The Old Bridge Street Church

The Old Bridge Street Church. . , In January 1863, an historic three-day celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation occurred here at the Bridge Street African Wesleyan Methodist Episcopal Church. On Wednesday night, New Years Eve , known as "watch night" in the church's tradition of annually awaiting the start of a New Year hundreds of black and white Brooklyn citizens attended the service, in anticipation of Abraham Lincoln's promise to sign the proclamation on New Year's Day., On Thursday, January 1, 1863, the Bridge Street Church remained open all day. As word spread that President Lincoln had signed the Proclamation , freeing four million African American men, women, and children , people came hourly into the chapel to express their joy in meetings, speeches, prayers, and songs , and their concern about the ongoing Civil War. On Friday, January 2, 1863, a formal program of speakers at the Bridge Street Church included African American historian William Wells Brown and abolitionist Theodore Tilton., The Bridge Street Church served prominently in the anti-slavery movement as an abolitionist meeting place and a "station" of the Underground Railroad, hiding freedom seekers in the church basement. With local abolitionist leaders Henry Ward Beecher, Henry Highland Garnet, J.W.C. Pennington, James Gloucester, Arthur and Lewis Tappan, and John H. Raymond (a founder of the Polytechnic University), and sites like the Plymouth Congregational, Siloam Presbyterian, and Concord Baptist Church, Brooklyn became a national hub of abolitionist and anti-slavery activities , the nation's first human rights campaign., In February 1863, the nation's leading civil rights activist Frederick Douglass spoke at the Bridge Street Church, delivering a stirring speech on the need for black soldiers in the Union ranks. Douglass used the Bridge Street address a few weeks later to launch his historic Men of Color, To Arms campaign which recruited 200,000 African American soldiers for the Union cause., In October 1865, Harriet Tubman, the nation's most famous conductor of the Underground Railroad, visited the church and was welcomed by an immense congregation fully half consisting of whites, reported the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and she was hailed for her war heroics as a Union scout and nurse. At the time eighteen-year-old Susan Smith McKinney was the church's youngest organist. Born and raised in Weeksville, she was an activist in missionary work and the suffragist movement, and she became the first black female doctor of New York State., The Bridge Street Church's origins extend back to 1776 when black and white members met at the Sand Street Methodist Episcopal Church. Racial tensions grew over time; and in 1818, African American members withdrew and formed the African Wesleyan Methodist Episcopal Church on High Street, before moving to Bridge Street in 1854. Today the Bridge Street AWME Church is located at 277 Stuyvesant Avenue., (The idea to place this plaque was born out of the vision and activist struggle of the Rev. Dr. Herbert D. Dwight, Sr. Chairman of the Downtown Brooklyn Neighborhood Alliance (DBNA)'s Center for the Study of History, Culture and Social Movements and the National Presiding Minister of the House of the Lord Churches, February 12, 2007)