Center for Historic Preservation

Rural African-American Church Survey Project

For Tennessee's African-Americans, there are no more important places associated with community, history, and identity than their churches.  Especially in the countryside, rural churches, often with adjacent historic cemeteries and/or schools, are extremely valuable places to study and document African-American culture and heritage.  The recent pattern of vandalizing and burning rural African-American churches has led scholars, the media, and political leaders to recognize the real threats faced by these key places of religious freedom, community, and identity. 

In 1997-1998, the Center for Historic Preservation at Middle Tennessee State University conducted a statewide survey of rural African-American churches for their possible listing in the National Register of Historic Places, the nation's honor roll of significant historic properties.  The project received special funding from the Tennessee Historical Commission and from MTSU's Sponsored Programs, in addition to a match of time, expertise, and resources from the MTSU Center for Historic Preservation.

Center staff along with graduate and undergraduate students continue to be a part of the research team, gaining invaluable experience and knowledge about this neglected aspect of Tennessee history.  To date, nearly 400 churches in Tennessee have been surveyed, many of which are eligible for listing in the National Register.

From this initial statewide survey, Center staff wrote a contextual history of the significant events, people, and architecture associated with Tennessee's rural black churches resulting in a National Register multiple property listing, Historic Rural African-American Churches in Tennessee, 1850-1970.  With this statewide context established, over a dozen individual churches have been listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

 In 2000, the Center produced, with the support of the National Trust for Historic Preservation,  Powerful Artifacts: A Guide to Surveying and Documenting Rural African-American Churches in the South.  For a copy of this publication, please contact the Center.

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Contributors

Dr. Carroll Van West
Caneta S. Hankins
Nancy Tinker
Teresa Douglas
Heather Fearnbach
Rebecca L. Smith
Anne-Leslie Owens
Susan Besser
Sarah Jackson Martin

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Advisory Committee

The staff of the Tennessee Rural African-American Church Survey Project is assisted by an advisory committee of distinguished scholars and preservation activists of African-American history and heritage.

• Adonijah Bakari, Middle Tennessee State University

• Cynthia Griggs Fleming, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

• Jimmie L. Franklin, Vanderbilt University

• Kenneth Goings, University of Memphis

• Dorothy Granberry, Tennessee State University

• Wali R. Karif, Tennessee Technological University

• Bobby Lovett, Tennessee State University

• Reavis Mitchell, Fisk University

• Sharon Norris, Nutbush Heritage Productions, Brownsville

• Thad Smith, Middle Tennessee State University

• Earlice Taylor, Memphis
  

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For further information, a copy of Powerful Artifacts: A Guide to Surveying and Documenting Rural African-American Churches in the South, a project brochure, or an application for a church in your community, please contact:

Center for Historic Preservation
Box 80
Middle Tennessee State University
Murfreesboro, TN 37132

Phone: 615.898.2947
Fax: 615.898.5614

For questions about the Rural African-American Church Survey Project, email Anne-Leslie Owens.