alexis mckenney.
psalms by the riverside
cohort. 2023-24
project. Psalms By the Riverside: An Archive of Sycamore Hill Missionary Baptist Church and Black Greenville (1860-1968)
location. Greenville, NC
medium. exhibit
Sycamore Hill Missionary Baptist Church, 1967. East Carolina Manuscript Collection. https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/50203
In 2022 I lived with my grandma Ann in our maternal homeland of Greenville, North Carolina. Greenville is a small riverfront town turned southern city. Some would call it a college town, but the side of the railroad tracks my family calls home feels most distinguished by corner stores, sidewalk chatter and, in the summertime, a familiar haze that coats the air with humid thickness and blurs the edges of time.
It was during this season that I stumbled upon the land my grandma Ann grew up on, and where her church, Sycamore Hill Missionary Baptist Church, once stood. I had been there before, brought by my grandma to see the outdoor installation that commemorated Sycamore Hill as the oldest Black Baptist church in Greenville. But this time, drawn by my own intuition, I paused to look at the pictures featured on the installation in what is now the Town Commons Park. One showed an aerial view of the old downtown neighborhood dotted with homes, businesses, and luscious fauna lining the river. Beside it was another, depicting a blighted, empty piece of land where the neighborhood had once been before a wave of urban revitalization in the late 1960s swept through, displacing my grandmothers, great aunts, and the Sycamore Hill congregation.
shore drive pre- and post-development.
As I looked on, I remembered pieces of a story about the mysterious fire that destroyed the original building that housed Sycamore Hill, a church grounded in the clandestine meetings of enslaved people and developed into a thriving community institution. Tears began to pool beneath my eyes as the weight of what had occurred settled over my shoulders and a familiar rage rose from my stomach. What had happened in Greenville had also happened in Durham, North Carolina, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and in cities across the country where Black churches were destroyed as part of white supremacist campaigns against African American economic, social, and spiritual progress. In the midst of ongoing racial terrorism, Black people found ways to create self-sustaining communities only to be displaced racist mobs or city governments.
I searched for this glaring truth in the blocks of text that accompanied the images in the downtown installation. I looked for it amongst the handful of rushed oral history interviews collected by white Eastern Carolina University historians. I went to the library, and scanned local and regional texts to see if anyone had written at length about what happened to my grandmother’s community or had placed it within a broader sociopolitical context. What I found was whitewashed accounts of Black resistance and near erasure of the community that made my existence possible.
I was left disappointed and angry. So, under the sage wisdom of Toni Morrison who once said “If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it,” I embarked upon this project to fill the gaps in the archive and write the historical narrative I desperately wanted to find. Psalms by the Riverside is a retelling and reflection of Black Greenville from those who lived it. This project sits with and honors the grief and rage that emerged within myself as a descendent of the displaced and from the elders who experienced it firsthand. It is the response to a call from the land of my maternal lineage to bear witness and give full attention to the cycle of displacement Black people in this country have been subjected to. This work is ongoing and made even more relevant by present-day threats of gentrification in West Greenville. Psalms by the Riverside is an effort to revisit the past in order to prevent the same harm from occurring today.
meet the elders.
Greenville residents Alton Harris, Ann Floyd Huggins, Benjamin Johnson, Connie Morris, and Lonnie “Tobe” Norcott are all current or former members of Sycamore Hill Missionary Baptist Church, and most attended C.M. Eppes High School.
ALTON HARRIS
"My name is Alton Ray Harris. And like Alexis say I'm in Greenville, North Carolina at Sycamore Hill Missionary Baptist Church, and I am 81 age or more, 81 of age. My street is called Reade, R E A D E, Reade Street. And it goes right down to the river. All the streets. By the Sycamore Hill Gateway Plaza, all of them lead right down to the river."
ANN FLOYD HUGGINS
"Ann Huggins: My name is Ann Floyd Huggins.
Alexis McKenney: And how old are you today?
Ann Huggins: I am 81 years old.
Alexis McKenney: So let's get right into it. Can you describe The street you grew up on? The one downtown. What it was like and who you lived with.
Ann Huggins: Okay well, when My grandmother and my grandfather, Olivia Malone and John Malone, moved on First Street at first I was not living with them because it was in the middle of the school year when they moved there. So I didn't want to change schools at that particular time. So later on I came to live with them on First Street. I Was in the eighth grade at CM Eppes High School. We lived on First Street and we lived in the block between Green Street and Washington Street. I believe the house number was 202, I think. The church was on the corner and we lived on the same side of the street that the church was on."
BENJAMIN JOHNSON
"Alexis McKenney: I'm here with—
Ben Johnson: Benjamin F Johnson.
Alexis McKenney: Okay and could you share your age with me today
Ben Johnson: I was born October the 12th, 1936, in a place called I guess we call Bruce Falkland area of Pitt County."
CONNIE MORRIS
"I am Cornelia F. Morris and right now I am 88, I’ll be 89 in December.
I was born and raised in Chatham, Virginia, and I went to school in Chatham, Virginia, high school. And after that, I lived there in Chatham a few years, I think it was until I became a teenager. And then we moved down here to Greenville."
LONNIE "TOBE" NORCOTT
"Lonnie Norcott: Okay, I'm Lonnie Norcott. Most people know me as Tobe.
Alexis McKenney: Gotcha.
Lonnie Norcott: Matter of fact, most people don't know my real name.
Alexis McKenney: Really?
Lonnie Norcott: And uh, 87 years old and living in Greenville, except off to school and the military, been here just about all my life. I was born in Virginia, but we migrated here. I wasn't even a year old when we came to Greenville. I grew up downtown. We called it downtown then now it’s uptown, whatever. I lived on 2nd Street about three or four blocks from the Tar River down the hill. At that time, all the Black neighborhood had dirt streets."
black fugitivity in greenville.
Pre-emancipation & Reconstruction
From 1716-1860 North Carolina Slave Codes forbade enslaved people from gathering in groups for any reason, including religious worship. The institution of chattel slavery required total control of enslaved peoples to quell any threats of rebellion. In Greenville and many other towns throughout the South, Black people were forced to attend white churches whose religious doctrine supported and reinforced the status quo of slavery (Source: Architectural Heritage, pg 8).
black community infrastructure in greenville.
A Snapshot during Jim Crow
While the NC Slave Codes of the 19th century were long gone, Black people still lived under the apartheid system of racist Jim Crow laws which forbid them from accessing public parks, schools, and any other spaces deemed for whites only. As I interviewed elders from the community, it was clear that the cocoon of community infrastructure was central to their memories of Greenville and helped them not just survive, but also experience joy, protection, and abundance in the middle of a city that embraced violent segregation. In some interviews, it was clear that despite the rich interior lives they created, living under such regressive social conditions still impacts those living elders who experienced it first-hand.
lasting scars on modern-day greenville.
Urban Renewal and Displacement
As my Grandma and most of the elders I interviewed were beginning high school, attending Baptist Training Union camps, and starting their first jobs, federal legislation was being passed and trickled down to cities across the country that would have grave consequences for many Black communities, including Greenville’s.
gratitude.
This work would not have been possible without the community elders who shared their stories and experiences with me. Thank you, Mr. Lonnie Norcott, Mr. Alton Harris, Mr. Benjamin Johnson, Miss Connie Morris, and Miss Ann Floyd Huggins. It was also made possible through the amazing guidance and support of my advisor, Dr. Aleia Brown and digital storyteller, isis amusa who designed the StoryMaps.
This research was funded by a Fellows Grant from The Crossroads Project, a collaborative research initiative directed by Judith Weisenfeld, Anthea Butler, and Lerone Martin and supported by the Henry Luce Foundation and Princeton University.
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Citation: McKenney, Alexis. “Psalms By the Riverside: An Archive of Sycamore Hill Missionary Baptist Church and Black Greenville (1860-1968)." SPIRIT HOUSE: A Crossroads Project. July 2024. Date Accessed. https://www.crossroads-spirithouse.org/mckenney.
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