LATimes.com: 'Hometown U.S.A.: Hampton, Va. Historic black church rises from ashes of Civil War'

[“Church archivist Catherine Howard holds up a hymnal that dates to the founding of First Baptist Church Hampton after the Civil War.” (Rob Ostermaier, Daily Press / February 3, 2012)]

John Malveaux of www.MusicUNTOLD.com brings this article to the attention of AfriClassical:

“The legacy of First Baptist Church in Hampton, Virginia — founded by free and enslaved blacks on the site of a place abandoned and burned by rebellious whites — can still be felt nearly 150 years later.

By Mark St. John Erickson, Daily Press

February 26, 2012

“Like most blacks in the pre-Civil War South, the African Americans of the old Colonial town of Hampton, Va., had few choices when it came to worship. Enslaved or free, illiterate or learned, they crowded shoulder to shoulder in the rear balconies of the white churches, forced there by laws that barred them from gathering by themselves. And despite outnumbering their white brethren by 9 to 1 in such places as Hampton Baptist Church, they had little say over how they practiced their faith.

“Those long years of silence and submission came to an end with the upheaval that rocked this historic town during the Civil War. Founded by a pioneering band of free and enslaved blacks, one of the first independent African American churches born in the conflict between North and South rose from the ashes of a place that had been abandoned and burned by its rebellious white population. So deeply did the roots of First Baptist Church take hold in this seemingly unpromising soil that its legacy can still be felt nearly 150 years later.”