Pickett Chapel / Civil Rights

The story is in the brick. Enslaved workers made and laid the bricks of this 1827 church, and their fingerprints can still be seen in the walls. White members worshiped on the main floor while enslaved members sat in the balcony. Methodist sources describe the building as probably the oldest surviving historically Black Methodist church in Tennessee. The Wilson County Black History Committee bought it in 2007 and has since stabilized it, hoping to open a museum and event space.

What the plaque says

Pickett Chapel / Civil Rights Pickett Chapel. Methodists began worshiping on this site shortly after purchasing an original town lot. Congregants erected this brick structure in 1827 where white and enslaved members worshiped until 1856 when a new building was constructed on East Main Street. In 1866 freedmen who once worshiped here in bondage bought the church and established Pickett Chapel Methodist Church. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places on April 18, 1977, services continued here until 1973, when the congregation moved to a new facility because of the congregation's growth. Civil Rights. On this site, the Wilson County Chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (C.O.R.E.) met to educate African-American citizens on the tenets of direct non-violent protest. Organized boycotts and attempts to desegregate local schools in 1961 and 1962 led to violent attacks on civil rights activists here on March 13, 1962. Afterwards Lebanon Mayor Charles D. Lloyd appointed a biracial committee to address racial inequality in the city.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Wynnewood State Historic Site — 13 mi
  A National Historic Landmark log inn at the Bledsoe's Lick springs, beside a Mississippian mound center and tied to the domestic slave trade.
• Andrew Jackson's Hermitage — 18 mi
  Andrew Jackson's cotton plantation east of Nashville, where visitors can walk to the quarters, Alfred's Cabin and the Enslaved Cemetery as well as the mansion.
• Stones River National Battlefield — 24 mi
  The Murfreesboro battlefield of December 1862, with a national cemetery built by Black soldiers, a Trail of Tears route and the story of the freedmen's settlement called Cemetery.
• Red Boiling Springs — 33 mi
  A Macon County spa town built around red sulphur springs, with five kinds of mineral water, red-painted pumps and the surviving hotels of a resort that once held more than a dozen.

More markers nearby

• Lebanon Post Office — steps away
• Battle of Lebanon — steps away
• Wilson County Courthouses — steps away
• Wilson County Training School — 0.2 mi