Bethel A.M.E. Church

Bethel's story starts with a purchase. Organized in 1864 by Rev. Page Tyler, a missionary from Missouri, the congregation bought its site in 1868 for $28,000; white Presbyterians had built a church there in 1828. Its members included John Lynch, Mississippi's first Black congressman, and Isaiah Montgomery of Davis Bend, who helped found Campbell College. Hiram Revels, later the first Black U.S. senator, is listed as a former pastor. That AME junior college opened in Vicksburg in 1890, moved to Jackson in 1899, and was closed by the state in 1964.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Court House Museum — steps away
  Vicksburg's Greek Revival courthouse of 1860, raised on a hilltop with the labor of enslaved artisans and now a private local-history museum heavy on Confederate relics.
• USS Cairo Gunboat and Museum — 1.6 mi
  The raised hull of a Union river ironclad sunk by a mine in the Yazoo in 1862, displayed at Vicksburg National Military Park with the artifacts the river mud preserved.
• Vicksburg National Military Park — 1.8 mi
  A 16-mile tour road through the trenches of the 47-day siege of 1863, with a national cemetery and the story of the thousands of enslaved people who reached freedom behind Union lines.

More markers nearby

• Dr. David D. Foote — steps away
• Anchuca — steps away
• Newit Vick's Original Vicksburg — steps away
• Tommie Lee Williams Sr. — steps away