The Black church is the foundation of St. Louis history 

A major part of American history is St. Louis history. The city predates the nation by more than a decade and became part of the United States in 1804 through the Louisiana Purchase. St. Louis has played a pivotal role in holding America accountable to its promises of liberty and justice for all.

St. Louis has been a battleground for equality for more than two centuries. One of the first civil rights demonstrations in American history took place on the steps of the Old Courthouse in 1819, when free Black residents and White allies protested Missouri’s entry into the Union as a slave state. The Old Courthouse was the site of the freedom suits of the 1840s, culminating in the Dred Scott U.S. Supreme Court case, often credited as inciting the Civil War.

Black St. Louis church history is St. Louis history — and therefore American history. If we are going to name, honor and exhibit the organizations that shaped this city as part of America’s origin story, we must begin with the Black church. That is not to be confused with churches that Black people attend. Every other organization is beautiful wallpaper. The Black church is the wall.

In 1825, John Berry Meachum organized what became First African Baptist Church — now First Baptist Church City of St. Louis — the oldest Black church west of the Mississippi. Meachum purchased his own freedom through carpentry, then bought roughly 20 enslaved people, trained them in a trade and set them free.

When Missouri outlawed the education of Black people in 1847, he did not close his classroom. He equipped a steamboat with a library, desks and chairs and opened the Floating Freedom School on the Mississippi River, beyond the reach of Missouri law. One of his students, James Milton Turner, founded Lincoln Institute, the first institution of higher learning for Black Missourians. Mary Meachum, his wife, helped freedom seekers cross the river at what is now called the Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing. It’s documented in the State Historical Society’s archives.

The Greek word for church is ekklesia. It means “the called-out ones,” the assembly summoned for a purpose beyond itself. Ekklesia was never meant to be four walls and a steeple. Before there was a Lincoln Institute, the church was already the schoolhouse. Before there was a bar association to induct pioneering attorney and longtime Central member Margaret Bush Wilson, the church was already the only room where a Black grievance could be spoken aloud without a white officer standing watch.

Quinn Chapel AME Church, Union Memorial Methodist Church, Antioch Baptist Church and Central Baptist Church — the church I now pastor — ran mutual aid societies, burial societies and benevolent funds that functioned as the first banks Black St. Louisans could trust because no other bank would have them. The sanctuary built the scaffolding the community stood on.

Scripture says in Hebrews, “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.” That has been the Black church’s offering in this city for more than two centuries.

I do not say this to diminish the contributions of other organizations. I say it because every one of them was founded by people who first learned to organize, to tithe and to trust one another with money and strategy inside a Black church. They borrowed their order of service from Sunday morning. The mutual aid society borrowed its ledger from the deacon ministry.

The administration seeks to silence the prophetic voice of the Black church. Privilege has sidelined our acknowledgment, support and reverence for the Black church. Proximity has planted seeds that internalize the same oppression that mutes the liberative ethos and pathos of our work. Before and after every march, the people gathered in a Black church.

The steamboat anchored beyond the reach of an unjust law. The riverbank where a pastor’s wife pointed enslaved people toward Illinois and freedom. Before Black St. Louis had any other organization, it had a Sunday. Before it had any other association, it had a baptism. The Black church is our epicenter, our incubator, the very wall on which the wallpaper of St. Louis life and culture was raised.

We have been building this city since before this city would let us own the ground we stood on. We built it with hymnals and offering plates and Sunday school rooms turned into night schools. We built it with the kind of joy the world did not give us — and the world cannot take away. If we are going to continue building, join us in church first.

Rev. Anthony L. Riley is pastor of Central Baptist Church in St. Louis.

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