Charles L. Williams remembers standing outside of Cory United Methodist Church in a tightly packed crowd who couldn’t get in to see the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
People were craning their necks and cupping their ears in hopes of hearing King’s speech wafting from open windows at the church on East 105th Street in Glenville.
“There were so many people there that it was like the Million Many March,” said Williams, who would join the church years later, eventually becoming a trustee.
The streets were so clogged when King spoke on May 14, 1963, that traffic was at a standstill for 20 blocks, according to the Cleveland Civil Rights Trail website. Four thousand crammed into a sanctuary designed for 2,400. Williams was among the 5,000 gathered outside.
Cory isn’t the only church included in the Cleveland Restoration Society’s project.
“So many sites in Cleveland where civil rights history was made were at a number of these historic Black churches,” said Margaret Lann, CRS’ director of preservation services and publications.
Today, many of these churches are struggling to find the money for major repair and renovation projects. This is why CRS is laying the groundwork to start a $5 million fund that would help Cleveland’s historic Black churches with such projects.
Here is a look at the Black churches Cleveland Restoration has deemed historic. These congregations were able to document the architectural significance of their buildings and how their churches were the site of historical events such as the Civil Rights Movement. Lann said most of the churches CRS has worked with are larger, and other churches could be identified as historic in the future.
Think your church should be included? Let us know.
Read more about the effort to preserve Cleveland’s Historic Black Churches
How a $5 million fund could help Cleveland’s Black churches preserve their historic buildings
Advent Evangelical Lutheran Church, 15309 Harvard Ave.
This 1965 church is considered mid-century modern. The Cleveland Restoration Society says it was designed by William and James Whitley, the twin brothers who founded the architectural firm Whitley and Whitley with their sister, Joyce.
Antioch Baptist Church, 8869 Cedar Ave.
This church grew out of Shiloh Baptist, Cleveland’s oldest African American Baptist church. Antioch held its first formal worship service in 1893. In the early 1900s, it enjoyed financial support from the industrialist John D. Rockefeller.
Antioch’s various community outreach activities include the Antioch Development Corp. and the Antioch Credit Union. It supports a variety of outreach work, including programs focusing on at-risk youth, HIV/AIDS education and re-entry resources.
Cory United Methodist Church, 1117 E. 105th St.
Cory United Methodist was Cleveland’s largest Black-owned church in the 1950s and 1960s with more than 3,000 members. The church became a civil rights center and “the most important platform for influential civil rights leaders to address Cleveland’s Black residents,” according to the Cleveland Civil Rights Trail website.
NAACP co-founder and Pan-Africanist W.E.B. Du Bois spoke there in 1950. Thurgood Marshall, founder and head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and later the first Black U.S. Supreme Court justice, spoke there the following year. Malcolm X stood at the pulpit giving his first “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech there, which would become famous, and sometimes controversial, for offering the Black community a strategy for gaining political and economic power. Voting was emphasized, as was self-determination by taking up arms, if all else failed.
Williams couldn’t get into the Malcolm X speech and again found himself outside on a crowded sidewalk.
“He drew a lot of people, but not like Dr. King,” he said. “Malcolm X was not as popular as Dr. King was in our community because he was talking violence and Dr. King was talking non-violence.”
Cory United Methodist bought the Glenville building from the Anshe Emeth Beth Tefilo congregation. The large building was able to accommodate meetings of all sizes.
East Mt. Zion Baptist Church, 9990 Euclid Ave.
This building at the corner of East 100th Street and Euclid Avenue, finished in 1908, has an unusual green serpentine pattern to its stone siding.
Emmanuel Baptist Church, 7901 Quincy Ave.
This Fairfax building, completed in 1949 after a fire devastated an earlier structure, is “the first Baptist church in Cleveland built to completion by an African-American congregation,” according to the Cleveland Restoration Society.
Fellowship Missionary Baptist, 1754 E. 55th St.
This building was constructed for Grace Lutheran Church in 1908. Fellowship Missionary took over in 1962. According to the Cleveland Restoration Society, it was the sixth congregation to come from Shiloh.
According to Ohio’s Historic Preservation Office, “the church and its leaders actively fought against racial discrimination and poverty, launching initiatives like the Fellowship Credit Union to support Cleveland’s disenfranchised communities.”
Greater Abyssinia Baptist Church, 1161 E. 105th St.
In 1961, Rev. Emmit Theophilus Caviness became pastor of Greater Abyssinia. Under his leadership, the church became the headquarters of the United Freedom Movement, which challenged segregation and overcrowding in Cleveland public schools.
The church’s next door neighbor is Cory United Methodist.
Caviness personally invested $500,000 of his savings in 1995 to establish an endowment fund for Greater Abyssinia. “The church is central in the future of our urban cities and indeed the nation,” he said in a March 1995 interview with Jet Magazine.
Greater Friendship Baptist Church, 12305 Arlington Ave.
This Glenville church features three African-American stained glass windows. The church, organized in 1955, occupies a 1926 building.
Lane Metropolitan Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, 2131 E. 46th St.
With its columns and Neoclassical design, this church, built in 1900 as the First Church of Christ, Scientist, resembles the Pantheon in Rome. Lane purchased the building in 1919, according to the restoration society.
Liberty Hill Baptist Church, 8206 Euclid Ave.
This Moorish Revival structure was dedicated in 1912 by Anshe Chesed, Cleveland’s oldest Jewish congregation. Liberty Hill Baptist, founded in 1917, bought the massive building in 1956. It features eight stained glass windows and a tile mosaic created by Tiffany Studios.
Mt. Zion Congregational Church, 10723 Magnolia Drive
This 1955 building houses a congregation formed in 1864. According to the restoration society, the University Circle church was home to the city’s first African-American Girl Scout troop.
New Life at Calvary (Calvary Presbyterian Church), 2020 E. 79th St.
While New Life at Calvary is now a predominantly Black congregation, this was not an historically Black church. In the 1950s, it became one of the first churches in the city to actively seek to integrate at a time when most Euclid Avenue churches and synagogues were moving to the suburbs.
Olivet Institutional Baptist Church, 8712 Quincy Ave.
King used Olivet as his headquarters when he visited Cleveland. In 1974, Rev. Otis Moss Jr. became pastor of the Fairfax church.
During and after World War II, the congregation grew rapidly, and by the 1950s it was one of Ohio’s largest African American churches. It broke ground on the Quincy Avenue building in 1949 and moved into it in 1954. Members paid off the mortgage within seven years.
Moss had strong ties to the civil rights movement – he and his wife, Edwina, both worked at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference before moving to Cleveland. He supported gender equality and oversaw significant community development efforts.
St. Adalbert Catholic Church, 2347 E. 83rd St.
The restoration society notes that this “rare Catholic African-American church” in Fairfax was combined with Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament in 1961, primarily because the 1922 St. Adalbert building was in better shape. St. Adalbert – Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament parish operates a school for students in pre-K through 8th grade.
Banners outside the church on East 83rd Street, across from the Fairfax recreation center, trace its history to the 1870s and call it the oldest African-American Roman Catholic Church in Ohio.
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, 2171 E. 49th St.
According to “The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History,” St. Andrew’s was “the elite black church in Cleveland at its founding in 1890.” After meeting in homes and two other churches, it built its Gothic Revival structure in 1916.
St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church, 8401 Cedar Ave.
Founded in 1894, this is “one of Cleveland’s leading Black churches,” according to the restoration society. The congregation has worshiped in this Richardsonian Romanesque building since 1926 despite fires in the 1930s and 1950s.
St. John African Methodist Episcopal Church, 2261 E. 40th St.
This was the only permanent African American church established in Cleveland before the Civil War. Its charter was issued in 1836 to a group of six formerly enslaved people. The current Neogothic church in the Central neighborhood dates to 1908. According to “The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History,” the congregation grew dramatically after World War 1, peaking at 3,200 after World War II.
St. Philip’s Christian Church, 2303 E. 30th St.
Built in 1968, this Cleveland landmark is near Cuyahoga Community College’s Metro campus. According to the restoration society, it has “little ornamentation because its small, poor congregation felt that their work was focused on the outside of the church, rather than inside its four walls. The building itself has been created using precast concrete panels.”
The building is currently home to Ray of Hope Ministries.
Shiloh Baptist Church, 5500 Scovill Ave.
Founded in 1849, Shiloh is the oldest African American Baptist church in Cleveland and the second oldest African American church of any denomination in Cleveland.
Shiloh has a long history of caring for the community, in recent years providing resources for dealing with COVID-19, distributing food and sponsoring community cleanups.
