Washington Chapel C.M.E. Church
Washington Chapel C.M.E. Church is a historic Christian Methodist Episcopal church located at 1137 West Street in Parkville, Platte County, Missouri. It was built in 1907, and is a two-story, rectangular, Late Gothic Revival style native limestone building. It has a gable roof and features a castellated corner tower and projecting bays.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992.
History
After the Platte Purchase Treaty was ratified, White settlers and the people they enslaved began to arrive in Platte County, Missouri, which includes to Parkville. In conditions and values that mirrored the South, these African Americans grew and harvested labor-intensive hemp, which fostered a rapid economic and population increase. By 1860, Blacks comprised nearly one-quarter of Platte County's population.At the time, enslaved people were not allowed to assemble, not even for religious reason, and only in extremely rare cases were they allowed to become full members of White churches. Before the Civil War, Platte, Clay, and Jackson Counties, had “slave balconies” in their churches where Black worshippers sat, or they were relegated to a segregated section of pews. If these options weren’t available, African American worshipped in their own manner in cabins or outdoors, served by both local and itinerant Black ministers.
However, before the end of slavery, free African Americans in the North began to create religious institutions separate from their White counterparts. In the late 1700s, Richard Alien formed the Free African Society in Philadelphia, which led to the regional spread of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1844, a split occurred in the Methodist Church over slavery. In the South, enslaved people usually worshiped in the churches of their masters, but in the North, they were allowed to organize their own congregations, where they found an independence and respect that was not possible in White churches.
Black churches were one of the few means that Blacks had to express themselves; religion became the heart of their community, hosting a variety of social activities.
At first, Blacks preaching to a gather African American congregation was greeted with a fear and suspicion. To do so was often a crime. Typical of the situation was an account from the early history of Platte County describing two Black ministers who were caught preaching in 1854. “Charles, a slave of Almond Paxton, and Callahan and Andy, enslaved men held by L. C. Jack, were convicted and fined for expounding on the gospel to their fellows with no officer present on Atchison Hill”. Charles and Andy.
After the Civil War, the small African American membership of the Methodist Episcopal Church South was permitted to organize into a separate church. In Jackson, Tennessee, in 1870, they formed the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. The Colored Methodist Episcopal Church held its first conference in the summer, 1870. Reverend Arch Brown and his cousin, Steven Carter, traveled by horse-drawn wagon from Leavenworth, Kansas to Jackson, Tennessee to attend. It took them months to make the long, arduous trip. Representing a “colored church” in Parkville organized by Moses White, a Black man, of Leavenworth, Brown and Carter returned home to give the Black church an affiliation. The Parkville church was said to be the second Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in Missouri.
From 1870 to 1877, George Park allowed his housekeeper, Angeline Rucker and the other members of the newly named C.M.E. Church to hold services in the northeast corner of the basement of his hotel. The hotel was located near the tennis courts at English Landing.
In 1877, the C.M.E. congregation was moved to a brick structure on Main Street. The membership was growing rapidly, as reported in 1886 in the Park College Record. “For some time, the Colored people of town have been trying to raise means to erect a church, the present having become too small and old for their use. This week they have purchased the ruins of the old College barn, and will use the timbers, which are very heavy and solid, in building their new house of worship. We trust their effort will be successful, and if persistence will bring about success, they will not fail.” As it turned out, however, it took more than persistence to begin building the church—as reported in the Platte Shopper News. “In spite of many local Black residents receiving employment at Park College, it is still difficult to raise the funds for construction.”
According to the oral history of Alcorama Douglass Spencer and Cora Douglass Thompson, the congregation was moved “because the White residents of Parkville wanted the Black people off of Main Street.” The Minutes of the College Board of Trustees of June 18, 1905, stated that, “On motion, H.B. McAfee was authorized to negotiate an exchange with the C.M.E. Church of Parkville, trading No. 4 in Block 41 lot, for a parcel of ground (i.e., 1137 West Street