The Search for the Five Women of Grace Baptist Church

By Rachel J. Pilgrim

For 132 years, Grace Baptist congregants had been telling their founding story the same way: “In 1888, five Negro Baptist women, with great faith and courage, founded Grace Baptist Mission in Mount Vernon, New York.” I read that line every Sunday, waiting week after week for someone to update it with the women’s names. More HERE.

Grace Baptist Church in Mount Vernon, N.Y., was founded by five Black women whose names, until recently, were not known. David Dee Delgado for The New York Times