Bass Street Church (Nashville)

Bass Street Church is a historic church founded in 1883 in the Bass Street Community of Nashville, a neighborhood created by emancipated Black people that previously resided at Fort Negley during the Civil War.

During the Civil War, the Union Army saw Nashville as an opportunity to maintain a strong presence in the South by utilizing it as a hub to house troops and transport supplies. To fulfill this idea, the army assigned General James S. Negley to fortify the city. At first, Black residents that were skilled workers were recruited with the promise that they would be paid. However, recruitment was low, which led to a labor shortage. To solve this, the Union army forced the conscription of both free Black people as well as previously enslaved refugees (dubbed “contrabands”). These people worked to build forts and encampments, cooked, and performed other tasks for the soldiers. The workers were also promised wages, but most of what was promised was not given. In addition, the conditions were abysmal, with long hours and little food and shelter; this led to the deaths of hundreds of people. Unfortunately, the Emancipation Proclamation did not free them from this forced work. This is because Tennessee had returned to the Union before the proclamation was issued on January 1, 1863, and it only applied to states that were currently seceded. It wasn't until October 1864 that all enslaved people in Tennessee were declared free.

After the Civil War ended in 1865, many newly emancipated Black people who resided at Fort Negley decided to build neighborhoods around the fort. One such neighborhood was the Edgehill Neighborhood- now known as the Bass Street Community- which formed after the Union Army left. In the years following the Union Army's departure, Fort Negley became a meeting place for the Ku Klux Klan; but despite the KKK's presence, the Bass Street area provided a sense of safety due to the number of retired soldiers that resided there. In fact, veterans of the US Colored Troops were able to eventually force the Klan out, causing the branch to officially disband in 1869.

The Bass Street Missionary Baptist Church was first established in 1883 located at 611 Bass Street. In 1889, Reverend William J. Bagus became the first recorded pastor of the church. An issue of the Nashville Banner from 1896 noted that the Bass Street Church was in support of a plan to build an orphanage for Black children in Tennessee. Throughout the early 1900s, the church became a center of community for the Bass street community as it held and participated in numerous events from multi-church music events to the Bass Street Baptist's Sunday School. The church was relocated in 1909 on lot 401 of Bass Street, which was west of its primary location. As the church continued to grow, Reverend Andrew Murray and Reverend Burton Murray, the pastor and assistant pastors of the time, dismantled and started construction for the church's third iteration. During construction, services were held at 6th and 7th Avenue South from 1930 to 1933. Construction concluded in 1938 to be followed by increased growth and congregation at the church. In the newly constructed building, various organizations held meetings, including the Oddfellows and Household of Ruth. Throughout the 1940s, pastors varied between Rev. Major Alexander (1938-1940), Rev. John B. Perry (1942), Rev. Surrey Holloway (1933), and Rev. Samuel Alexander (1946).

Church data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).