After I left Roselawn Cemetery, I navigated south across North Street, back to North Boulevard, and turned west toward the Mississippi River. I pushed hard on the pedals to make it up the North Boulevard overpass, perhaps the highest point in my ride, and enjoyed the pull of gravity down the other side. Crossing under the 110-overpass, I picked up the Downtown Greenway at First United Methodist, and followed the green-painted path south that runs down the middle of East Boulevard, the path of an abandoned streetcar line, and stopped in front of a church, shining bright white in the morning sunlight.
I’ve been to Mt. Zion First Baptist Church several times for worship during MLK Day observances. Hopefully you know the story of T.J. Jemison. Rev. Jemison served the congregation for 54 years (!), importantly helping organize the Baton Rouge Bus Boycott in 1949. This was the first organized and successful effort to establish better equity in bus service for black residents. A few years later, Martin Luther King Jr. visited Rev. Jemison in Baton Rouge, learning strategic and organizational details that were implemented in the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, famously sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks.
Rev. Jemison is remembered for his visible leadership in civil rights and pastoral presence with his Baton Rouge congregation. He was a founding leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which worked with congregations throughout the south to organize non-violent protests. Worshipping in Mt. Zion Baptist Church, I always feel that sense of history and the urgency that churches played in those early days of the civil rights movement. And, I’m awed to realize that this is still a church; a place of ongoing prayer and song, where souls are saved and lifted up, where marriages are solemnized, and the dead are ushered into God’s presence.
I often think of sacred places and places of history, a lifetime or more removed. I’m learning to see the living sacred places all around me.
Buen Camino!
Rev. Dr. David Chisham
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A vivid still active reminder of our Baton Rouge journeys. Than you, for Black Lives Matter.
The history still resonates. As we continue our journeys, may we never forget.