Like a Village eleventh and r streets nw
churches have deep roots in the life of this historic African American community. A num- ber of the congregations in the immediate area, including the Lincoln Temple United Church of Christ on this corner and Vermont Avenue Baptist Church nearby, date back to the Civil War. At the time, Union soldiers at Camp Barker at 13 th and R Streets and at the Wisewell Barracks at Seventh and P Streets offered protection and assistance for freedmen fleeing the South. These churches are a fraction of the religious institutions to be found everywhere in this neigh- borhood — in storefronts, in grand buildings with nineteenth-century towers and spires, and in modern structures. In addition to serving as places of worship, they have been and continue to be centers of community activity. They have been filled with music, not only by church choirs, but by such internationally known artists as Leontyne Price and Roland Hayes. The ministers and members of neighborhood churches have also always been in the forefront of the strug- gle for equal rights. Strategy meetings, lectures, and rallies have most often found a base of operations in church basements and Sunday School rooms. The families of the neighborhood developed deep ties, sometimes for generations, with other families in these churches, and there was much visiting back and forth between the congregations. These relationships were further repeated and deepened in the schools. One old-timer put it this way — “It was like a village.”
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