Mount Zion First Baptist Church

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.

Famous quotes containing the words mount, baptist and/or church:

    If you would feel the full force of a tempest, take up your residence on the top of Mount Washington, or at the Highland Light, in Truro.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.
    William Faulkner (1897–1962)

    It is time that the Protestant Church, the Church of the Son, should be one again with the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of the Father. It is time that man shall cease, first to live in the flesh, with joy, and then, unsatisfied, to renounce and to mortify the flesh.
    —D.H. (David Herbert)