-story, gable fronted frame building on a brick foundation. It features a large round-arched window and two-story, square corner tower. Portions of the building are believed to date to 1847. Also on the property is a contributing one-story, Queen Anne style cottage that served as the original parsonage.
Reverend Romulus Moore was an American politician and leader of the early civil rights movement after the American Civil War during the Reconstruction Era in the U.S. state of Georgia. An African American, Moore was elected to the state legislature in 1868. Moore was expelled from the legislature in 1868 along with other African Americans and reinstated in the Georgia General Assembly in 1870 by an Act of Congress. Reverend Moore was active in advocating the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The Ochlocknee Missionary Baptist Church and Cemetery is a historic church and school at 521 U.S. Route 319 S. in Beachton, Georgia. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2010.
The Shrine of the Black Madonna of the Pan African Orthodox Christian Church, or more simply the Shrine of the Black Madonna, is a church building located at 7625 Linwood Street in Detroit, Michigan. It is significant for its association with civil rights leader Rev. Albert B. Cleage Jr., and as the location of many significant 20th century African American civil rights activities. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021.
The First African Methodist Episcopal Church, formerly known as Pierce’s Chapel, is an AME church established in 1866 by Rev. Henry McNeal Turner, and located at 521 North Hull Street in Athens, Georgia.