Changes in attitudes of the German Moravians towards Africans started to take place in the late 1700s. In the early years of the congregation, African and European American Moravians worshipped together. They attended the same church services, and were buried together in God’s Acre.
In 1816, the church leadership decided to extend the Parish or Strangers' Graveyard on the South end of town westward towards Church Street. This site then became the first African Graveyard for all Africans, Moravian or not.
Six years later, in 1822, the congregation ceased worshiping together, and Africans in and around Salem became a mission of the newly-organized Female Missionary Society. Services were held in several places in the immediate area during the first year, including the Schuman farm.
Finally, in 1823, the church approved the construction of a log church to be used as the location of worship, on a site adjacent to the African Graveyard. Later, in 1861, a larger brick church was built nearby.
"Thirty Negroes gathered to lay up the logs for the church for Negroes. The Female Missionary Society has with pleasure undertaken to bear the expense. All went off well." -Salem Diary, September 27, 1823
On the last Saturday in September in 1999, five local lodges of the Prince Hall Masons recreated the 1823 event by hand raising the first several logs of the reconstruction of this African Moravian Church.
This building, serves as the interpretive center for the entire site telling the stories of the African Americans of Salem.
During the mid 19th century, worship at the African American log church was a major event. A new pastor, Brother Holland, reinvigorated the church and reorganized the Sunday school.
In 1860, Brother Holland wrote about the need for a new church to serve the African American population. “The church edifice presently used by the colored people, having become too small to accommodate the increasing numbers of hearers, measures were taken for the erection of a large brick church for its slave members.”
The Brick Church
The cornerstone for the new brick church was laid on August 24, 1861. The brick church is the only building in Salem with a document in its cornerstone. It reads “Jefferson Davis being Provisional President of the Confederate States of America.”
The brick church was built in the Greek revival style, with a bell tower, a new pulpit, and pews. The church opening on December 15, 1861 was filled to capacity.
On May 21, 1865 Rev. S.G. Clark of the 10th Ohio Calvary Regiment, announced that the Civil War had ended by reading the Emancipation Proclamation. The Church diary for that day concluded: “May this great change turn out to the eventual well-being of these people, and the furtherance of the kingdom above them.”
Sunday School
Formerly enslaved African Americans could learn and work for themselves. The brick church's Sunday school played an important role in the formation of the newly freed community. More than 300 scholars of all ages attended Sunday school at its peak after the war.
In 1891, the church added rooms to accommodate for the growing crowds attending Sunday School. The new addition was placed over graves in the old stranger’s graveyard. Later in the church's history, the gravestones were removed from the graveyard and placed under the stairs of the new addition.
"The church" becomes St. Philips
On December 20, 1914 the African American Church received its first formal name, St. Philips, during a lovefeast ceremony.
In 1946, St. Philips received its first African American leader; Nicaraguan native and lay pastor George A. Hall.
On May 4, 1952 the last service was held in the brick church. The congregation moved to Happy Hill and later to its current day location on Bon Air Avenue in northern Winston Salem.
Bringing the church back to life
The St. Philips brick church sat empty for nearly 40 years. In 1989, Old Salem Museums & Gardens decided to restore the church as a way to exhibit the African American story in Salem. The same year, Old Salem nominated the building for the National Register of Historic Places.
The Moravian Church reconsecrated the brick church and graveyard on May 4, 2003The brick church allows visitors to step inside the space as it was. Exhibits in the Sunday School rooms and upstairs balcony tell the story of African Americans in and around Salem through their struggles & triumphs.
Bringing the church back to life
