Blog | Presbyterian Historical Society

You are here

Home > About > Blog

Blog

News, events, updates, and tidbits from the Presbyterian Historical Society. Use tags to read related articles or sort by author for similar posts written by PHS staff members and volunteers.

Upholding Segregation: Racist Seating Policies in Southern Presbyterian Churches

June 12, 2023

Harmful Content Alert: This story contains outdated and offensive language. 

In the South in the early 1960s, churches debated whether and how to accommodate African Americans who came to worship. The US Supreme Court's Brown v. Board decision upended legal segregation, and intentionally intercultural congregations emerged to challenge both de facto and de jure segregation in the church. Berea in St. Louis, responding to combined white flight and...

Author: 
David S
Tags: 
Congregations, African American History
Read more

PHS Awards Six Heritage Preservation Grants

January 27, 2023

The Presbyterian Historical Society is pleased to award six Heritage Preservation Grants to PC(USA) congregations in 2023. The winners are:

Woodland Presbyterian Church (Paw Creek, N.C.), organized 1868
First Presbyterian Church (Jeffersonville, N.Y.), organized 1845
First Presbyterian Church (Lebanon, Ind.), organized 1840
...

Author: 
David S
Tags: 
Heritage Preservation Grants, Congregations, Digitization
Read more

Liberty and Oakwood in Troy

February 15, 2022

In the wake of Brown v. Board ending legal segregation, and contending with the decades-long flight of white families from city centers, Presbyterians undertook efforts to merge city congregations, both as a practical and a moral matter. Second Presbyterian Church in Maryville Tennessee was merged into New Providence. Berea in St. Louis ministered to new white congregants as its Black...

Author: 
David S
Tags: 
Civil Rights, Congregations, African American History
Read more

PHS Awards Three Heritage Preservation Grants

January 18, 2022

The Presbyterian Historical Society is pleased to award three Heritage Preservation Grants to PC(USA) congregations in 2022. The winners are:

Dakota Community Presbyterian Church (Dakota, Ill.), organized in 1846.
Westminster United Presbyterian Church (West Islip, N.Y.), organized in 1958.
...

Author: 
David S
Tags: 
Heritage Preservation Grants, Congregations
Read more

First Presbyterian Church in the City of New York records digitized

June 8, 2021
Image via Pearl ID: 15971

PHS is happy to announce completion of the mass digitization of many of the original records of the First Presbyterian Church in the City of New York, an undertaking paid for by the congregation. We salute the labor of our archives technicians and digitization coordinator, Cecilia, Sharon, and Allison. We thank the archivist at First Church, David Pultz, for his labor...

Author: 
David S
Tags: 
Congregations, Digitization, New York
Read more
Featured Tags
New & Noteworthy