From the Editor: Church will mark 150th anniversary

Morgan City and the surrounding area can boast about a lot of history — Civil War history, commercial shipping and railroad history, energy industry history, and more.
But no single institution has a history richer than the church at the foot of Federal Avenue. It’s Mount Pilgrim Baptist Church, which will mark its 150th anniversary Sunday.
“You have some loving people here,” said the Rev. Chrispin Finnegan Smith, who has been the Mount Pilgrim pastor since 1964. “They’re conscientious. They want to go forward. It’s a challenge, but I love it.”
Mount Pilgrim may have been one of the nation’s first churches serving African-American congregations to emerge after the Civil War and emancipation. Its history goes back to 1865.
That history seems almost miraculous considering what was going on in Louisiana at the time Mount Pilgrim was born.
Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 had specifically exempted St. Mary Parish, possibly because the federal presence here meant that the area was no longer in active rebellion. The point became moot early in 1865, when the enactment of the 13th Amendment ended slavery for all time.
But Reconstruction was a contentious and violent process here. There were at least two infamous massacres of black residents, one in New Orleans, where 30 people were murdered, and another at Colfax near Alexandria, where 100 or more were killed, many of whom died after they gave up their attempt to defend the Grant Parish courthouse.
Federal attempts to prosecute the Colfax killers led to the notorious Cruikshank decision in the U.S. Supreme Court, which limited the scope of the newly passed 14th Amendment and its demand for equal protection under the law. Cruikshank led to the institution of Jim Crow laws across the South.
But in 1865 in Morgan City, a few acts of kindness helped Mount Pilgrim get its start.
A man named Olympus Young donated a plot of land on which freed slaves could build a church, according to the church’s official history. A Mr. Lawrence, who had been a slave-holder, gave another gift that continues to serve today — the bell that has been placed atop the brick sign in front of the church.
The church would go on to conduct the city’s first kindergarten for African-American children in the 1940s and would host Morgan City Colored High School commencement exercises.
“Growing up here, Christian education was very important,” Smith said. “If you took it in, as I tried to do — and I’m still trying — it grows within you.
“Nothing happens overnight. It continues to grow, and you have to love it. Those who were instrumental in teaching me were committed and dedicated to the Lord. Much of what they taught and tried to exemplify, that seed was planted in me as well as many others.”
At the church’s weekly Bible study Wednesday night, member Debbie Green also talked about seeds.
Johnson said, “That seed planted early on has grown and developed and been nurtured in each one of us. … It’s a church where we praise and worship God, but we love each other, and this becomes our family.”
Sandra Greene agreed.
“Our motto is that a praying church can do anything,” Greene said. “And we believe that.”
Associate Pastor Edward Robinson summed up his feeling about the church in just a few words.
“Love,” Robinson said. “Fellowship. That’s the foundation. We love each other.”
Bill Decker is managing editor of The Daily Review. Reach h im at bdecker@daily-review.com