WATCH! GLORY BE TO GOD! REEDY CHAPEL AME CHURCH IN GALVESTON, TEXAS, IS THE “FATHER” AND THE “MOTHER CHURCH OF JUNETEENTH AND TEXAS”
DANIEL WHYTE III, PRESIDENT OF GOSPEL LIGHT SOCIETY INTERNATIONAL, SAYS IT IS GOOD WITH ALL OF THE JUNETEENTH CELEBRATIONS THAT ARE GOING ON TODAY THAT SOMEBODY HAS TAKEN THE TIME TO REMIND EVERYBODY THAT IT WAS GOD, JESUS CHRIST, AND THE BLACK CHURCH THAT LED BLACK PEOPLE IN AMERICA THROUGH THE MOST TURBULENT TRANSITION AND TIME IN THEIR HISTORY. UNFORTUNATELY, MANY IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY HAVE FORGOTTEN FROM WHENCE WE COME, AND LIKE THE ISRAELITES OF OLD, WHO WERE DELIVERED OUT OF SLAVERY FROM EGYPT BUT WERE STIFF-NECKED AND CONSTANTLY DISOBEDIENT TO THE GOD WHO DELIVERED THEM, SO ARE MANY BLACK AMERICANS TODAY WHO WERE DELIVERED FROM SLAVERY BY THE POWER OF GOD ARE JUST AS STIFF-NECKED AND DISOBEDIENT TO GOD AND ARE SUFFERING THE CONSEQUENCES. WHYTE CALLS ON ALL BLACK AMERICANS WHO NAME THE NAME OF CHRIST, PARTICULARLY, TO “HUMBLE YOURSELVES, PRAY, SEEK GOD’S FACE AND TURN FROM YOUR WICKED WAYS,” REPENT OF YOUR SINS AND GET BACK TO “YOUR FIRST LOVE,” THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. DON’T FORGET, BLACK PEOPLE, THE SONG THE OLD BLACK CHURCH USED TO SING: WE HAVE COME THIS FAR BY FAITH, / LEANING ON THE LORD, / TRUSTING IN HIS HOLY WORD, / HE’S NEVER FAILED US–YET. / SINGIN’ OH, OH, OH, CAN’T TURN A-ROUND, WE’VE COME THIS FAR BY FAITH.
Galveston will play host to any number of Juneteenth celebrations over the next week, both public and private, but it’s hard to imagine any will have more feeling or pure soul than the services at Reedy Chapel. The modest but architecturally significant structure at Broadway and 20th Street isn’t nicknamed “The Mother Church of Texas” for nothing.
Reedy’s origins date to 1848, when the southern branch of the Methodist Episcopal Church, a forerunner of the United Methodist Church, underwent a schism over slavery that separated the island’s white and black congregations. The church’s (white) trustees purchased the property, erected a building, and operated it as a “mission church” ministering to the island’s enslaved population, said Roy Collins III, who will give a lecture entitled History of Juneteenth in Galveston at 11 a.m. Saturday at the Rosenberg Library.
After the Civil War, “the story with Reedy Chapel was that [the trustees] had no interest in giving title to the people from the north who had been the victors,” he said. “They would rather sell it to the former enslaved people, and that’s what occurred.”
Because it stands a few blocks away from the old county courthouse, Reedy became one of the first places on the island where General Order No. 3, the U.S. Army edict officially ending slavery in Texas, was read aloud. It was, current pastor Rev. Lernette Patterson told Houston Public Media last year, “the first documented celebration of Juneteenth on the island of Galveston.”
The church has been a cornerstone of the island’s Black community ever since. It will hold another celebration Sunday morning; and then yet another on Wednesday, Juneteenth itself, when Reedy will serve as the terminal of the city’s annual Emancipation March.
The church has weathered plenty of upheaval along the way, starting with a lawsuit in which the northern branch of the Methodist Episcopal Church unsuccessfully tried to snatch the property back; afterward, it aligned with the African Methodist Episcopal faith. Additionally, the original 1863 building was destroyed by the fire that devastated the city’s East End in 1885; rebuilt the next year, the church also incurred heavy damage from the Great Storm of 1900 but remained intact. Prompted by myriad lesser hurricanes and other storms, further renovations came in 1947 and 1977.
“Today the fellowship includes several descendants of the original founders,” notes a state historical marker erected in 1975.
More recently, Reedy took less than a year to reopen after taking another hit from Hurricane Ike in 2008. In January of last year, it received a $100,000 capital project grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s African American Cultural Heritage Fund, part of the nonprofit’s $20 million Preserving Black Churches program. The money will go toward repairing the exterior masonry and stucco, and restoring the stained-glass windows, trustee Sharon Batiste Gillens told the Galveston County Daily News.
The first and oldest still-operating AME congregation in Texas, Reedy was also the site of the denomination’s annual conferences in 1867 and 1868. (The nearby Avenue L Missionary Baptist Church is even older, originally chartered in 1840.) One of Reedy’s earliest trustees was Collins’ great-great grandfather, whose “name is on the side of the building, a formerly enslaved person,” he said.
Then, and now, the church “was a whole lot more than just hearing sermons and saying ‘amen’ and going home,” Collins added. “It was a community. It was a community hub.”
