Tag Archives: Churches of Lee County GA

Shady Grove Baptist Church, 1963, Lee County

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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.

New Hope A. M. E. Church, Circa 1950, Smithville

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New Hope A. M. E. Church is located just down the street from New Hope Methodist Church. The two were built around the same time and have strikingly similar architecture.

The following abridged history is from an entry entitled “New Hope Methodist Church: County’s Oldest Church” in Smithville Georgia: A Glimpse of the Past (1976): “One of the first Methodist Churches in Lee County was organized in 1853, for the slaves. It was some two miles west of the later site of Smithville. First a brush arbor was erected to hold their services in, then they built a small log cabin church and in 1868, this building was destroyed by fire. Leaders of that project were H. M. Mitchell, Sr. and P. J. Griffin. It was…used for school purposes, being the first school for Negroes in this area.


The old building became dilapidated and the membership increased until it was necessary to start the third one in 1923. It was started by Rev. E. A. Clark and was finished by Rev. S. Fields. In September, 1949, that building was also destroyed by fire. The present building was started in 1950.

Smithville Methodist Church, 1946, Lee County

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The following abridged history is from Smithville, Georgia: A Glimpse Into the Past (1976). “Sometime after the Civil War, a number of Methodist families living in Smithville
community banded together and erected a meeting house near the Sumter and Lee
County line, about one mile Northwest of Smithville. This building was by the side of
the Old Smithville-Dawson Road, near the present site of the colored Primitive Church.
The earliest official record of the Smithville congregation occurs in 1878 when the
South Georgia Annual Conference created the Dawson and Smithville Circuit. Rev. W.
M. Hayes was appointed pastor.

At the beginning of 1881, a new pastoral charge was created with Smithville as
head. The congregation was moved into town and erected a new house of worship on
Whitaker Street. This building set well back into the lot; its architecture was typical of
the day, featuring a spacious porch with wide columns across the front.

In 1912, the prosperous Smithville congregation erected a new building, featuring
a corner tower. Rev. N. H. Olmstead was pastor and was serving his second appointment to the Smithville Circuit. This structure on Whitaker Street was the home of the congregation until the end of World War II. At that time, the building had fallen into ill repair, due to wartime restrictions on materials and labor.

The congregation under the leadership of Rev. J. D. McCord boldly erected a
concrete-block building in a modified Gothic style on Church Street in early 1946. It
was dedicated in October of the same year by Bishop Arthur J. Moore.“

Leesburg Presbyterian Church

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Leesburg Presbyterian Church was founded in 1869, and this church built around 1906. Donna King notes that it closed in 2009 after the congregation worked very hard to keep it open. It was purchased by Leesburg First Baptist Church around 2011. Steve Robinson writes: …this church was moved in July 2016 to Moultrie. It is now a wedding Chapel at Sundown Farms Plantation.