By Rosaland Tyler
Associate Editor
New Journal and Guide
It was like thumbing through a well-preserved history book or journeying back through time, when congregants celebrated their 250th anniversary on Oct. 8-11 at the historic First Baptist Church Williamsburg.
Trailblazing Virginia Senator Mamie Locke and pioneering Virginia Supreme Court Justice John Charles Thomas delivered keynote addresses at the nation’s second oldest Black church, which began in fields and wooded areas in 1776–three years after the nation’s oldest Black church (First African Baptist) was launched in Savannah in 1773. This means the Williamsburg church’s history tracks through the Revolutionary War, slavery, the Civil War, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Era.
But its history also stretches ahead to 2016, when former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama officially opened the National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. by ringing the church’s 1886 Freedom Bell. Its history also includes modern upgrades such as a new HVAC system for Virginia’s scorching summers, a refreshed altar table for sermons, shutters and handblown glass windows.
Another page of church history, meanwhile, shows that in June 2025, Colonial Williamsburg began rebuilding the original 16-foot by 32-foot church with pine, poplar and oak. Windows were rebuilt with shutters but no glass. First Baptist’s original meeting house was known as the African Baptist Meeting House and built around 1805, its foundation laid with recycled bricks on land that was low, soft and often soggy — hardly ideal for building.
Then, many of the church’s congregants were skilled tradespeople.They made it work by flipping bricks on their side and making other adjustments to lay a level foundation.
“The First Baptist Church of Williamsburg, Virginia, stands as a living monument to the enduring power and resilience of its congregation,” Dr. Cassandra L. Newby-Alexander, wrote in her new book, “First Baptist Church of Williamsburg: A History of Resilience, Determination, and Hope.”
“Beginning in the hush harbors on plantations owned by Virginia’s most powerful leadership, First Baptist emerged as a powerful force, inextricably linking religious salvation and education as tools of liberation and agency for Africans in America,” wrote Newby-Alexander, the endowed professor of Virginia Black History and Culture at Norfolk State University.
So, the church’s history actually includes triumphs plus tragedies, in other words, since its building at 1805 on Nassau Street was destroyed by a tornado in 1834. Another church was later built on the property but Colonial Williamsburg acquired the site in the 1950s, razed the church building, and replaced it with a parking lot. In 2021, archaeologists uncovered the church’s original foundation, as well as 62 graves that DNA linked to the congregation.
The Rev. Reginald F. Davis, pastor of First Baptist, told the Associated Press in a recent interview, “What this day means and shows is that Black history is American history, and we’re an example for the rest of the nation. A church that has a history that was during the signing of the Declaration of Independence, you cannot erase us out of American history because we have been at the outset and formulation of the nation,” said Davis, who leads the current 215-member congregation in a 20th century church on Scotland Street, located less than a mile from the original site.
The 250th anniversary also included keynote speeches by a trailblazing political leader and a history-making Virginia Supreme Court Justice.
Locke, 72, is the first African American woman elected mayor of Hampton and the third African American woman elected to the Senate of Virginia. Thomas, 76, is a former justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, serving from April 25, 1983, to Nov. 1, 1989, and was the first African American and the youngest person to hold that position.
The Nassau Street Remembrance Choir presented spirituals. Sarah Ikumu provided inspirational music. The anniversary celebration also included James Ingram, a museum interpreter who has for 26 years portrayed Gowan Pamphlet, First Baptists’ pastor when the original church structure was built. It included dinner, a concert, and an after-party with a DJ. The Foundation presented its inaugural Freedom’s Bell Award to Brent Leggs, president and CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The anniversary celebration also included the unveiling and dedication of the newly constructed African Baptist Meeting House and sacred burial ground at the congregation’s original Nassau Street.
Photo: Courtesy
