Second Baptist Church

Second Baptist Church. . , A Tradition of Faith and Activism , A block west of Central Avenue, radiating from the corner of 24th Street and Griffith Avenue, stands Second Baptist Church, among the most influential of the city's African American faith institutions. The church has had a remarkable history steeped in both spirituality and activism, particularly with regard to civil rights and community development. Established in 1885 in a room over a stable in downtown Los Angeles, the congregation grew as migration in the early 20th century packed the pews with African Americans from Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas. , Paul Revere Williams, an African American architect, and Norman Foote Marsh designed the building, Second Baptist's third home. The gold-toned brick, Romanesque Revival structure, which opened in January 1926, featured seating for more than 2,000 congregants. It was Williams' first major public commission and one of the few from the black community. According to church history, the congregation's leaders, including Reverend Thomas Lee Griffich, hired an African American real estate agent with a very light completion to secure the site from its white owners. , Sanctuary of Service , Through the decades, the church has always combined the sacred and the secular. When the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) held its first West Coast convention in Los Angeles in 1928, delegates attended all-day sessions at Second Baptist. In 1954, the congregation contributed $1,500 to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to print the briefs used in the U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education. , Church members raised money so that Ralph J. Bunche, the valedictorian of his class at local Thomas Jefferson High School, could attend UCLA. Bunche became a civil rights advocate and United Nations diplomat. He was the first African American to win the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded in 1950 for his negotiation of a ceasefire in the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli conflict. In 1961, Second Baptist parishioners paid for round-trip bus tickets for a dozen Los Angeles-area "Freedom Riders" - eight whites and four African Americans - who traveled to Jackson, Mississippi, to protest Southern states' disregard for federal anti-segregation laws. The church welcomed singer Paul Robeson, despite the controversy stirred by his progressive sympathies. , Second Baptist's congregants included such influential individuals as Lt. Col. Allen Allensworth, U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher, Congresswoman Juanita Millender McDonald, and renowned attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr. , Shouting "Amen!" to Dr. King , In March 1968, parishoners shouted "Amen!" from the church pews after Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed that racism was still a glaring reality and that it was "time for somebody in Washington to say we made a mistake in Vietnam." Just weeks later, he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. King received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for his efforts to end segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other nonviolent means. , Community Building , East of the church, Second Baptist built two complexes of federally subsidized housing for seniors, Griffith Gardens and Kilgore Manor. The latter is named for longtime pastor Thomas Kilgore Jr., who helped organize the historic 1963 civil rights march on Washington and founded the Los Angeles chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. When the federal Head Start program began in 1965, educator Mary Clay left the private school she had opened in West Adams to help establish a Second Baptist preschool for low-income children. Second Baptist is a Los Angeles Historie-Cultural Monument and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.