March 27, 2019
Page 5
A Legacy
of
Action
C ontinueD froM f ront
The church, now located at
3138 N. Vancouver Ave. in the
Albina district of inner north and
northeast Portland, was originally
established in 1944 across the Co-
lumbia River in Vancouver, Wash.,
at the site of a housing project
called Burton Homes where it was
known as the First Baptist Church.
Thousands of shipyard workers
who came to the Northwest during
World War II—many of whom
were Southern and black--helped
the congregation get formed.
“What people were looking for
was a better life, better opportu-
nity, a place to raise your family
without all the blatant signs of Jim
Crow and racial prejudice and bias
and things of that nature,” Hen-
nessee said.
It relocated no fewer than three
times over the next decade as the
ending of WWII saw the closures
of many housing projects. The
church then established itself in
Albina— where many of the city’s
African Americans resided. In
1951 it moved to its current loca-
tion, a former Methodist Episco-
pal church, built in 1909.
From 1951 to 1967 the mem-
bership grew from 650 to 2,000
and during that period became a
town hall for local African Ameri-
cans. At the time it was the largest
black church in the entire Pacific
Northwest.
“If there were things that were
related to community activities,
such as the NAACP, The Urban
League, or anything related to
improvement in terms of better
conditions for blacks--like hous-
ing, employment, education--the
church played a role in helping to
foster those social/economical im-
provements for blacks in the 50s
and 60s,” the church’s historian
and archivist, Raymond Burell III,
told the Portland Observer.
In 1961, the Urban League se-
lected the church as one of the
stops on Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr.’s national speaking tour. The
national civil rights leader met
with clergy and delivered a speech
entitled “The Future of Integra-
tion,” commenting that “if democ-
racy is to live, segregation must
die. Segregation is a cancer in the
body of democracy that must be
removed if the health of the nation
is to survive.”
Rv. King’s message was
undoubtedly resonant to the
then-segregated
neighborhood
residents. The church would later
be the site of the statewide memo-
rial service held for King after his
death in 1968. In 2006, the church
also hosted a memorial service for
Coretta Scott King, who was Hen-
nessee’s godmother.
Rev. O.B. Williams, who
passed away in 1993, and wife
Ida, who passed away in 2010,
were given numerous communi-
ty recognitions in their lifetimes.
That included a community award
for Ida by the Black Caucus of
Portland in 1979; and then-Mayor
Bud Clark proclaiming May 27 as
O.B Williams Day in 1986.
Since 2007, under the lead-
ership of Pastor Hennessee, the
church hosts Drum Major cele-
brations each year in tribute to Dr.
King on the weekend of the nation-
al holiday honoring the civil rights
icon. In January the church hosted
Ambassador Attalah Shabazz, the
eldest daughter of Malcolm X and
Dr. Betty Shabazz, as its keynote
speaker. The celebration annual-
ly honors community leaders and
provides scholarships for local
college-bound high school stu-
dents.
In 2016 the church was official-
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photo C ourtesy v anCouver a venue f irst b aptist C hurCh
The Vancouver Avenue First Baptist Church in the 1950s when it was the largest black congregation
in the Pacific Northwest, a meeting place for social justice groups like the Portland NAACP, the
Portland Urban League, and even hosted Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1961. Today, the church
continues to be a central part of African American community life.
ly listed on the National Register
of Historic places thanks in part
to the efforts of Burell, who wrote
a 133-page nomination report for
the listing. He also authored a cof-
fee table book of the history of the
church and its leadership, “Van-
couver Avenue: Yesterday, Today,
and Forever,” in 2009.
By 2016, the membership
of the church dwindled to 400,
coinciding with the gentrifica-
tion and displacement of black
community members from the
church’s Eliot neighborhood
over the last couple of decades.
Current plans would bolster
the church’s prominence in
the community for decades to
come by establishing a new Af-
rican-American Museum at the
church. Plans call for an exhib-
it gallery, spanning a little over
1,000 square feet, which will
showcase the legacy of blacks in
the community, Burell said.
“There’s a lot of history in this
area and yet there’s no one place
you can go to kind of say, let’s go
look at the exhibits, so our goal is
to develop that,” Hennessee said.
Thanks to a $175,000 grant
from the National Fund for Sacred
Places, and other pending grants
and donations, the museum will
be part of a larger renovation proj-
ect that will unfold over the next
year.
It will include the formation of
a dedicated space for iUrban Teen,
a partnering organization that
brings together underrepresented
teens and young adults for career
exploration and mentoring in the
science, technology, engineer-
ing, math, and arts fields. A board
room for community use is also in
the works.