The First Colored Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, also known as First Baptist Church—Lauderdale, was built in 1939 in a vernacular Colonial Revival style, with design attributed to Rev. Thomas O. Fuller. with
History The First Baptist Church, Lauderdale is a rectangular brick building with brick laid in common bond. It has a limestone fence separating its parking area from the street, which is a c.1890 fence from the former Second Empire-styled Sanford house on the property.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000. It was deemed significant for its association with Thomas Oscar Fuller (1867-).
First Baptist Church, Lauderdale, in Memphis, Shelby County, Tennessee is one of the city's most significant African American churches and is associated with the early twentieth century African-American religious, education, and political leader, the Reverend Thomas Oscar Fuller.
Although the present church building was not constructed until 1939, the significance of the congregation to African-American religious and social history in Memphis dates prior to the American Civil War. The formation of African-American churches during and after the Civil War represented a new era in institution building for the newly emancipated blacks. Religion, which provided a source of strength for African Americans during their enslavement, proved a logical arena for most of the urban African-American institutional development after the war. The fact that a majority of organizational accounts kept with the Freedmen's Saving and Trust Company immediately after the war were either African American churches or benevolent societies associated with the churches, is just one demonstration of the significance of the newly established black religious institutions in post Civil War Memphis.
The congregation of the First Baptist Church, Lauderdale, is considered the “Mother Church” for most of the black Baptist congregations in Memphis, and by extension, for most of the African- American Baptist churches in West Tennessee. The earliest beginnings of the First Baptist Church trace back to 1854, when Morris Henderson, then a slave, ministered to a small group of Christians. Supervised by white ministers, this first group of believers worshiped in the basement of the white First Baptist Church on the corner of Beale and Main Street. A decade later, circa 1864–1865, Morris Henderson received his formal ordination from Baptist missionaries who had flooded into many southern cities to minister to the needs of newly emancipated African Americans.
The end of the Civil War in the spring of 1865 prompted Reverend Henderson to make a down payment on a lot located on Beale Street, using funds raised by women members of the newly established congregation. Hundreds of dollars, for example, came from the efforts of the women's Baptist Sewing Society. Reverend Henderson led his congregation from the basement of the white church at Main and Beale streets to worship under a “brush arbor” at the new site, which was approximately four blocks west on Beale Street. Henderson and leading members chartered the new church as the First Colored Baptist Church. This action made Henderson one of the first African Americans in Memphis to reject white religious paternalism and successfully pioneer a completely black institution. It also established a tradition of leadership and activism on the part of the ministers of the congregation. The role of women members in funding the new church also established a tradition of service for various women clubs and societies within the congregation.
The movement of blacks away from white establishment became common across the South during the early years of Reconstruction. Operating churches independent of white control is one way that post emancipation blacks exercised freedom. Because most of the African American churches of the time were exclusively religious in their business, the white leadership did not perceive the large church assemblage of blacks as a threat. Reverend Henderson mirrored this philosophy by prohibiting the association of overt political groups with the church, although many prominent members of the church were also prominent leaders of various civic, political, and social societies in Victorian-era Memphis.
After an extensive membership drive and fundraising campaign, the First Colored Baptist Church congregation raised $5,000 to completely purchase the Beale Street lot in 1866. Three years later, Henderson raised enough money to build the first level of what would eventually become a large, brick Gothic-styled church building. This church building, the Beale Street Baptist Church, is the oldest brick African-American church building in Tennessee and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. This large building reflected the growth of church membership. At this time, it was common for 2,500 worshippers to crowd into the building. Reverend Henderson encouraged members to limit their attendance to one service each Sunday.
The heady days of unity, common purpose, and institution building gave way to congregational disputes within a decade of the founding of First Colored Baptist Church. Due to the large membership, doctrinal disagreement, and the death of Reverend Henderson in 1877, the First Baptist Church congregation split into two groups in 1877, both of whom held services on Beale Street. By 1894, the two factions had gone to court to settle the differences. The original church charter by Henderson and the name “First Colored Baptist Church” was given to the group that moved out of the Beale Street church building to worship at Zion Hall at 217 Beale Street.13 The group that remained in the Beale Street church building received the charter for the “Beale Street Baptist Church.” The first minister of the First Colored Baptist Church after this legal separation was Dr. W. S. Ellington, a graduate of Fisk University. He served from 1894 to 1900. The congregation remained on Beale Street until 1906, when under the leadership of Rev. Thomas O. Fuller, the congregation relocated to a site on 495 St. Paul Avenue.14 They consecrated a Victorian Gothic-styled church building as their new home in 1907. At that time in Memphis “Jim Crow” segregation was in full force while, at the same time, there was an important movement among leaders of established African-American institutions to accommodate themselves to their white-dominated environs by strengthening and expanding black institutions, businesses, and neighborhoods. In an era of lynching and white mob violence, some religious leaders rejected actions of political incitement and militancy. Instead, they encouraged racial cooperation and sought alternatives to public protest. This strategy is known as “accommodation,” with Booker T. Washington of Alabama viewed as the most important national figurehead of this movement.
In 1900, Thomas Oscar Fuller became the minister of the First Colored Baptist Church. Upon his arrival in Memphis in 1900, according to standard historical accounts by David Tucker, Lester Lamon, Kenneth Goings, and Gerald Smith, the Reverend Thomas Oscar Fuller adopted a strategy of accommodation; in fact he became of the most prominent black minister in the city due to his principles of accommodation with whites. However, when one considers Fuller's actions over a forty-year period, the broad category of accommodation does not always apply. Fuller often strongly expressed his pride in being African-American and refused to accept the prevailing white notion that blacks were racially inferior. While Fuller clearly adapted himself to the racial climate and assumptions of early twentieth century Memphis, he also exercised what may be called selective accommodation in dealing with the needs of his congregation in specific and middle-class African-Americans of Memphis in general over the next forty years.
In their overview of African-American community building in Memphis between 1860 and 1920, historians Kenneth Goings and Gerald Smith identify Fuller as one of the four most important accommodationists in turn-of-the-century Memphis. He came to Memphis with impressive credentials. He had received his A. M. degree from Shaw University, under his white mentor Dr. Thomas Skinner, in 1893; Fuller later received his doctorate in theology in 1906. He had been politically active in his native state of North Carolina. Prior to his appointment at First Baptist, Reverend Fuller had been elected to and had served in the North Carolina State Senate in 1898. As he recalled in his 1910 autobiography of his North Carolina career, the election was fraught with racial prejudice; the call for white superiority incited riots that resulted in the arson of a local black newspaper and death of innocent African Americans in Wilmington, North Carolina. Once in office, many black North Carolinians looked to Senator Fuller to push an agenda of racial equality since he was the only African American in the state senate. Fuller's philosophy of accommodation impeded him from making demands and instead he emphasized cooperation and harmony between the races in hopes that whites would leave law-abiding African Americans alone. Fuller's approach, however, gained little support from prominent blacks, who wanted more activism for change, nor did it please whites who wanted to eliminate all African Americans from political office, no matter how conservative their politics might be. The criticism and pressure facing Fuller made the pastoral position at the First Baptist Church in Memphis very appealing. He took the job and moved to Memphis.
Fuller fared well in his new home. In 1902, he was named principal of Howe Institute, which had been established in 1888 as the Memphis Baptist and Normal Institute for West Tennessee Baptists. Heading the Institute provided Fuller with important contacts and outlets for his talents. As historian David Tucker has pointed out, “the Institute founders had shrewdly designed a curriculum which combined academic, religious, and industrial training, and therefore had a wide appeal.” Howe's success hinged on “cooperation between the local white power elite and black ministers” and brought the “ministers important white contacts and greater prestige in the community.” Howe provided Fuller with his first podium to attract the attention of white leaders. Originally appointed as the interim principal, until the Institute could find someone to fill the position full time, Rev. Fuller's “temporary” arrangement lasted twenty-seven years until Fuller requested a leave of absence to author two books, after which he continued his educational service to Memphis.
With his prominent positions in education and religion came increased social and political responsibility for Reverend Fuller. In 1905, Fuller was a conservative voice in the dispute and strike over the segregation of the city's streetcars. He urged compliance and highlighted the Christian virtues of abiding the law. When black community members threatened to confront streetcar conductors. Reverend Fuller argued that public confrontations would only produce violence against African Americans. He publicly pleaded for citizens to accept the new laws. He wrote, “the law will be in full effect, and law-abiding citizens can do nothing but respect its provisions.” With his experiences in North Carolina in mind, Fuller viewed attempts to protest the new laws as futile, believing that the white power structure would crush any opposition.