First African Baptist Church (Franklin Square)The oldest black congregation in North America, dating from 1777. The founding pastor was George Liele, who was the first black Baptist in Georgia. The building pictured was erected in 1859 and built almost entirely by the members of the congregation, most of whom were enslaved at that point in our history. It was a key staging area for the Underground Railroad and a nerve center of the early civil rights movement in Savannah in the early 1950s.

Illustration and creation by ms. Lisa C. Jackson