About Us: A Brief History of First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill
An Afro-American Journey in Faith?
After worshipping with the white Christians in the First Baptist Church of Nashville since 1831, the slave and free Negro members requested separate worship services. In 1844, they were granted separate prayer services, under the supervision of a white assistant minister, Samuel A. Davidson. As they comprised half of the First Baptist Church's members, soon the Negroes were allowed evening services, and in 1847 the First Baptist Church voted to allow the Negroes to find a separate building. In January 1848, the First Colored Church Baptist Mission began services in a former city schoolhouse. John Dodd, Nelson G. Merry, and Henry Howard, among other Negro preachers, assisted Davidson. By 1849, the Negroes had raised $220 for a building fund, and the mission members later purchased property on West Martin (Pearl Street) near McLemore Street (10th Ave. N.). Nelson Grover Merry (1824-1884), a slave freed in 1845, was ordained and placed in charge of First Colored Baptist Mission on November 29, 1853.
During the Civil War, when the Union army occupied the white mother church, the First Colored Baptist Mission enjoyed a measure of quasi-independence. When Tennessee abolished slavery in March 1865, First Colored Baptist held a mass meeting to give God thanks. On March 7, 1865, the Negro members presented a petition for independence to the pro--Confederate First Baptist Church, and on April 16, 1865—the day after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and the same day First Colored Baptist held a citywide mass meeting to honor ?the Great Emancipator,? the white church reviewed the petition. The congregation became independent on August 13, 1865, and the General Assembly granted a charter to "The First Colored Baptist Church of Nashville" on May 25, 1866.
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Under Nelson G. Merry, the congregation grew to some 2,800 members. First Colored Baptist Church was the site for the first meeting of the Tennessee Negro Baptist Association (1866). Merry participated in the earliest Negro Baptist convention, the American Baptist Missionary Convention, which was founded in the 1850s. In 1864 Merry also participated in the founding of the Northwestern and Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis, Missouri. This convention convened the 1866 session at First Colored Baptist Church in Nashville. In August 1866, Merry headed a committee in Richmond, Virginia, that united the two conventions into the Consolidated American Baptist Missionary Convention, which held its first official session in the First Colored Baptist Church in August 1867. Merry became a vice president of the Consolidated Convention, first president of the Stones River District Baptist Association, "President-for-life" for the Tennessee Negro Baptist Association, and editor of The Baptist Sunday School Standard (1874). In 1872 the First Colored Baptist Church members marched to a new and more spacious building near the southwest corner of Spruce Street (8th Ave. N.).
Two years after the American National Baptist Convention was founded (1886), all the Negro Baptist associations convened at First Colored Baptist Church in Nashville to attempt to form a unified Negro Baptist Convention—this would not happen until the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc. was formed at Atlanta (1895). Reverend Merry served as a member of the board of directors for the local branch of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company bank (1866-1874), and was one of the founders and trustees for Roger Williams University, which held its first classes in the basement of First Colored Baptist Church. Merry gave prayers at Fisk University’s first college commencement (1874). He died in July 1884, and his towering monument stands in Mt. Ararat Cemetery.
R. Thomas Huffman succeeded Merry, and by 1886, raised $5,000 to liquidate the debts of the Church. In a dispute over the Temperance Movement and morality issues, Huffman and 300 members left on March 10, 1887, and formed the Mount Olive Baptist Church. When Meredith W. Gilbert became Pastor, the congregation published its Rules and Regulations, and Act of Incorporation of the First Colored Baptist Church, of Nashville, Tennessee (July 1887). Gilbert, a co-editor of The Negro Baptist Pulpit (1890), left to pastor churches in other places. On February 1, 1891, Jesse E. Purdy was installed as pastor. Frederick Douglass was the speaker on the night of May 20, 1892. After a fire destroyed the Church on the night of December 4, 1893, a dispute about Church finances developed between the pastor and the officers of the Church. A division resulted in the 1895 Chancery Court decision, leaving many of the original members with the 1866 charter of "First Colored Baptist Church of Nashville." The other faction rebuilt the burnt church building and incorporated the Spruce Street Baptist Church (1897).
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On April 2, 1895, a new Charter of Incorporation read: ?Be it known that E. W. Knight, W. M. Brown, S. W. Crosthwait, A. B. Carter, Deacons J. E. Eakin, J. W. Work, Sr., J. H. Atkinson, Trustees, and their successors in trust are hereby constituted a body politic and corporate by the name and style of the First Colored Baptist Church of Nashville.? Harding Smith was pastor of the Church from 1893 until 1895. Thomas W. Lott served from 1895 to 1896, the year a new building was erected near the northwest corner of Eighth Avenue North and Cedar (Charlotte) Street. Deacon William T. Hightower mortgaged his home and businesses to help finance the loans. Allen D. Hurt was the next pastor (1896-1898). He assisted R. H. Boyd in establishing the National Baptist Publishing Board (1896) before leaving First Baptist to become head of missions for the Tennessee Negro Baptist Association. Hurt published The Beacon Lights of Tennessee Baptists (1900). J. Gardner Ross served as pastor from 1898 to 1899.
W. S. Ellington headed the Church from 1899 until 1915. In September 1911 Deacon Solomon P. Harris became the first Negro elected to the Nashville city council since 1885. Ellington, who also was dean of Chapel at Tennessee A. & I. State Normal School, became famous for his annual Easter sermon: "The Prodigal Son," which often was held in the downtown Ryman Auditorium to accommodate the crowd. Ellington left to become pastor of the First Baptist Church of East Nashville.
Meredith W. Gilbert returned to head the church in 1916, but died in 1917. The supply minister and officers operated First Colored Baptist Church during the interim period. Then, the Reverends S. L. McDowell (1919-1923), T. B. Livingston (1923-1924), and Peter A. Callahan (1924) served as Pastors of the First Colored Baptist Church. The supply minister, deacons, and other members operated the Church through 1927.
In 1928, the congregation sent Deacons J. B. Singleton, E. W. D. Isaac, and S. P. Harris to Galveston, Texas, to recruit Russell Conwell Barbour (1929-1944), who took the First Colored Baptist Church to new heights. Deacon Coyness Ennix was appointed to the city’s housing commission in 1939, and later became the first Negro appointed to the Nashville Board of Education. Barbour edited the National Baptist Voice, served as dean of the Chapel at Tennessee A. & I. State College, and traveled extensively. On August 6, 1944, he collapsed in the pulpit, and died in Hubbard Hospital four days later. Ralph W. Riley (1944-1946) and Herbert L. Wilkins (1946-1950) were Barbour's successors.
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Kelly Miller Smith, a native of Mississippi and a Morehouse graduate, became the Pastor in March 1951. He became president of the local NAACP, and Kelly and Alice Smith entered their children in the first integrated public schools of Nashville in 1957. Smith and others formed the Nashville Christian Leadership Council in 1958—an affiliate of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. By teaching a course at American Baptist Theological Seminary, Smith influenced the students to attend First Colored Baptist and to engage the philosophy of Christian social activism. In 1959 Reverend Smith announced to the congregation that Reverend James Lawson, Jr., and local college students would start their non-violent Christian workshops on certain evenings. In February 1960 they launched sit-in demonstrations upon Nashville’s segregated stores. The mayor declared the city desegregated in May 1960, but the marches from First Colored Baptist into the downtown area continued to target Jim Crow. Smith and the NCLC announced to the congregation one Sunday that a ?Mass Prayer Vigil? would be held at the Courthouse on April 28, 1961, because ?Nashville is still largely a Segregated City.? As students were arrested, hundreds of reserves waited in the Church basement to take their places at the lunch counters, theaters, and restaurants. On May 17, 1961, Smith and the NCLC gave the local Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee some $900 to help finance the Freedom Rides into Alabama and Mississippi. The Freedom Rides helped to end Jim Crow practices of interstate travel in November 1961. First Colored Baptist Church served as the communication center and depository for records of the movement.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. of the SCLC was a frequent visitor to First Colored Baptist Church. The church’s activism and the charisma of the pastor attracted several white liberals to join First Colored Baptist Church. On October 16, 1965 (the 100th Anniversary), the integrated congregation voted to change the church’s name to "First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill." In 1969, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference presented a certificate "To First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill of Nashville for special acknowledgement for unselfish support to bring an end to racism, poverty, and war."
After the Capitol Hill Urban Renewal Project pushed all other historic black churches out of the downtown area, Kelly Miller Smith worked out a deal to exchange the Eighth Avenue property for a lot at 625 Rosa L. Park Boulevard. On March 5, 1972, the congregation marched two blocks down the hill to the new edifice. The Banner newspaper (April 10, 1972) proclaimed: "First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill, will remain the only downtown Negro Church." Barbara Harris became the first woman to chair the Deacon Board in 1982. Kelly Miller Smith authored Social Crisis Preaching (1984), based on his Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale University (1983). He authored books in 1947 and 1948 and contributed to three others. Kelly Miller Smith died on June 3, 1984.
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The Reverend Ottie West and the officers operated the Church during the interim period. Dr. Wallace Charles Smith of Pennsylvania became the Pastor in 1985. The Church experienced great growth, and formed A Task Force on South Africa to protest apartheid. In 1991 the Church fulfilled a commitment to raise $200,000 for The Charles Emerson Boddie Chair of Excellence at American Baptist College. Boddie was a member of First Baptist Capitol Hill, former president of the college, and author of God’s Bad Boys. The Reverend Wallace Charles Smith, author of a recent book, left to pastor the historic Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington, D. C.
In 1992, Dr. Sherman R. Tribble, a musically talented young preacher, was called from New York to the Church pastorate. The church proceeded with the purchase of an adjacent office building to house community outreach and social programs, naming the facility the Ennix-Jones Center in memory of late Deacons Coyness Ennix and Clinton Jones. In 1995 the First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill Endowment Fund was established to honor the late Barbara Harris. In 1998 the Reverend Tribble's contract was ended by a vote of the congregation. The Church elected a Pastoral Search Committee, and Assistant Pastor Arrold N. Martin, served during the interim. The congregation adopted a retrospect titled ?A New Beginning: Looking to Jesus, the Author, and Perfecter of Our Faith.? In 1999 the Church Clerk reported a net loss of 39 members, but the majority members remained committed to the love of God, and steadfast in their Afro-Journey in Faith.
By recommendation of the pastoral search committee and vote of the congregation on June 20, 2000 the Church approved the Reverend Victor Michael Singletary as the eighteenth pastor. The Reverend Singletary was ordained June 12, 1988. Reverend Singletary preached the services at First Baptist Church Capitol Hill on Sunday, July 2, 2000, and upon his arrival he began to provide the spiritual leadership to revitalize the congregation. The theme in 2000 was ?Forgetting that which is behind us, we press on toward the future in Christ Jesus?—Philippians 3:12-15. Singletary started a class—?What the Bible is All About,? commenced a church-wide Bible study, and began Bible study for residents of Kelly Miller Smith Towers. Mrs. Carol Joy Singletary began offering a nursery for children 18 months to three years old to complement the Kincaid Nursery and Children’s Church. Installation services for the new pastor took place on February 18, 2001. The theme was: ?Celebrating Our Legacy As We Move Forward in Faith?—Joshua 4:21-24.He said: ?The vision for now is focused in the first few years on discipleship development of the membership and that is through Christian education, and we will endeavor to become the best disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ that we can be.? The Church completed plans for expansion and renovation of the main facility. On October 27, 2001, V. M. Singletary and other leaders of the Nashville Opportunities Industrial Center held the first Kelly Miller Smith, Sr. Prayer Breakfast at the Renaissance Hotel.
In 2001, First Baptist Church Capitol Hill celebrated 136 years in worshipping the Lord. The service was held Sunday, December 2, 2001, with the Reverend Clement W. Fugh an AME minister from Memphis preaching the sermon under the theme: ?Celebrating our legacy as we move forward in faith.? During 2001-2002, the church held seminars on economic dependency for minorities, political forums featuring local and statewide candidates, health seminars for minorities, Baccalaureate Sunday for the high school and college graduates, National Children’s Day, Roots Sunday with Spruce Street Baptist Church and Mt. Olive Baptist Church, Women’s Day, Men’s Day, Youth Sundays, Vacation Bible School, Loyalty Sunday, Holy Week, and the annual picnic and church meetings. And the congregation approved the church renovation project.
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(See a more detailed story of FBCCH by clicking on Chronology) (All copyrights reserved)
