The current structure, erected in 1924, is the third and most recent home of the oldest African-American religious institution organized in the City of Paterson and Passaic County. Established in 1834 and then known as the Godwin Street AME Zion on account of its location at that time on the north side of Godwin Street, the church preserves and sustains the history and cultural memory of the often overlook African-American community in Paterson and north Jersey from the antebellum and into the 21st C. As such it is associated with the free African-Americans that worked and worshipped in Paterson prior the Civil War and experienced an often difficult life of segregated cultural, educational and economic life in proximity to continued vestiges of slavery.
Among First AME Zion’s many accomplishments in these efforts was its location as the home Paterson first Colored School in 1855. Many of these 19th C. African-Americans were not only pioneers in establishing communities and institutions for the advancement of their own culture, but continued to assist and support abolition efforts such as the Underground Railroad. First AME Zion has long been associated with the Underground Railroad and especially the nearby Huntoon’s Point Station (a City of Paterson Municipal Landmark) both in cultural memory and 19th C. historical reporting.
First AME Zion’s role as a home to prominent African-Americans within Paterson remains to the present day as the church continues an example of leadership and community service rooted in the historic values and record of notable and significant leaders who established an abiding presence and inspiration to the African-American community for nearly two-hundred years.
While the first law abolishing the slave trade in New Jersey was enacted in 1786, and the 1804 act freeing the children of slaves after a twenty-five year ‘apprenticeship’ were only the beginning of gradual efforts to eliminate slavery altogether in the state. For these reasons, New Jersey maintained a place as a moderate state among those that advocated abolition. In the Saddle River and A areas, first settled by Dutch colonists, slavery was present but on a very modest scale. An early 19th C. census of the area records a total of seventy-eight enslaved persons, owned by sixty-five local farmers and merchants. By 1860, Paterson historian William Nelson records only two remaining enslaved persons registered in Paterson, out of a statewide total of eighteen.
Though Paterson was home to only a small number of enslaved persons, numbering below fifty out of a stable population of nearly two-thousand African-Americans until the 1870s, free African-Americans began to settle and develop a community challenged by segregated religious, education and economic opportunities and institutions. Following the leadership of African-Americans who objected to the segregated worship and discrimination in white churches, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion movement was founded at John Street Methodist Church in New York City in 1822. By the 1820’s the AME Zion churches had won full independence from white institutions and began to ordain their own clergy.
The relatively small African-American community of Paterson, in a long-line of firsts and as one of the earliest African-American communities in New Jersey, established its first church in 1834. The AME Zion congregation met until 1845 in the school house adjacent to the Prospect Street Methodist Church. By 1846 the fledgling community had developed its own resources to fund the construction of an independent church home for the sum of found-hundred and twenty-five dollars on property deeded by Trustees William Tanner, John Klein and Cato George on the north side of Godwin Street. This was a significant moment for a community that was often prevented from or unable to purchase property and notable because the property was provided for the new church by African-Americans. In a report to the New York Annual Conference of AME Zion churches by Reverend Peter Vanhass, the Paterson AME Zion included a membership of thirteen, which does not indicate the total number of those who worshiped frequently or sustained the church’s efforts in the community, but rather those who were regular documented members. The early date of First AME Zion’s organization puts it in distinct company with the first few African-American churches in New Jersey at Camden, Newark, Princeton and Trenton.
Education was often denied to enslaved persons and free African-Americans, creating a disadvantage that disenfranchised many forcing these communities into marginal economic positions dependent on domestic labor and low-skilled work. However, in 1855 a Colored School was opened in Paterson in order to provide education for the city’s African-American population, which by this time has established itself firmly in the River Street neighborhood that included the Godwin Street AME Zion and know informally as the “African Shore.” Miss Eliza M. Halstead was selected as the school’s first principal. Later the school moved to the Goetschuius Schoolhouse on Division Street and then to the Clinton Street Schoolhouse until the African-American community largely concentrated in the African Shore complained of the hardship imposed by the distance of the school. It was until 1872 that African-Americans were allowed to attend the previously white-only schools. It is a significant mark of the importance both that churches held as identifiable cultural institutions for early African-American communities, but also for First AME Zion specifically to be the home and incubator of the first education opportunities provided for the African-American community prior to desegregation. It firmly took the lead as did many African-American churches in providing the educational opportunities that were otherwise denied them.
It was not for another thirty years after the founding of First AME Zion that another African-American church would be established in Paterson. Even after the 1865 founding of the Bethel AME, there would be another thirty year period before the creation of Calvary Baptist (1886) and St. Augustine Presbyterian (1895) as Paterson’s other 19th C. African-American congregations. In fact, the frequently struggling Bethel AME Church failed in 1889 which supported a sudden burst of growth in membership at First AME Zion (still located on Godwin Street in the 1846 structure).
The 1846 church was demolished by the congregation in 1889, although they were unable to build a replacement for four years. Following the arrival of Rev. Blalock in 1897, the church eventually purchased the current site in 1911 on the corner of Ellison and Summer Streets. A new church building was destroyed by fire in 1921 and replaced with an entirely new structure by 1924 which still stands proudly on Ellison Street as witness to First AME Zion’s continuing leadership in the African-American community. However, First AME Zion was still known by its original name as the “Godwin AME Zion.” During this time the church acknowledged both its outstanding history and its removal from the original Godwin Street location by renaming itself the First AME Zion Church in 1945 after completing repayment of all expenses incurred on behalf of the new structure and parsonage.
Among the notable African-American leaders and members of First AME Zion was the Rev. Benjamin C. Robeson, brother of New Jersey’s famed Paul Robeson who led the church immediately following the construction of their new home on Ellison Street until 1936. The first African-American to achieve the ecclesiastical office of bishop was also associated with First AME Zion, the Rev. James C. Taylor who led the congregation between 1939-1948.
As the leading African-American Church in Paterson, First AME Zion continued to grow dramatically and enlarge its role as a cultural institution during the rapid growth experienced in Northern New Jersey cities’ African-American populations that paralleled the explosion in urban populations generally and the large wave of migrations that brought many African-Americans to northern cities in search of increased economic opportunities in urban industries and trades. Throughout the 20th C. First AME Zion has maintained its leadership through the outstanding efforts to continue its legacy in support of education and opportunity for African Americans and the City of Paterson. These have included the awarding of over $75,000 in scholarships since 1995, the creation of the Family Success Center and the First Church Christian Training Academy.
References
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