Baylor History Faculty & Alumna Observe Baptist History Unfold

Despite extensive research and engagement with Baptist history, Black Baptist history remains largely overlooked. However, recently, Colonial Williamsburg, the Let Freedom Ring Foundation, and the descendant community of the Historic First Baptist Church of Williamsburg, Virginia, took a step forward together to unveil a buried chapter in Baptist history. On Friday, Oct. 9, they held a public ceremony to commemorate the dedication of the reconstructed African Baptist Meeting House, originally constructed in the early 1800s. The Department of History was represented at the moving ceremony by Dr. Ronald Angelo Johnson, the Ralph and Bessie Mae Lynn Professor of History, and Baylor History distinguished alumna Ella Wall Prichard.

The church’s story began during the American Revolution. Free and enslaved worshippers began gathering at a plantation outside Williamsburg in the 1770s. “Despite the enslaved status of most of the Black population, they braved Anglican scorn and flouted restrictions on their movements to establish the capital city’s first Baptist congregation of any color,” writes Johnson in his latest book, Entangled Alliances: Racialized Freedom and Atlantic Diplomacy during the American Revolution (Cornell University Press, 2025).

Prichard, who established the Ella Wall Prichard Fund for Early Black Baptist History (EBBH) at Baylor, said, “When I read a history of Baptists, I read the story of white Baptists, with perhaps one chapter on Black Baptists, despite the fact that roughly half the Baptists today are Black; and in the colonial period, certainly in Virginia, Black Baptists far outnumbered white Baptists.”

Black Baptists built a meeting house in what is now Colonial Williamsburg in the early nineteenth century, but a tornado later destroyed the original building. Archaeologists recently uncovered the church’s original foundations beneath a parking lot. “I experienced the unveiling of the African Baptist Meeting House on the First Baptist Church’s 250th anniversary as history unfolding before me. It honored our ancestors’ struggles and celebrated their triumphs,” said Connie Matthews Harshaw, president of the Let Freedom Ring Foundation.

Rev. Dr. Reginald F. Davis, the current pastor of the Historic First Baptist Church of Williamsburg, pinpointed the enduring legacy of Black Baptists in his remarks, “This building is more than brick and mortar but a symbol of our shared history and the ongoing commitment to tell the nation that Black history is American history.”

Notably, Baylor University pursues the untold stories of Black Baptist history. Prichard said, “Secular universities aren’t interested, and Baylor with its R1 status (and the requisite resources) and deep Baptist roots is uniquely qualified to undertake this work.”

Johnson counts it as “an opportunity of a lifetime” to serve as steward of Baylor EBBH, which aims to support the study of the origins and evolution of Black Baptist history in North America to 1866. As Prichard said, “I won’t live to see the final results of this work—if indeed it is ever done—but I can’t think of a better legacy to leave Baylor than this.”