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Reflection, renewal mark 108th year
By WAVENEY ANN MOORE, Times Staff Writer
ST. PETERSBURG -- Efforts are under way to restore to grandeur a local historical landmark that once sat at the heart of the city's African-American community. This weekend, as Bethel AME Church celebrates its 108th anniversary, there is nostalgia for bygone days but talk as well of recapturing the congregation's past glory for generations yet unborn. The church, the first for African-Americans in St. Petersburg, represents more than a congregation trying to rebuild its membership and refurbish a historic property. As part of the African Methodist Episcopal denomination, Bethel AME gave its name to the black community that once flourished around it. Methodist Town, as the neighborhood came to be called, grew up just west of Dr. M.L. King (Ninth) Street N, between First and Fourth avenues. Bethel AME also was home to educator and activist Olive B. McLin and her brother Eugene McLin, a supervisor in the city's parks and recreation department and after whom the E.H. McLin Pool at Campbell Park gets its name. It was at Bethel AME that a young M. Mason Walker, another local civil rights activist, drew strength as he studied for the ministry. Goliath Davis, the city's first black police chief and now a deputy mayor, attended Bethel AME with his grandmother. Bethel AME also was a meeting place for supporters of the 1968 garbage strike, which pitted mostly black sanitation workers against City Hall. The church also was where the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership met. Today, the two-story church, at 912 Third Ave. N, cries out for repair, which the congregation hopes will be financed, at least in part, by government grants. These days Sunday attendance is considerably lower than in the 1950s and early 1960s. Many of the older members have died or moved away, but loyal ones remain. The church is attracting younger families, though not in numbers of the past. This week, the Rev. Roosevelt Hardy, 68, who has been at Bethel AME for two years, after the Rev. Harry L. Dawkins, spoke of the church's goals. "It's basically ... to really get the church focused on regrouping as it relates to membership. We used to be a community church, but it's not a community church anymore," Hardy said. With a membership of 600, Sunday attendance is about 200 to 250 people, he said. That does not include as many as 200 homeless people -- men, women and some children -- who show up for the church's special 8:30 a.m. Sunday gathering with a free breakfast of grits, eggs, bacon, biscuits, toast and coffee. "I have a Bible study sort of setting for them, and then I invite them to come to church school and worship," Hardy said. Only about 10 of the visitors typically accept his invitation, he said. Some also attend the church's Tuesday night Bible study, said Hardy, whose last church was St. Luke's AME in Tampa, "and their lives have been turned around." Besides boosting membership, "We are focusing on renovating it as a historical site," Hardy said of his church. "We want to restore it to its original luster. We have some moisture seeping through the exterior that is destroying the interior. The structure itself is pretty sound. Cosmetically, we need to do a lot of stuff." The original Bethel AME church was a small wooden structure that was built in 1894. That was replaced by a stone building in 1905. The Gothic revival brick structure in which the congregation currently worships was erected in 1922 and designated a local historical landmark in 1988. Rick Smith, a planner with the city's Urban Design and Historic Preservation Division, said the city is helping church leaders apply for grants to take care of exterior renovation. The church can get up to $40,000 from state and federal sources for historic preservation, Smith said. The congregation also can apply for up to $250,000 from the state of Florida, which allocates about $14-million annually for historic preservation projects. The most recent city projects to get money from this source were Sunken Gardens and the Mirror Lake Recreational Complex, he said. Before she was elected to the City Council, Virginia Littrell helped her church, First United Methodist, in downtown St. Petersburg, win a $250,000 state grant. "Because of the separation of church and state, it was used for the exterior of the church," said Littrell, now a member of the Florida Historical Commission, which makes recommendations about the grants. "There is precedence for churches receiving funding as long as they are part of the historic fabric of the community, and certainly Bethel AME is," she said. Longtime Bethel AME members have fond memories of the historic church, whose neighborhood has now been renamed Jamestown, in honor of former Methodist Town resident Chester Lucius James Sr. Therae Baten, who will be 78 years old Tuesday, has been attending Bethel AME all her life. "I guess I was almost born in Bethel. My mother had been a member there," she said. Mrs. Baten remembers when church services were always crowded. When Methodist Town was torn down and some of its housing rebuilt, members were lost, she said. "They had no way to commute over there, but a few of them still come to service," she said. Florzelle Howell, 64, also attended Bethel as a child. "I just remember Bethel being a church that cared about people. I've known them to pay the electric bill, the water bill for people," she said this week. Archie Nelson said he joined Bethel AME in November 1954, three weeks after moving to St. Petersburg from Lumpkin, Ga. "It was a small community for blacks at that time. I was living in this apartment building and I saw the cross and I did some inquiries and they said it was my denomination and I went over there and I joined," said Nelson, 71, whose six children were baptized there. Three of his four surviving children still attend Bethel AME, he said. The other is a member of an AME congregation in Tampa. For the Rev. M. Mason Walker, Bethel AME was where he was encouraged during his studies for the ministry. Although he had gone to the church building for meetings about the 1968 garbage strike, Walker did not start attending Bethel AME until 1974, after what he believes was a spiritual nudge. He had a dream about the church's sanctuary, which he had never seen, Walker said. When he eventually entered it, "It was exactly as I dreamed it was. And having come from a long line of AME (church members), I went to that church and it was probably one of the main decisions of my life," said Walker, now pastor of St. James AME Church in Tampa. "It was a very nurturing congregation. They had a very good and ethical pastor, the Rev. H. McNeal Harris. ... I served an apprenticeship there for five years." Walker, who also served at Moore's Chapel AME, 3037 Fairfield Ave. S, will be among tonight's guests at Bethel AME's anniversary banquet. Watson Haynes, president and chief executive officer of the Coalition for a Safe and Drug Free St. Petersburg Inc., will speak. The weekend of celebration will conclude with a 10:30 a.m. Sunday service. The Rev. F. Bernard Lemon, presiding elder of the Fort Myers AME district, will preach.
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