American Artscape Spotlight: Let Black Voices Ring Again
Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Athens, Ohio, the focus of a Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design (CIRD) rehabilitation project. Photo courtesy of Omar Hakeem
“What the Mount Zion Baptist Church Preservation Society is trying to do is listen to the voices of our ancestors and bring this church back to meaningful life. We need a space here in Athens where Black people can congregate again, where they can hear their voices ring again.” —Ada Woodson Adams
How do you remember and celebrate a city’s significant history of Black achievement and accomplishment when many, if not most, of its Black residents have long since moved away? How do you adapt a historically important but dilapidated Black church into a safe and thriving community center for the Black community? These were some of the questions that led the Athens, Ohio-based Mt. Zion Baptist Church Preservation Society to apply to the highly competitive Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design™ (CIRD), a National Endowment for the Arts design initiative in partnership with the Housing Assistance Council that helps small, rural communities tackle their unique preservation and rehabilitation issues for the social and economic benefit of the community.
Since the early 1990s, CIRD has annually facilitated focused, three-day workshops in at least three communities with populations of 50,000 or less to help them with issues ranging from improving walkability to revitalizing Main Streets to rethinking how public space can better serve community residents, which was the challenge faced by the preservation society.
When the newly completed Mt. Zion Baptist Church was dedicated in September 1909, it was the culmination of four years of hard work by its freeborn and formerly enslaved Black congregants, many of whom literally provided the building labor. The church, one of two Black congregations in the region at the time, was not just a place of worship but also a beacon of possibility for Athens’ thriving Black community. Despite the systemic racism that was rampant even in a “free” state like Ohio, in the mid- to late 19th century, Athens County was home to a larger percentage of Black residents than other counties in the state. Continue reading in the new issue of American Artscape.
