Hundreds gathered in Williamsburg, Virginia, on Friday to rededicate the reconstructed First Baptist Church, one of the nation’s oldest Black churches.
The original African Baptist Meeting House was founded in 1776 by enslaved and free African Americans who defied laws banning their gatherings. Its parishioners built the first church house in 1805 using recycled bricks and scrounged materials, only to see a tornado destroy it in 1834. The rebuilt structure stood until 1956, when the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation demolished it to create a parking lot because it clashed with the town’s curated 18th-century aesthetic.
Reginald F. Davis, pastor of the current 215-member congregation, has spent years pushing for this moment. “What this day means and shows is that Black history is American history, and we’re an example for the rest of the nation,” he said on Friday. “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.”
The discovery that made reconstruction possible came in 2021, when archaeologists unearthed the church’s original foundation along with 62 graves linked to the congregation. Oral tradition had long hinted at burials in the area, guiding researchers to the site. DNA tests and bone analyses later connected three sets of remains directly to the African Baptist Meeting House congregation.
“When the church’s original structure was discovered in 2021, Davis called it “a rediscovery of the humanity of a people,” He added: “We were just so elated that those people who had been buried and forgotten, have now been unearthed and given the recognition as human beings, as they should have been. It’s a wonderful time to shed light on our history in light of the erasure of so many things within our history.”
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, which operates the living history museum surrounding the site, has shifted its approach to the church’s story after decades of silence. Janice Canaday, the foundation’s community engagement manager, addressed the change directly at Friday’s event. “I wanted them to know that we were always here, where when the doors of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation first opened, the restoration, and even before then, we were sometimes present, but not able to speak,” she said. “This is a reclamation, a reclaiming of the narrative.”
More than half of Williamsburg’s 2,000 residents in the 18th century were Black, with few enjoying freedom. The museum’s Friday celebration marked the building’s 250th anniversary and included a procession symbolizing the congregation’s multigenerational struggle for education, faith, and freedom. The Nassau Street Remembrance Choir performed before an invocation from Davis and speeches from Virginia state Senator Mamie Locke and James Ingram, a museum interpreter who portrayed Gowan Pamphlet, the church’s pastor when the original structure was built.
Ingram, who handed the role to new interpreter Brandon Lee at the dedication, had previously described Pamphlet as “a precursor to someone like Frederick Douglass, who would be the precursor to someone like Martin Luther King Jr.” Pamphlet, an enslaved tavern worker, preached equality despite laws prohibiting large African American gatherings out of fear of slave uprisings.
Jennifer Wilkoski, director of architectural preservation and research at Colonial Williamsburg, noted that the original materials demonstrated congregants’ resourcefulness, likely including skilled carpenters. The new reconstruction, built at the original site with pine and white oak, recreates details like half-round brick steps while adding modern necessities including an HVAC system for Virginia’s summers and handblown glass windows.
“It’s not church stained glass, but we call it restoration glass, handmade like they would’ve had in the 18th and early 19th century,” Wilkoski said.
Finishing touches, including an ADA-accessible ramp, will wrap up in the coming months. Davis, whose congregation now worships less than a mile away on Scotland Street in a 20th-century building, said the meeting house structure delivers overdue recognition for “those of us who are still working to make America a more perfect union.”
The rededication ceremony continues Colonial Williamsburg’s recent efforts to resuscitate the church’s place as a pioneer of Black American faith traditions after years of omission from the museum’s historical narrative.