UNION'S
BLACK HISTORY

Union United Methodist Church’s story begins in 1796 when a group of African-American believers began meeting for study and worship on Beacon Hill.

 

As the faith community grew they requested their first pastor, the Rev. Samuel Snowden—a former slave turned abolitionist—and formed the May Street Meeting House. 

 

"In 1818, Rev. Samuel Snowden was called from Portland, Maine, to pastor the growing Black Methodist Episcopal congregation in Boston, Massachusetts. There he grew the first Black Methodist Episcopal congregation in New England and became a well-known and respected preacher and anti-slavery activist with a special ministry to Black seaman. At the end of his life, he opened his home as a refuge for fugitive slaves. Snowden’s son, Isaac Humphrey, became one of the first three Black men to enroll in Harvard Medical School."(1)

 

During Rev. Snowden's term, David Walker, who published the influential “Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World,” (2) was a member of our congregation. (3) 

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Our congregation soon outgrew the May Street Meeting House and built a larger church that was a station along the Underground Railroad. With the migration of Boston’s black population, the congregation moved from Beacon Hill to Roxbury and then to its current home on Columbus Avenue in Boston’s South End—and taking the name “Union.”

 

At the formal opening of the newly minted "Union Methodist Church" on May 8, 1949, the keynote speaker was Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, aunt to our pastor at the time. Dr. Bethune was a leading Black educator, Civil Rights activist, and presidential advisor who founded Bethune-Cookman University and founded the National Council of Negro Women. (4) Dr. Bethune vigorously fought against the segregation of The Methodist Church's Central Jurisdiction and advocated for a more inclusive Church.

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Throughout the decades, Union has been home to many important historical events. We hosted the NAACP Convention (1950) that voted to pursue Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark case that struck down segregation in public schools nation-wide. And on Friday July 22, 1966, the Duke Ellington Sacred Jazz Orchestra performed Ellington's Sacred Jazz Concert at Union in the main sanctuary where more than 1,000 gathered. Click here to read the Boston Globe article from that day.

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During the 1980s and 1990s we fought against apartheid in South Africa and for economic equality for all at home.

 

In 2000, Union voted officially to become a Reconciling Congregation, the first African-American Methodist congregation to be formally inclusive, affirming and empowering of LGBTQ+ persons. In July 2000, Bishop Martin David McLee was appointed to Union, hailing from the historic St. Luke "Community" UMC in Dallas (5). Under his leadership, Union lived into a renewed era of welcome and connection to the surrounding community.