Historic Black church in Great Falls awarded $200,000 for repairs, preservation

In a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood in south-central Great Falls stands one of the most important and enduring monuments to Black culture in Montana. The Union Bethel AME Church (African Episcopal Methodist) has been a landmark religious and cultural institution in Great Falls almost from the city's inception.

According to the Montana Historical Society, Black people began arriving in Great Falls as early as 1886. Many arrived via riverboats departing from St. Louis and Kansas, where the largest population of freed African Americans had migrated following the end of the Civil War.

"With the completion of the railroad through Great Falls, new jobs and easier transportation facilitated the growth of the city’s black community," a Historical Society essay states. "By the 1930s, Great Falls would boast the highest percentage of black residents of any Montana city. Zoning ordinances and Jim Crow style policies forced black residents into the Southside neighborhood. "

The first Bethel Union church was built on a donated plot of marshy ground in the heart of Great Falls' Black community in 1891. The original church fell into disrepair and was torn down in 1915. The existing church was built in 1917, following a lengthy fundraising campaign.

However, the old church on Fifth Avenue is now in trouble. Deterioration of the building's brick and mortar threatens to destabilize the church and could potentially result in a structural failure.

"The bricking has started deteriorating and falling bricks have become a hazard," Pastor Betsey Williams said. "There's deterioration along the foundation, and there's been some sinking of the building. The mortar and the bricks are just coming apart."

The cost to preserve and repair the old church is beyond the immediate financial means of the Bethel Union AME congregation. The church's future seemed uncertain. Then, just a week ago, a member organization of the National Trust for Historic Preservation announced it will grant $200,000 to the Union Bethel AME Church to support the repair of all existing mortar joint and to address other significant weather-related deterioration.

“We created the Preserving Black Churches program to ensure the historic Black church’s legacy is told and secured. That these cultural assets can continue to foster community resilience and drive meaningful change in our society,” said Brent Leggs, Executive Director of the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, which selected the Union Bethel AME Church as one of 31 black churches across the country it will provide financial support to this year.

A decaying exterior façade is not the only challenge the Union Bethel Church has had to face in recent years. The church closed to in-person services during the COVID pandemic, then during the winter of 2022 a major water pipe burst flooding the basement. The church is only now recovering from that damage

"We had to tear out drywall, redo the floors, we had to turn the water off," Williams said. "It's just been a major, major ordeal. Getting that together was not easy."

In the intervening time services at the church have been limited to the internet. The long pause has strained Union Bethel's links with the community it serves.

"God says preserve that which remains so it is not lost," Williams said. "We're trying to get the community back involved in the church and building our community resources up. To do that we have to start with the brick and mortar. We have to refresh it and get it back together so we can serve our community. It's not just the black community, its the entire community itself. The goal is to get the church back physically and spiritually strong."

"This is the major grant that we needed to sustain the church and get it back on solid ground so we have it standing strong for another 100 years," she added.

Repairs on the church are expected to begin this coming April or May.

Black history in Great Falls

During the progressive era of the 1890s, Great Falls' Black community made positive inroads into the city's social and political institutions. It became home to a baseball team, several bands, many businesses, and even a jazz room called the Ozark Club.

According to the Montana Historical Society, both Republicans and Democrats nominated Black men for public positions. In 1892, the Republicans elected William Morgan as the new city constable, possibly the first Black resident elected to public office in Montana.

However, the progressivism of the 1890s was short lived. Renewed racist policies were implemented in the first decade of the 20th century. Black men and women were unwelcome in local restaurants and bars, as well as labor unions, clubs and other establishments. This culminated in 1909 when Montana passed a law making inter-racial marriage and sexual relations a felony.

The Union Bethel AME Church provided a refuge where the community could socialize and promote civil rights at local, state and national levels.

Union Bethel women formed clubs to benefit both the church and the community, including the long-lived Dunbar Art and Society Club which performed charitable and literary deeds for decades.

Union Bethel's men's clubs included a Masonic Lodge and an Odd Fellows Lodge. According to the history website BlackPast, the church also occasionally partnered with non-black churches in public events such as a send-off turkey feast for Black soldiers in World War I, and a joint Thanksgiving service with a white Baptist church.

Great Falls black population began to dwindle during the 1920s and 1930s due to economic hardships. There was a slight resurgence beginning in the 1950s when Black airmen began to be assigned to Malmstrom Air Force Base.

"Women’s clubs in the city fought tirelessly for fair treatment of black airmen in businesses and institutions in Great Falls," the Montana Historical Society states. "Today, Great Falls still is home to the largest Black community in the state, though it is but a fraction of former size."

The hope is that Union Bethel AME Church will remain a vibrant part of Great Falls on into the next century.

“Black churches have been at the forefront of meaningful democratic reform since this nation’s founding. They’re a living testament to the resilience of our ancestors in the face of unimaginably daunting challenges,” said historian Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in a newsletter accompanying the grant announcement. “The heart of our spiritual world is the black church. These places of worship, these sacred cultural centers, must exist for future generations to understand who we were as a people.”

This article originally appeared on Great Falls Tribune: Union Bethel AME Church to receive $200,000 grant to restore exterior