Mount Helm Baptist Church - Original Site

Formerly enslaved Black Baptists in Jackson worshipped for years in the basement of First Baptist Church. In 1868 Thomas and Mary Helm donated land and money so they could have a church of their own, and the congregation named it Mount Helm in gratitude. Helm, a Kentucky-born banker who became president of Capital State Bank, outlived Mary, who died in 1875; six of their nine children died before her. Both are buried in Greenwood Cemetery, across the street from the church's first site, with the congregation's first pastor, Rev. Marion Dunbar.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Farish Street Historic District — 0.3 mi
  Jackson's Black business and cultural center, where Medgar Evers kept the NAACP office and furniture-store owners recorded the blues, now a quiet National Register district.
• Mississippi Civil Rights Museum — 0.5 mi
  A state museum in downtown Jackson, opened in 2017 beside the Museum of Mississippi History, that tells the movement from 1945 to 1970 through the people who made it.
• Old Capitol Museum — 0.6 mi
  Mississippi's Greek Revival statehouse of 1839, where the legislature voted to secede, Hiram Revels was elected to the U.S. Senate and the 1890 constitution was written, now a free state museum.
• Medgar and Myrlie Evers Home National Monument — 2.9 mi
  A modest ranch house in Jackson's Elraine neighborhood where Medgar Evers was shot in the driveway in 1963, now a unit of the National Park Service.

More markers nearby

• Mt. Helm Baptist Church — steps away
• Greenwood Cemetery — steps away
• Church of Christ (Holiness) USA — steps away
• Smith Robertson School — steps away