Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2024: Pop-Up Challenge

Question

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day today, the US Black Heritage Project would like to invite all WikiTreers to a pop-up challenge focused on his career as a pastor. This year, we'll be working to add more WikiTree categories for Black churches  - they have always been a cornerstone of the Black community and play an important role in discovering the FAN clubs of ancestors who were members of each church. This pop-up challenge will help us get started on creating profiles for members of Dr. King's churches and discovering the family connections between them. We have created a spreadsheet with links to obituaries of members of the two churches Dr. King pastored - Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama and Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia. We'd like your help to create profiles for each of these church members and to begin creating profiles for their family members.

Full directions are on the first tab of the spreadsheet - please read them carefully. Importantly, please make sure to:

• Add the {{African-American Sticker}} to any profiles where it is appropriate.
• Add the category for the church the person was a member of - either [[Category:Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama]] or [[Category: Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia]].
• Honor the privacy of any living individuals mentioned in the obituaries.

There are 110 profiles to create and we hope participants will be able to add additional profiles for family members.

Edited to add: There are several Ebenezer Baptist Churches (EBC's) in the Atlanta area. We've done our best to weed out obituaries for people from other EBC's, but in some it's difficult to tell which EBC they were a member of. If additional sources show that someone was a member of a different EBC, you can leave a note on the spreadsheet and skip that one if you'd like. The Ebenezer Baptist Church Martin Luther King Jr. pastored was in Atlanta - depending on when the obituary is from it may have either the 407 Auburn Avenue address or101 Jackson St NE address included in the obituary. Most of the other EBC's are in other towns in the Atlanta area, but not in Atlanta itself.

Comments

Thanks to everyone who participated - 61 profiles were created on MLK Day! We'll leave the spreadsheet up so you can continue working on this challenge if you'd like.

Answer 1

The first person I picked is actually a white person. Somebody posted this comment in the ‘flower’ section of his FindAGrave - He is not buried at Ebenezer Methodist Cemetery in Roswell. His obit states that he was buried at Ebenezer Baptist Cemetery, so it is referring to what is now known as Ebenezer Primitive Bapt. Cem. in Sandy Springs, GA.

So two different Ebenezer Baptist churches in Georgia are getting confused.

Comments

There doesn’t seem to be a category for the other Ebenezer Baptist church https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Canup-127

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Thanks S - there are a few other Ebenezer Baptist Churches in the Atlanta area - we tried our best to weed out members of the other ones from the members of the one Dr. King pastored, but a few may have slipped through and it sounds like that's what happened here. The one Dr. King pastored was in Atlanta itself on Auburn Street if that helps.

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If you find any more from other Ebenezer Baptists you can make a note on the spreadsheet and skip it if you'd like.

Answer 2

Point of order, the church that Rev Dr King pastored is at the corner of Jackson St. NE, and Auburn Ave.

Comments

True - I was trying to go off memory when I was in a rush this morning. I've updated it to be more specific now - it was at 407 Auburn Ave for many years and then a new sanctuary was built at 101 Jackson St NE (across the street from the old building), and as you said, the whole complex is at the intersection of the two streets.

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Sweet Auburn Historic District was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1976. Ebenezer Baptist and the Martin Luther King Jr Historic Site, among other attractions, are included in the neighborhood that "was the commercial, cultural, and spiritual center of Black life before the civil rights movement."

Answer 3

I would love to help!

ETA: When we find a white member of the church, should we create their profile, or focus primarily on tracking down black members of those congregations?

Comments

Great question Dawn. We want to profile and categorized all members of the church congregation regardless of race.

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It turns out the one profile I found where records listed them as "white" attended another church, so it was a moot point in that particular case. :)

I found a lovely family to work on in Jackson and Hall Cos., GA, and am slowly (because I'm super slow, lol) adding profiles of family members: Mozell (Yarbrough) Griffin

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Thanks for joining in Dawn! Glad you found a lovely family to work on :)