“He is never far from any of us”. One of at least ten “story windows” installed at Mount Mary in 1963.
Mount Mary Baptist Church in Chickasawhatchee, a forgotten settlement near Sasser, shares a similar history with other Black churches in the area. It was an active congregation founded by freedmen and their descendants in the late 19th century. [I’m still confirming details about the history of the church and will update when I learn more].
In 1962 Mount Mary was used for voter registration meetings by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and like Shady Grove in Leesburg and Mount Olive in Sasser, it was burned to the ground in retaliation. In fact, it was destroyed on the same day as Mount Olive, 9 September 1962. It was rebuilt in 1963. The stained glass windows are the most notable feature of the church, which was designed by Atlanta architect Joe Amisano. Trappist monks of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers are credited with the windows. I’m not sure if the other churches feature the “story windows”, with verses and illustrations. I am trying to learn more about them.
Mount Olive Baptist Church was established in Sasser in 1896 by freedmen and their descendants. In 1962, as the Albany Movement spread beyond the borders of Dougherty County with the intention of registering voters and raising civil rights awareness, it played a central role in the burgeoning Civil Rights movement. Many Black churches were resistant to the movement due to the potential for retaliation by White employers and law enforcement and many of those fears were realized at Mt. Olive, with the unapologetic support of Terrell County sheriff Zachary Taylor “ZT” Mathews. Mathews was an avowed racist and particularly irredeemable character who had most notably led the coverup in the lynching of James C. Brazier.
Because of Mount Olive’s prominence in the community, it was the primary site for the mass meetings of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and its allies, organized by Charles Sherrod. On 25 July 1962, Sherrod led a meeting at Mount Olive, with White activists Ralph Allen and Penny Patch also present. The SNCC activists were well aware of the attention they had attracted by local law enforcement but continued their work. As noted in the SNCC digital archives: Mass meetings at churches were under constant surveillance. Police sometimes stood outside the churches, taking the names of people as they entered. In Sasser, Georgia, a tiny town in Terrell County, Sheriff Zeke Matthews and a dozen deputies stormed into the Mount Olive church during a mass meeting and went from pew to pew rubbing their pistols; they then stood scowling in the back. Reporting on this for the New York Times, Claude Sitton quoted Matthews as telling him, “We want our colored people to go on living like they have for the last hundred years.”
On 9 September 1962, Mount Olive fell victim to arson, with no immediate aid from firefighters or law enforcement, begging the question of their own involvement. Zeke Mathews’s responses to journalists covering the crime were predictably despicable, blaming the arson on outside agitators. He was quoted in the 10 September 1962 edition of the New York Times: “It’s unusual for white folks to go down there living with n___ – pretty unusual. The n____s are upset about it, too – the better n___.” And he told the Atlanta Constitution: “People here are disturbed because some of these white boys are living with Negroes. I think that has more to do with the fires than this voter registration business. People here know that the Negroes just don’t care anything about voting.”
While real justice in the case(s) was questionable, the congregation of Mount Olive persisted, and with the aid of funds raised by Jackie Robinson and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was rebuilt in 1963 during the pastorate of Rev. F. S. Swaggott. It remains active today.
Shady Grove Baptist Church was established in the late 1870s by freedmen families, and in 1880 members James Harris, Paul Tracy, Billy Pope, and Boss Scrutchins purchased the land on which the congregation still worships today. Rev. Samuel Lamar was the first pastor.
On 14 August 1962, Shady Grove was the first of four Black churches (including Mt. Mary, Mt. Olive, and I Hope) to be burned by arsonists in Lee and Terrell Counties. Unsurprisingly, local officials who inspected the Shady Grove site dismissed arson as a cause, blaming it instead on “faulty electrical wiring.” The FBI disagreed and in October charged domestic terrorists Jack Smith and Douglas Parker with the crime.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who visited the ruins of the church, wrote (in part) in the September 1962 issued of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) Newsletter, in an essay entitled “The Terrible Cost of the Ballot”: “Tears welled up in my heart and my eyes not long ago as I surveyed the shambles of what had been the Shady Grove Baptist Church of Leesburg, Georgia. I had been awakened shortly after daybreak by my executive assistant, the Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, who informed me that a SNCC (Student Non violent Coordinating Committee) staffer had just called and reported that the church ·where their organization had been holding voting clinics and registration classes had been destroyed by fire and/or dynamite.
Lee Count y is one of the three southwest Georgia counties where for years an attempt to register to vote has been tantamount to inviting death...
The naked truth is that whether the object of the Negro community’s efforts are directed at lunch counters or interstate busses, First Amendment privileges or pilgrimages of prayer, school desegregation, or the right to vote, he meets an implacable foe in the southern white racist. No matter what it is we seek, if it has to do with full citizenship, self-respect, human dignity, and borders on changing the “southern way of life ,” the Negro stands little chance if any, of securing the approval, consent or tolerance of the segregationist white South.
Exhibit “A”: The charred remains of the Shady Grove Baptist ·Church, Lee County, Georgia. This is the terrible cost of the ballot in the Deep South.”
Shady Grove was one of the three burnt churches to be rebuilt in 1963, with Dr. King present at the groundbreaking ceremony. Fundraising efforts successfully netted $70,000 (over $700k in 2024 dollars) and were led by baseball star Jackie Robinson, who along with Dr. King helped bring attention to the problem. Joe Amisano, representing the Georgia branch of the American Institute of Architects, designed the new church, as well as those at Mt. Mary and Mt. Olive.
