Saving the Old AME Zion Church

BY RODNEY BROWN,
Staff Reporter

Peoples AME Zion Church, along with community leaders and the Onondaga Historical Association, are stepping up efforts to stabilize, preserve and restore their former church at 711 E. Fayette.

The congregation of the new church at 2306 South Salina Street could no longer afford to retain the building. "The first and largest African American congregation in Syracuse's, Onondaga County worshipped at the old church," said Reverend Darin C. Jaime, pastor. "The old church was very important in the 20th century because it helped sustain and stabilized African American families in a society engulfed with slavery and racial injustices."

Documents that outlined the history of the old church noted that it was "the single most important community organization for African Americans before the Civil War and it represented the central importance for promoting the Freedom Trail."

The Old AME Zion Church and the homes of its ministers were used as safe houses for slaves escaping from the South to the North using the Underground Railroad. Many people in the City of Syracuse look at the important role the old church played in the abolitionist movement and the Underground Railroad as "historically significant" and credible reason to restore and preserve the building.

"Bishop Jermaine Loguen, who helped steer the progression of the Old AME Zion Church in its early days, was very instrumental in helping slaves escape to freedom," Reverend Jaime said. "Bishop Loguen was a freedom seeker from Tennessee and used his home as one of Syracuse's most important safe houses."

July Wellman wrote in "Uncovering the Freedom Trail in Syracuse and Onondaga County," that Bishop Loguen advertised in the Syracuse Newspaper that his house on East Genesse Street in Syracuse (it's no longer there) was a safe house for the Underground Railroad. Loguen was an AME Zion bishop from 1868 until his death in 1872.

In addition, Wellman noted, the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged, at 180 South Street in Auburn, is the official name of the thirty-two acre property owned by the Old AME Zion Church, and it includes Harriet's own brick house, a frame house and foundations of brick structure known as John Brown Hall.

In an article on the bicentennial of the A.M.E. Zion Church for the Ebony magazine, author Lisa Jones Townsel wrote, "Officially born October 1796, the new Black denomination was chartered in 1801 and firmly established in 1820 when the leaders voted themselves out of the White Methodist Episcopal Church. The next year, church founders agreed to call the church the African Methodist Episcopal Church in America. But to distinguish this New York-based group from the Philadelphia Black Methodist movement which emerged about the same time, the word 'Zion' was added to the title during the church's general conference in 1848. With its identity problems resolved, the AME Zion Church made the salvation of the whole person--mind, body and spirit--its top priority. At the crux of its ministry lay racial justice, peace and harmony, thus earning it the title, the Freedom Church."

"The Old AME Zion Church historical significance is heavily concentrated in its legacy as being an advocate for racial equality," Reverend Jaime said. "It was and still is the People's Church."

Crawford and Sterns, an architectural company in Syracuse, said the Old AME Zion Church is believed to have been designed by Charles E. Colton. Colton designed churches, businesses, banking and light industries, schools and buildings for community organizations, and apartment houses and residences throughout the City of Syracuse.

The Old AME Zion Church broadens its historical significance because of its ties with Colton, who is viewed as a renowned architect of the 20th Century. His best known work is Syracuse's City Hall which was built in 1889. Colton was educated in the public schools of Syracuse and was engaged in various enterprises before he entered the architectural office of Archimedes Russell in 1873. Three years later he established his own architectural offices. He was Treasurer of the Western New York Association of Architects and as elected Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1888. Colton was offered the position of State Architect, which he declined.

The new AME Zion Church [Peoples] has continued to cater to the concerns and needs of parishioners and African Americans who reside in the City of Syracuse. Reverend Jaime has a program called "Power Perspective" on Syracuse's local radio station 106.9 FM. "The radio program addresses the concerns in our community," he said. "I invite community leaders and city officials to listen and respond to questions from residents of the city in an attempt to find corrective resolutions to hot-button issues."

In the chapter's creed, the AME denomination is devoted to religious, educational and social causes. Over the years the denomination have reported that many of its churches have implemented programs to help families find low-income housing, jobs, financial planning assistance, health care and day care services.

"We have a holistic approach and a holistic Gospel," said a former retired bishop of the AME Zion Church. "We don't feel that we live in a kind of compartmentalize sense, but that life is a complicated whole. So we have to be concerned about all of those amenities of life that help make up wholeness in an individual."

After restoration has been completed, Reverend Jaime hopes to see the Old AME Zion Church placed on the National Register of Historical Places.