Mt. Zion First Baptist Church is an historic African American church located at 333 Martin Luther King Drive in San Antonio, Texas.
Founded in 1871 by former slaves, the church has since provided ministerial services to thousands and played a major role in the civil rights movement of the city.
In 1949, the Rev. Claude Black Jr. became pastor and lead the church to national prominence in the National Baptist Convention. Pastor Black, who would become a civil rights icon and city councilman would invite figures controversial at the time to speak from his pulpit. Some of those would include Thurgood Marshall, Adam Clayton Powell Jr, Azie Taylor Morton, Percy Sutton, Barbara Jordan and others. The church created the city's first black owned credit union as well as Project Free, a program dedicated to assisting the poor and elderly.
The church was burned by arson in 1974, but rebuilt the following year.
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Each breeze from foggy mount and marshy plain
Dilutes with drivel every drizzly brain.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“There was on old person of Fratton
Who went to church with his hat on.
“If I wake up,” he said,
“With my hat on my head,
I shall know that it hasn’t been sat on.””
—Anonymous.