Existing comment:
Rockville's African American Heritage Walking Tour Site #8
Jerusalem - Mount Pleasant Church and Parsonage
21 & 17 Wood Lane
Racial tensions between African American and white church members peaked immediately before the Civil War. Pro-slavery parishioners joined the M. E. Church South in 1863. By 1868 the predominately African American M. E. Church North owned this property.
This church had African American parishioners, slaves and free men but was segregated. White worshipers entered the front door and sat in the sanctuary while African Americans used a separate entrance and sat upstairs in the gallery. Some African American parishioners protested this racist system by refusing to attend church, listening from outside the window.
The Parsonage was built in 1912 from trees harvested by the congregation at a church-owned lot in Poolesville. The Reverend James Cole, his wife Lila and their nine children lived here. These two buildings are among the few remaining historic church and parsonage units left in Montgomery County. |