Second Baptist Church

01 / The story of this place

Make time for these

Second Baptist Church was organized in March 1836 by thirteen formerly enslaved people who left Detroit's First Baptist Church over discrimination, making it the oldest Black congregation in Michigan and one of the oldest in the Midwest. Standing less than three miles from the Canadian border, the church became a major station on the Underground Railroad, sheltering freedom seekers on their final steps to Canada, and it hosted one of Frederick Douglass's Detroit meetings with John Brown in 1859. It also ran the city's first school for Black children, taught for years by Fannie Richards, who went on to become Detroit's first Black public school teacher. Diplomat and Nobel Peace Prize winner Ralph Bunche was baptized here as an infant in 1904, shortly after his birth in Detroit. The congregation has worshipped at 441 Monroe Street, on the edge of Greektown, since 1857, and the building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

1. Founded in 1836 by thirteen formerly enslaved Detroiters
2. Michigan's oldest Black congregation
3. Underground Railroad station; hosted a Douglass–Brown meeting in 1859
4. Ralph Bunche was baptized here in 1904
5. On the National Register of Historic Places