Mt. Moriah Baptist Church

The Progressive National Baptist Convention that Mt. Moriah hosted in 1996 was born in a fight. In 1961, 33 delegates from 14 states met in Cincinnati under L. Venchael Booth of Zion Baptist Church and voted, by one vote, to organize, after reformers failed to replace Joseph H. Jackson at the head of the National Baptist Convention USA, which largely stayed out of the civil rights movement. The word National came in 1962. Martin Luther King Jr., pushed out of the older body, joined and addressed every annual session until his death in 1968.

What the plaque says

Mt. Moriah Baptist Church Mt. Moriah was founded in 1879. The oldest church in the area, it was relocated to this site in 1893, predating the Orange Mound community by seven years. A vernacular-sandstone building, the present edifice was completed in 1926, during the pastorate of the Rev. A.D. Bell (1926-1945). The Rev. Roy W. Norsworthy, a Memphis civil rights leader, served as pastor from 1946 to 1986. In 1996, the 300-member church, under the Rev. Harvey B. Jackson, hosted the Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Elmwood Cemetery — 3.2 mi
  Memphis's oldest active cemetery, a rural garden cemetery of about 1,500 trees opened in 1852, with Black civic leaders, yellow fever victims and the city's whole history in its lots.
• Stax Museum of American Soul Music — 3.2 mi
  A rebuilt Stax studio on the site of the old Capitol Theatre, with a replica of the sloped-floor Studio A, Isaac Hayes's Cadillac and the story of an integrated soul label.
• Sun Studio — 4.0 mi
  The small Union Avenue room where Sam Phillips recorded Rocket 88, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley and the Million Dollar Quartet, now a National Historic Landmark.
• Beale Street — 4.7 mi
  The street that became the center of Black Memphis after the Civil War, home to Church's Park, W. C. Handy, Ida B. Wells and the blues, now a National Historic Landmark district.

More markers nearby

• Orange Mound — 0.3 mi
• Mt. Pisgah C.M.E. Church — 0.4 mi
• The University of Memphis — 2.0 mi
• Thomas F. Cassels — 2.3 mi