The Landmark Designation Ceremony for the Old Stone Church, the historic church home of the Antioch East Baptist Church and the Candler Park home of the First Existentialist Congregation (First E), took place on Saturday, June 22.
A hot, blistering day was soothed by the joyful singing and merry hearts that joined in honoring the legacy of Antioch East, its founding members, and the Black Edgewood community where the church first took root. The BiRacial History Project, an 18-year research, documentation, and community engagement and building project managed by Edith Kelman, blossomed into this Landmark Designation. Anthony Knight, the African American Heritage Initiative Coordinator in the Office of Design Studio with Atlanta’s Department of City Planning, shaped the process for the designation.
The Atlanta Future Places Project report made the preservation of Black heritage its top recommendation. It created the position held by Anthony Knight beginning in 2022 and was the first step in achieving the established goals. Matt Adams, Assistant Director of Historic Preservation, Office of Design, called attention to the first two Black heritage sites honored with a Landmark Designation this year — the Philadelphia School and the Old Stone Church.
The First E community expressed exuberant support for the designation and their continued connection with the Antioch East Baptist Church. Yvonne Carey Culbreth stood with her mother, Mother Sophie Lillian Greene Carey, as an early Antioch church family and long-term member: “I am so grateful that we had the opportunity to come. Grateful that my mother has been a member of Antioch all of her life. And now that she is 104 years old and was able to experience this is just a blessing from God.”
Charmaine Warren, who grew up in a small town in Illinois, said she “insisted on being here because I think it’s history. For one, if you don’t know where you came from, you don’t know where you’re going. So anytime I can make history or give some young people some advice on history, I need to be knowledgeable about it.”
The ceremony was a public demonstration of the importance of Black history, learning, and collaborative care for all in attendance and beyond. Barbara Boone — who attends First E, is part of its Social Justice Guild, and is a supporter of the Old Stone Church community events — shared her thoughts on the “why” motivates actions that lead to more than good feelings.
Boone, an African American woman, said she started to attend First E because of what she saw during her first visit: signs like “Black Lives Matter” and Old Stone Church artifacts telling the history of the church. It was a place where everyone was welcomed.
“All these people that did not look like me but we’re honoring the people who had preceded them. [The community at First E] respects everyone and celebrates all things that matter,” Boon said.
She went on to share examples of other events the BiRacial History Project and Antioch East Baptist Church have created together, forming a “union.” There was a 2023 “Come Back Musical” celebration. In October 2022, on the ballfields of Candler Park, there was an event to acknowledge and “celebrate Black families and Black property” by surveying and laying out the property lines of the Black community buildings that once stood there before residents were forced out and displaced in 1942.
“Today’s celebration with the city and all the efforts that Edith has gone through, some sparked by an article in the Candler Park Messenger,” Boone said. “It’s said that the history was something that needed to be memorialized and historically maintained so that everyone in the future could appreciate it.”
Historic designation for African American history and heritage in the built environment serves to provide broad support for formal recognition. The Old Stone Church demonstrates the need to identify these sites in neighborhoods around the city. The public ceremony points to the long legacy of Antioch East Baptist Church and the perseverance of Black people in maintaining their spiritual heritage despite being targets of White violence; the history of the church bears witness to these stories.
AJ Leslie Sr., a longtime member of Antioch East Baptist Church, shared, “After the Klu Klux [Klan] burned this church down, the men of the church along with some of the deacons went to Stone Mountain and brought these [stones] back and rebuilt this church by hand. That’s quite a feat!”
Emily Taft, an architectural historian who serves on Candler Park’s preservation committee, expressed praise for the work the BiRacial History Project completed. She said she was “pleased that the Old Stone Church did this on their own and became a City of Atlanta Landmark because it protects them into the future. No matter who owns it, you can’t demolish the church, and you won’t be able to dramatically change it, so that means that this place will be in our neighborhood [and] in part of our neighborhood in perpetuity.”
The City Ordinance 101.6 provides regulation for Landmark Historic Buildings and Districts. The Director of Historic Preservation and the Urban Design Commission are the legal bodies that will manage the construction, alteration, repair, enlargement, restoration, relocation or moving of buildings and see that usage of the Old Stone Church is aligned with maintenance of the historic building.
The intersection of preservation legislation and engagement of collective memory is what makes the Old Stone Church significant. This is the practice of Sankofa, a tradition based on African principles of honoring the past as a guide for forward movement. Our collective humanity is more resilient in and buffered by the knowledge of a shared full historical narrative. It is through the act of gaining an understanding that communities develop tools to build more inclusivity, where all residents are part of the society based on equity and equality.
The rapidity of development across the city and the encroachment into formerly segregated Black neighborhoods too often mean that these deeper stories disappear from the built environment and collective memory. Emily Taft points out, “In the 20th century, most of the African American communities that were on the north side of the tracks shifted south, and so there is very little of the African American communities that were integrated into our neighborhoods from across the city… from after the Civil War there is very little left of those on the north side of the tracks particularly.” This is true across Atlanta.
Preserving Black heritage sites not only keeps those cultural resources in neighborhoods but also provides access to the past. Black Heritage sites serve as pilgrimage and gathering sites and physical spaces designed for the community’s benefit. Remembering, learning, and sharing history is a tool to build intergenerational connections and foster community spirit; as AJ Leslie Sr. said: “… I think … a lot of our youth are lost, and they are wondering. Because they don’t have the connections to those roots, grandmama and great-grandmama and great-granddaddy and aunts and uncles, pass that history down, like the griots in Africa, pass that history down verbally.”
It is important to understand how there are so few Black heritage resources that have been preserved with legislation. Garfield Peart, who grew up in the same neighborhood as Anthony Knight, is an architect and former Atlanta Urban Design Commissioner and Vice-Chair.
“As you read the history of this structure, it was born out of, unfortunately, what many of our historic buildings experience,” Peart said. “They were built with materials that weren’t sustainable in that sense, and with the technologies that we had in the late 1800s and early 1900s, much of the rest of the city was built out of wood. So, the decision to get stone and build a stronger building not only represented an education but also represented a symbol that this structure would not be easily destroyed like the other one.”
Peart acknowledged the opportunity presented by the moment; the ceremony highlights the Stone Church as a preservation model.
“The legacy, this is very significant. Not only for the city of Atlanta but for the Candler Park neighborhood,” Peart said. “It’s an opportunity for us to embrace our history in the city of Atlanta, to set the example for other cities in the South on how you work together both racially and culturally to build a greater city.”
In a period where the political narrative bifurcates diverse communities into cultural wedges instead of laying out solutions or designing reparative solutions, it is important to recognize “what we are doing right,” Peart said.
Typically, the act of honoring diversity in history is intentionally pushed aside.
“Today’s experience was … I think a great lesson to everyone that the process of learning our history and understanding our history can be a joyful process; it’s nothing to be afraid of,” Mary Howard, a congregant of First E, said. “It enables us to move forward with justice and harmony.” Learning presents an opportunity to understand and cultivate new relationships.
Many of the people in attendance were members of the Antioch East Baptist Church. They had family roots in the church, with an older relative who served as a Mother or Deacon or another position, or were part of an 1872 founding families, or they participated in past commemorating events. They may have once lived in the modern Edgewood neighborhood, to which Antioch East Baptist Church relocated in 1951 when the Black Edgewood residents of what became Candler Park were forced south to the other side of the Georgia Railroad tracks.
AJ Leslie Sr. shared his connection to the Old Stone Church. “I remember when they first started [meeting collectively], we did a concert over here [at First E],” he said. “I’m one of the drummers in my church. … My mother [Mother Annie Leslie] was one of the Mothers[.] Her oldest daughter and son-in-law [Deacon Gus Newman], he was the youngest Deacon at the church at the time.” Estella Maddox, a member of Antioch East and former resident on LaFrance Street, described the service as “lovely, beautiful” and added that she “learned a lot. … I want younger people to get more involved with their church, to learn the history of it, get more involved because we need younger people.” And Stanlecia Carithers, whose great-grandmother, Georgia Carithers, was a Church Mother in Antioch East, said she was happy to be part of the event. “[I] came with my mother,” she said. “This is my first time inside. I drove past [the church before], but this is my first time inside. [My great-grandmother] probably would be happy that her family still living on through the church.”
The work of honoring the legacy of Antioch East Baptist Church continues beyond the Landmark Ceremony. Edith Kelman arranged for the BiRacial History Project’s documentation, research, and events to be retained in the Rose Library archives at Emory University. The collection will remain accessible to the founding families, church communities of Antioch East Baptist Church and First E, and the public, in perpetuity.
Two young people, affiliates of Antioch East, are working with the BiRacial History Project: Donald Sellers Jr., an active Antioch member and youth leader, and Jasmyn Clark, a descendant of the Latimore family, who were co-founding members of Antioch in the late 19th century. Community members hope they will serve as liaisons between the archival collection and the intergenerational Antioch East Baptist Church and stakeholder families. Their goal is to collaborate with the families, facilitate awareness and access to the materials, and support active engagement with the historic documents, artifacts, and exhibits, Ms. Kelman said.
District 2 Councilperson Amir Farokhi stated that “moments like this are undervalued in our city. We tend to look forward and not backward.” May the Old Stone Church give Atlanta and the broader South the opportunity to practice Sankofa and look backward and learn the lessons necessary for all of us to face forward to a healing and joyful future with hope and peace for everyone.
Peart said the church is emblematic of Atlanta’s building history. “Architecturally, that speaks to a lot of our structures around the city. If you take care of building them, they’ll be around so that we can honor them in the future,” he said. Historic preservation planning continues in Candler Park, where Emily Taft works with the neighborhood to create protections for “the identity of the rest of the neighborhood.”
Click here to learn more about the Early Edgewood-Candler Park BiRacial History Project’s work. The website includes:
- Information about Candler Park markers and sites related to Black history resources
- A self-guided walking tour with photos
- A gallery of historic photographs and artifacts
- Community engagement, with music and reflections on past events
- Information about the project’s timeline, references, sponsors, and more
It’s Emily Taff, not Taft. Thanks for highlighting this designation.
Thank you for this.
Edith Kelman is a hero. She’s worked for somewhere around two decades to bring to light the tragic history of early Candler Park (before it was Candler Park), during which black residents were pushed out of their thriving community. For current residents, the story she has documented makes real a history of racism that reverberates to this day.
But Edith went beyond just research. This official recognition of the history is a culmination of her efforts to reconcile the past with the present — and to bring together two communities.
Edith would probably scoff at all these compliments and give credit to others. But she drove this wonderful project and deserves her share of recognition.