II. ACCORD Freedom Trail Site - 84 St. Benedict Street

Parsonage St. Paul AME Church - Lincolnville

The narrow streets and small building lots of this area mark it as the earliest part of Lincolnville, founded by freed slaves after the Civil War and now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. An earlier house that stood on this site was the home of William VanDyke, a pioneer black elected official of St. Augustine in the 1870s.

The current building was constructed between 1910 and 1917 to serve as a parsonage for the adjacent St. Paul A.M.E. Church. It is similar in age, design, and building material to the nearby parsonage for First Baptist Church and the rectory for St. Benedict the Moor Church, all of them representing the early twentieth century heyday of Lincolnville.

Rev. Shepherd Hunter and his wife Alberta lived here in the 1940s. Their granddaughter remembered visiting them, and "the passage way between the church and the parsonage", in her biography, In My Place (1992). Her name is Charlayne Hunter-Gault. In 1961 she became the first black woman to attend the University of Georgia in its 176 year history. She is known to millions from her years as correspondent on the popular PBS television program "MacNeal/Lehrer News Hour".

St. Paul A.M.E. Church played an important role in the civil rights movement. Baseball Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson spoke at a large rally here in June 1964. When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to speak, many people wanted to hear him, but no single church was large enough. Rallies were held simultaneously at St. Paul and neighboring First Baptist. Dr. King was shuttled out the back door of one church and in the back door of the other, allowing more people the opportunity to hear him speak.