Leland Missionary Baptist Church

01 / The story of this place

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Leland Missionary Baptist Church was chartered in 1923 and has been a fixture of Detroit's Black church community ever since, though the congregation today worships in a newer building on Fenkell Street rather than its original home. Blues singer Sippie Wallace, who had been a recording star of the 1920s with hits like "Shorty George" and "Women Be Wise," moved to Detroit and largely stepped back from secular performing, instead spending roughly forty years, from the 1930s into the 1970s, as a singer and organist for this congregation. That long church career kept her musical skills sharp even as her blues fame faded, and it set the stage for her unlikely comeback: in the 1960s and 1970s, artists including Bonnie Raitt championed her old recordings, and Wallace returned to secular performing and recording in her later years, carrying the gospel discipline she'd built at Leland Missionary Baptist back into the blues world.

1. Congregation chartered in 1923
2. Blues singer Sippie Wallace sang and played organ here for about 40 years
3. Wallace's church years bridged her 1920s fame and her later blues comeback
4. Congregation today worships in a newer building on Fenkell Street